Populism, Party Realignment, and Race Relations

Through the early 1890’s the Republicans remained trapped by their demographic base but the populist movement would provide them a way out of what would otherwise have been a mathematical vice that would have relegated them to permanent minority party status despite the deep linkage to Northern elite society and economics. As the result of the populist movement both parties realigned, significantly distancing themselves from their traditional base supporters and small government politics largely became a concept of a past era. While the events are complex, a brief summary is required in order to understand the fairly dramatic effect this had on the association of religion and politics in American history.

After the Democrats won the presidency (Grover Cleveland) and both houses in 1892 it appeared as if they had won the demographic race to control the country and the Republicans would wind up as a regional party only. The Democrats were the sound money free market party of that time period but that was to change. The Depression/Panic of 1894 caused large midterm losses. This was caused largely by uncertainty about the commitment to the gold standard and the contraction naturally resolved itself in about 18 months, as always happened prior to the 1930’s, but the damage was done.

The Republicans sensing an opening moved away from support of Pietist blue laws to broaden their appeal made possible by populist factions that primarily impacted the Democrats. The Populist movement consisting largely of farmers who had consistently fallen behind economically (there is a credible alternative view of this) developed around the support of looser monetary policy and currency expansion taking the form of a bi-metallic system with silver, as tight access to money/credit was seen as a major problem for agriculture. (The Wizard of Oz is a parody of this)

Starting in the late 1880’s, populists formed a northern contingent (northern Alliance – mostly Union veterans), southern contingent (Southern Alliance – mostly Confederate veterans), and a smaller black contingent (Southern Farmers Alliance and Cooperative Union). The three groups didn’t necessarily get along well due to regional differences and the Black alliance was specifically southern due to a lack of a significant Black population in the North. Union pensions, which was the first really large-scale federal government entitlement program that was used to buy votes and was heavily impacted by fairly open fraud, was a major point of contention. This was effectively a direct transfer of income and wealth from South to North and could be seen as a form of reparation. The regional differences made it difficult to adapt to the Democratic Party which led to the formation of a separate Populist Party. (1 pp. 140-41)

William Jennings Bryan rose to lead the progressive Populist Party and eventually took over the Democratic Party by 1900. Bryan is a northern style Pietist from Nebraska who supported all Blue laws and was strongly anti-Catholic. He is best known for his “Cross of Gold” speech and defense of fundamentalism showing both the commonality and division between the two dominant forms of protestant Christianity during this era. He was not the Democratic nominee in 1904 but regained the nomination in 1908. Showing a libertarian side on foreign policy, he consistently opposed US imperialism and, after having been appointed Secretary of States under the Wilson administration, resigned over this issue.

The tactical response to populism by the conservative wing of the Democratic Party in the South was to position poor Whites on a higher social level than Blacks by creating a form of Apartheid law in many areas and taking measures to suppress the Black vote. This also suppressed the poor White vote to a lesser extent. Author Philip Leigh described the strategic shift this way:

“In order to offset party defections that Cleveland’s nomination might cause in the South, the region’s conservative Democrats played the race card to divert the attention of poor whites from the benefits of populism. If poor whites would not unite with the conservative whites on economic principles and thus deny the conservatives continued regional control, they might vote the conservative ticket if offered a racially superior status – laws that would promote whites over blacks – as a method of preventing the black voter from becoming the balance of power between any two competing white groups.

Much like Republicans waved the “bloody shirt” toward former Confederates to remind Northerners’ that the Democratic South was responsible for the Civil War and thus keeping them loyal to the GOP for years afterwards, around 1890 aristocratic Southern Democrats started reminding poor whites of the role black voters played in sustaining the evils of the carpetbag era.” (1 p. 143)

These changes effectively created a one party system in the South through the 1960’s with low participation. The region was severely impacted by this over the long term as the Democratic Party took the South for granted and the Republicans felt no obligation towards the South as there was no constituency there for them to appeal to. (1 pp. 152-53)

The Populist movement ultimately didn’t capture the Presidency but strongly influenced the major parties leaving a very different political landscape in its wake. For the next 20 years or so there were two progressive parties that advocated either a progressive Christian belief system (Northern Pietist) or Fundamentalist belief system that, while opposing movements, were in many ways more similar than they would initially appear to be politically at least through the 1920’s. This era also coincided with America becoming an international military power.

