southern democrats definition

This political maneuvering required the organization of a new and distinct political party, which the Southern defectors from the Democratic Party chose to brand as the States' Rights Democratic Party. Get HISTORYs most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week. Lincoln, whose sole experience in national government had been as a one-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois, confounded contemporary pundits by appointing all three of these political powerhouses to his cabinet: Seward as secretary of state, Chase as secretary of the treasury, and Bates as attorney general. [5] Supporters assumed control of the state Democratic parties in part or in full in several Southern states. Wildcard, crossword Not only that, Democrats recaptured the House and Senate after Republicans had taken control of both in 1946. This geographic region includes up to 16 states. The brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation includes Oklahoma in its definition of Southern states that have not expanded Medicaid and thus have adult populations in the coverage gap. Excluding Oklahoma, 88 percent of adults who fall into the coverage gap in these 14 states without expansion live in the South, defined as the 11 states of the former Confederacy. In fact, until 2002, Democrats still had much control over Southern politics. The 1888 Republican platform, in fact, said this was just the first step: We declare our hostility to the introduction into this country of foreign contract labor and of Chinese labor, alien to our civilization and constitution; and we demand the rigid enforcement of the existing laws against it, and favor such immediate legislation as will exclude such labor from our shores.. When senators want to put the brakes on legislation,. Since segregation continued well into the late 20th . On average, in the states of the former Confederacy, those numbers were 38 percent white, 37 percent African American and 25 percent Latinx. The ability of state governments to block or redirect federal aid to the detriment of minority communities (as Texas has done with its federal welfare dollars) could make these voters ready for a revolution or skeptical of one. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights. To save this word, you'll need to log in. Similarly, Latinx voters in the South cast ballots for Clinton over Sanders 82 percent to 18 percent, a significant difference compared to Latinx voters outside of the South who favored Clinton over Sanders 65 percent to 35 percent. 15 of January 1865, which had set aside land along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia for the exclusive settlement of black families. In the late 1930s, southern Democrats in Congress had forged a "conservative coalition" with like-minded Republicans to fight New Deal liberalism. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for president and Gov. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Reconstruction governments served the expanding citizenry by establishing the Souths first state-funded public school systems, seeking to strengthen the bargaining power of plantation labourers, making taxation more equitable, and outlawing racial discrimination in public transportation and accommodations. Southern Strategy | Encyclopedia.com [8], Three-time Democratic Party presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan opposed a highly controversial resolution at the 1924 Democratic National Convention condemning the Ku Klux Klan, expecting the organization would soon fold. Throughout the analyses that follow, the data were weighted to reflect national demographics and improve the representativeness of the sample. In Arkansas, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Sid McMath vigorously supported Truman in speeches across the state, much to the consternation of the sitting governor, Benjamin Travis Laney, an ardent Thurmond supporter. In truth, the seeds of the Southern strategy were sown in the West 100 years earlier, as detailed in a new book by Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War. All Rights Reserved. In the hope of creating a New South whose economic growth would benefit both blacks and whites, the governments also made available considerable funding for railroads and other enterprises. The states of the former Confederacy are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona epitomized the new-style Western Republican who rejected legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, not because of racism but because it represented big government. Democratic Party, in the United States, one of the two major political parties, the other being the Republican Party. [15] While several leaders from the Deep South such as Strom Thurmond and James Eastland attended, most major Southern Democrats did not attend the conference. On the other hand, states that have expanded Medicaid have seen these racial gaps in coverage in their states begin to close, according to a Commonwealth Fund survey, also in January. Angie Maxwell is the director of the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics & Society and the author of The Long Southern Strategy: How Chasing White Voters in the South Changed American Politics., 2020 Election (1211 posts) The Republican party was strictly a sectional party, meaning that it just did not exist in the South, he says. This combination of moderate ideology and strong party loyalty that is characteristic of African American Democrats in the South particularly women may be the product of religious and cultural values. White supremacist organizations that committed terrorist acts, such as the Ku Klux Klan, targeted local Republican leaders for beatings or assassination. It met at Birmingham, Ala., and on July 17, 1948, nominated Gov. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won several Southern states in the 1952 and 1956 presidential elections. By the time of Lincolns inauguration in March, seven Southern states had seceded, and barely a month after Lincoln became president, the country became engaged in civil war. The 1860 election is regarded by most political observers as the first of three critical elections in the United Statescontests that produced sharp and enduring changes in party loyalties across the country (although some analysts consider the election of 1824 to have been the first critical election). Trying to transcend the sectional divide was the Constitutional Union Party, which was formed in 1859 by former Whigs and members of the Know-Nothing Party. 'Racially conservative' attitudes led white Southerners to leave And so the political parties began to reconstitute themselves.. Southern Democrats still did and do see much support on the local level however, and many of them are not nearly as liberal as the Democratic party as a whole. In 1873, scores of black militiamen were killed in Colfax, Louisiana, after surrendering to armed whites intent on seizing control of the local government. Dixiecrat Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster There, they nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond, a staunch opposer of civil rights, to run for president on their States Rights ticket. In 1876, a decade after the U.S. Civil War, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes competed against Democrat Samuel Tilden in a bitterly contested presidential election. The move was on to remove Truman's name from the ballot in the southern United States. Moreover, 16 African Americans served in Congress during Reconstruction, including two U.S. senators, Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce. | The Constitutional Unionists named former senators John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts as their presidential and vice presidential nominees, respectively. