It's About Coalitions Not Purity, Part Five

I'm going to backtrack here in the first part of this article, as I feel I should explain a bit more about the political nature of the country in the post-Civil War era, largely during what is known as Reconstruction and thereafter. It was an important era that brought political alignments (coalitions) for decades.

In the last couple of decades our political system has become increasingly polarized, and we "may" have to look back to the Civil War era to find a time when Americans were so politically divided over such an extended period of time and over so many issues. Some Republicans have even mentioned "secession from the United States," not that I believe that anything  is imminent. The Civil War era division largely centered around slavery and federal power to bring it to an end; a concept opposed by many southern states, whose representatives argued that states had a right to do what they wanted. Of course, the major beneficiaries of slavery were wealthy interests, usually plantation owners and exporters,* who were able to make the "states' rights" issue appear to be at the heart of the matter, not the immorality of slavery. By promoting the idea of a bullying Federal government, which was attacking southern independence, the interests were able to rally a "southern nationalism" to help them keep slavery in place. Poor white farmers and town dwellers, essentially receiving little, if any, benefit from slavery, became its staunch advocates, as they saw attempts to end it as an attack on "the South." If some of this sounds similar to today, you are wide awake.

The defeat of the Confederacy brought occupation to the South by troops of the Federal government. Each former Confederate state had to agree to certain laws before they could be readmitted to the Union, mainly those guaranteeing rights to former slaves. Republicans, the big political winners from the Civil War, as the party had been formed largely as an anti-slavery party, gained political control of most southern states by forming a coalition of blacks, northern white Republican transplants, and "repentant" white southerners.** Former slaves made up a substantial percentage of each southern state's population, but remember, at that time, only men could vote, not women, and blacks were virtually 100% Republican, as it was Lincoln and Republicans who helped them gain their freedom. Many southern white Democrats were elected to local offices, and thus began a period of intimidation of blacks and gimmicks (like poll taxes) to keep blacks from voting. Gradually, white Democrats began to regain control of southern states. In an agreement reached in 1877 over the disputed election of 1876, where Republican Rutherford B. Hayes trailed Democrat Samuel Tilden by more than two percentage points in the popular vote, Hayes won the Electoral College by just one vote, but the agreement provided for the withdrawal of troops from the South, and the ascension of Democrats to power there until the latter part of the 20th Century. Cracks began to develop much earlier in the Democratic coalition, however, over race.

Progressive elements within the Democratic Party,*** with support from none other than Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin Roosevelt, wanted black Americans to enjoy the same rights as other Americans, something that was not a fact in those times, even in the north, although the black population was still overwhelmingly concentrated in the states of the former Confederacy. Segregation was the fact, with separate seats for whites and blacks in theaters, restaurants, buses, etc, and separate schools and even separate water fountains. The movement for equal civil rights brought discord among Democrats, as southern whites, although staunchly Democratic, began to voice opposition to such rights for black Americans. At times, some southern politicians like Strom Thurmond, ceased their affiliation with the Democratic Party, at least temporarily, forming the so called "Dixiecrats," with the main aim being the perpetuation of segregation, although as like nearly a hundred years before, under the guise of supporting "states' rights." **** As more black Americans began to move northward to find jobs in northern industrial cites, conflict developed with the indigenous white population, much of it working class.***** The Democratic Party was finding their political coalition being strained, but fear of Republican pro wealthy policies (a carry over from Depression times) kept most Democrats scared enough to keep them in the fold election by election. When President Lyndon Johnson pushed for, and got, civil rights legislation in the mid 1960s, Republican political strategists found a potential opening to bring their stagnant party to possible majority status.******

The 1960s, more specifically the mid to late 1960s and into the early 1970s, were highly tumultuous. The war in Vietnam grew increasingly unpopular and divisive, with bloody protests and riots, at the same time as the civil rights movement for black Americans brought bloody protests and riots. The war brought antiwar people into activist positions within the Democratic Party (a group which also tended to be highly supportive of civil rights). Republicans won a close election for President in 1968 with former Vice President Richard Nixon. Republicans and conservative southern Democrats had been "flirting" for a number of years, but Nixon's appeal to patriotism and "law and order" (code for breaking up riots by antiwar protesters and civil rights groups; that is blacks) brought him a major victory in the election of 1972. Republican momentum to take control of Congress in 1974 or 1976 was derailed by the Nixon administration scandals, sort of collectively called "Watergate." Democrats won big in the 1974 congressional elections, and captured the presidency in 1976, but their era was out of gas, almost literally (oil and gasoline shortages). As the Democratic coalition unraveled, the Republicans were about to build one of their own.     

* The South was highly agricultural in those times, and heavily dependent upon cotton, of which much was sold outside the South, and overseas.  

** I've used the term "repentant southerners," for lack of a better term, but these were southern whites who essentially agreed with meeting the required conditions to rejoin the Union. "Unrepentant southerners" called these folks "scallywags" and they called the white northern transplants "carpetbaggers," after the travel bags they carried, fashioned out of carpet-like material, a fairly common  practice in those times.

*** Many progressives in the Republican Party began to switch to the Democratic Party in the 1930s and thereafter, but the progressive wing of the Republican Party remained fairly strong until 1964 and the nomination by Republicans of highly conservative/libertarian Barry Goldwater. After that, it was pretty much only a matter of time before progressive/liberal Republicans became an endangered species within the GOP.

**** It is worth noting that Thurmond later became a Republican and served in the U.S. Senate until the age of 100. It also is important to note that Thurmond, the staunch segregationist, fathered a child (a daughter) by a black woman. Hmm, I guess he didn't believe in segregation as far as sex was concerned.

***** As I've joked with black friends over the years, "Northerners opposed slavery, but we didn't think you were going to come up here and live next door to us." I'm not naive, and I'm sure someone will take this out of context, but I use it to point out that there were many racists in the North.

****** The 1964 election saw conservative Republican Barry Goldwater carry several southern states in a losing effort against Lyndon Johnson, an indication of how strong racial tempers were flaring in the Old South.

WORD HISTORY:
Slave-The ultimate origins of this word are uncertain, but it goes back to Old Slavic "slovo," the underlying meaning of which had to do with "sounds, utterances;" thus "speech." This then produced "sloveninu," meaning "Slav/Slovene," from the notion "group of people of the same or similar speech/language." This was borrowed by Greek as "Sklabos" ("Slav"), which in turn was borrowed by Latin as "Sclavus," but with the meaning "slave," as many Slavic people had by that time been conquered and enslaved by others. This gave Old French, a Latin-based language, "(e)sclave," and this was borrowed as "slave" by English in the latter part of the 1200s.