Voter participation dropped dramatically after this shift occurred. In the South voter suppression and a non-competitive election process led to participation levels dropping from as high 75% in 1876 and 68% in 1880 all the way down to 50% by 1900 and 38% in 1904, Outside of the South, Liturgical voters dropped out on a large scale with no party left to represent them. Since then 60% for a presidential election is considered high. (2 pp. 192-200)

The low point in African-American post antebellum history came from around 1890 to 1920 and then from there very gradually improved until the mid 60’s, which was also a period of time the corresponded with reductions in foreign migration that benefitted American workers in a broad sense (3 pp. 12-19). As the War Between the States wound to an end, Blacks made up 11% of the Union Army but, while white veterans left to rejoin civilian life, most Blacks remained in the Army because it was their best economic alternative. Within a few months after the end of the war, they made up 36% and the number was trending higher. Many of these would become associated with the Union League. (4)

During the latter half of the war Lincoln tried to develop a plan for transitioning the freedmen to freedom but this was largely overwhelmed by the core abolitionists and radical Republicans. Part, but not all, of his thinking involved colonization but it was still some form of a plan. In a conversation with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens in February 1865, when the South was trying to negotiate an end to the war, Stephen’s asked what the North was prepared to do for the emancipated slaves. According to Stephens, Lincoln responded with a story of an old farmer who advised that a hard winter was coming and he had to look out for his pigs. The farmer quoting a song that was popular at the time said “Root, hog, or die”. The process under the Freedman’s bureau was a bit more structured than that but their motivation was political and their funding inadequate placing the financial responsibility largely on the conquered states. (5 pp. 49-50)

After the war with full Black suffrage and disenfranchisement of large numbers of former confederates, black voters outnumbered white voters in Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama. Republicans reasoned correctly that they needed an overwhelming majority of the Black vote to hold onto power. In 1868 Grant got a minority of the white vote but won the presidency by picking up forty one electorate votes from former confederate states in relation to sixteen for his Democratic opponent, Horatio Seymour. Grant got 450,000 black votes as opposed to Seymour’s 50,000 with that margin coming overwhelmingly from the South as there was only a very small Black population anywhere else. At the end of the war, Grant had opposed voting rights for Blacks, even Union veterans, but gradually changed his views as he grew closer to the radical Republicans which led to his nomination for president. His views on voting rights for other minority groups like Indians and Chinese didn’t change. (4 p. 5)

To help hold power Grant used funding allocated under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, intended to protect Blacks in the South, to limit voter registration in large Northern cities where immigrant populations were strengthening the Democrats. As previously discussed, prolonged economic problems were largely responsible for the end of reconstruction but the political tipping point came in 1875 when Mississippi Carpetbag governor Adelbert Ames asked twice for Grant to send federal troops to the polls and Grant refused. In the background Ohio Republicans convinced Grant that intervention in Mississippi would cause the Republicans to lose Ohio. In effect he traded Ohio for Mississippi and the Republicans lost interest in the South (4). In the 1876 election, Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular and electoral vote over Republican Ruther B Hayes with disputed votes in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina leaving both sides declaring victory. A deal was reached giving the Republicans the disputed votes and, therefore, the election in exchange for removal of all federal troops bringing the carpetbagger era to an end and creating the “Solid South” for the next hundred years. (5 pp. 51-52)

With the Redeemer governments, Blacks continued to be an important voting bloc with White politicians openly courting Black votes (1 p. 174). Racial mixing during this time period was better than what was commonly believed. When Black journalist from Boston, McCants Stewart, toured the South in 1885 he found racial discrimination but also saw more of a sense of equality than he anticipated. On trains he was not asked to forfeit his seat while late arriving white passengers sat on their luggage. In South Carolina he noted, “I feel about as safe here as in Providence, Rhode Island”. A Black man in North Carolina observed, “The best people of the South do not demand this separate car business . . . this whole thing is but a pandering to the lower instincts of the worst class of whites in the South.” (1 pp. 174-75)

As Blacks and poor whites started to compete for the same subsistence level employment, the racial situation degraded. With the rise of the Populist movement, poor whites voted for anti-planter and anti-Black candidates. When the Farmers Alliance gained strength, seven Southern states required segregated railcars. As the white populists challenged the establishment Democratic Party aristocrats of the time, blacks were caught between the two groups. The “Jim Crow” laws were based largely on statutes imported from northern states and cities that had abolished slavery decades earlier but setup ways of legislating an inferior status to blacks. The worst expressions of anti-Black violence were murders and lynchings. From 1882 to 1951 an estimated 4,900 people were murdered by vigilante mobs. About 4,000 were in the South and those were predominantly Black. Roughly 3,000 occurred before 1908. A commonly cited explanation for some of these events were in response to rape or sexual assault but only about 20% of the incidents can be associated with this. (1 p. 177)

On April 16, 1888 Fredrick Douglas gave a speech giving his observations of a recent trip to the South where he said in part:

“I admit that the Negro…has made little progress from barbarism to civilization, and that he in is deplorable condition since his emancipation. That he is worse off, in many respects, than when he was a slave, I am compelled to admit it, but contend that the fault is not his, but that of his heartless accusers. Though he is nominally free he is actually a slave.

I here and now denounce his so-called emancipation as a stupendous fraud – a fraud upon him, a fraud upon the world.” (5 pp. 52-54)

Because there was only a very small Black or minority population outside of the South, the desperate southern economic conditions disproportionately impacted African-Americans. There was initially after the war some black migration north along with marginal improvements in Black economic status in the North that corresponded to a slowing in European migration but, as mass migration ramped up again by the 1890’s, this progress faded away (3 pp. 41-45). The South was by far the poorest section of the country with per capita income as late as 1937 being only half of the average for the rest of the country. Tenant farmers and sharecroppers, who made up 53 percent of all Southern farm families both black and white, lived comparable to Russian serfs of the 19th century. Both Blacks and Whites living in these circumstances were equally destitute. This was largely due to federal economic and monetary policies along with consistently depressed cotton prices but was also self-sustaining in other ways. While the South had one third of the nation’s school children during the great depression, it had only one-sixth of the educational funding. Because of poverty, the most capable would leave to find better opportunities elsewhere leaving the South with a greater concentration of the old and the young. One third of the South’s population was school aged as opposed to one-fourth for the industrial states (1 pp. 180-85). There were some attempts to industrialize the South most notably by Henry Grady, who was editor of the Atlanta Constitution and leader of an investment group who attempted to attract industrial investment away from the North. Their success was limited however, despite significantly lower operating and plant costs because Northern interests manipulated rail rates to offset the difference. (5 pp. 56-57)

Bibliography

1. Leigh, Philip. Southern Reconstruction. Yardley, Pennsylvania : Westholme Publishing, 2017.

2. Rothbard, Murray. The Progressive Era. Auburn Alabama : Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2017.

3. Beck, Roy. Back of the Hiring Line. Arlington Virginia : Numbers USA, 2021.

4. Leigh, Philip. U.S Grant's Failed Presidency. Columbia, South Carolina : Shotwell Publishing, 2019.

5. Sale, Kirkpatrick. Emancipation Hell. Columbia, South Carolina : Shotwell Publishing, 2015.

Populism, Party Realignment, and Race Relations

Bibliography

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