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. The key was the rise of the West and its increasing political power as the population of Western states skyrocketed after World War II. After President Harry S. Truman, the leader of the Democratic Party, ordered integration of the military in 1948 and other actions to address civil rights of African Americans, many Southern white politicians who objected to this course organized themselves as a breakaway faction. [16] The States' Rights Democrats eventually succeeded in making the ThurmondWright ticket the official Democratic ticket in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina. A windows (pop-into) of information (full-content of Sensagent) triggered by double-clicking any word on your webpage. [1] Most of them voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by holding the longest filibuster in American Senate history while Democrats in non-Southern states supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Grant was reelected in 1872, but Republican support for Reconstruction began to wane as the older Radical leaders such as Benjamin F. Wade and Thaddeus Stevens retired or died and were replaced by technicians such as Roscoe Conkling and James G. Blaine who were devoid of the idealistic fervour that had marked their predecessors. A group of Southern governors, including Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Fielding L. Wright of Mississippi, met to consider the place of Southerners within the Democratic Party. States on the edges of the South Virginia, Florida and North Carolina have turned purple or a light shade of blue, but the heart of the South unquestionably remains Republican territory in presidential elections. The Compromise of 1877 (article) | Khan Academy Consequently, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation issue brief in January, 92 percent of adults3 who remain in the coverage gap live in the South, and they are disproportionately African Americans and Hispanics. But Southern conservatives were alienated from the GOP because of slavery and the Civil War. They wished to protect the ability of states to maintain racial segregation.[4]. Anagrams It was also bolstered in the next two elections by the "Southern Strategy" of Richard Nixon. On average, non-southerners voted 65 percent for Clinton to 35 percent for Sanders, but Clinton bested Sanders 77 percent to 23 percent among southerners. Give contextual explanation and translation from your sites ! Sen. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was nominated as Lincolns running mate. "[28], This article is about the American political party established in 1948. Even during the last years of Reconstruction, Democrats used paramilitary insurgents and other activists to disrupt and intimidate Republican freedman voters, including fraud at the polls and attacks on their leaders. How the 'Party of Lincoln' Won Over the Once Democratic South For When 'Lowdown Crook' Isn't Specific Enough, You can't shut them up, but you can label them, A simple way to keep them apart. Updates? Republican Party | Definition, History, & Beliefs | Britannica Republican candidate Barry Goldwater won many of the "Solid South" states over Democratic candidate Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and this Republican support for those states continues to this day. After the passage of this act however their support on a presidential level shifted to the Republicans. "Racially conservative" attitudes were the primary reason white Southerners abandoned the Democratic Party after party leaders began to advocate for civil rights legislation during the last half of the 20 th century, finds a new study from researchers at Princeton and Yale universities.. That gap in diversity takes on heightened significance when candidates fare better among one racial/ethnic group compared to others. Lincoln did not win any votes in any state that would form the Confederacy, with the exception of Virginia, where he garnered only 1 percent of the total vote (Douglas won slightly less than 10 percent). Nonetheless, violent opposition to Reconstruction by white Southerners increased. The two parties controlled Congress for almost equal periods, though the Democrats held the presidency only during the two terms of Grover Cleveland (188589 and 189397). Nonetheless, Democratic voters in the South still exert significant influence on the party during the primary season. [17], The States' Rights Democrats did not formally declare themselves as being a new third party, but rather said that they were only "recommending" that state Democratic Parties vote for the ThurmondWright ticket. The States' Rights Democratic Party collapsed after the 1948 election, as Truman, the Democratic National Committee, and the New Deal Southern Democrats acted to ensure that the Dixiecrat movement would not return in the 1952 presidential election. [24], Regardless of the power struggle within the Democratic Party concerning segregation policy, the South remained a strongly Democratic voting bloc for local, state, and federal Congressional elections, but increasingly not in presidential elections. In federal elections from the 1870s to the 1890s, the parties were in rough balanceexcept in the South, which became solidly Democratic. Letters must be adjacent and longer words score better. Scalawag | History & Facts | Britannica scalawag, after the American Civil War, a pejorative term for a white Southerner who supported the federal plan of Reconstruction or who joined with black freedmen and the so-called carpetbaggers in support of Republican Party policies. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky was the candidate of the Southern Democrats, whose campaign was based on the demand for federal legislation and intervention to protect slaveholding. 2023, A&E Television Networks, LLC. By this time, however, the Democratic Party leadership began to change its tone somewhat. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was the candidate of the generally antislavery Republican Party. The Northern Democrats elected Stephen Douglas and they supported his Freeport Doctrine, which accepted the decision of the Supreme Court. As all of this was happening, the dynamics within the Republican Party were changing in ways that made it even more accommodating to Southern conservatives. "[23] Former Dixiecrats received some backlash at the 1952 Democratic National Convention, but all Southern delegations were seated after agreeing to a party loyalty pledge. Franklin Roosevelt, irritated by the lack of support many Southern Democrats were giving to various New Deal programs, tried to purge some of them in the Democratic primaries. Constitutional Unionist John Bell won 12.6 percent of the vote and 39 electoral votes. The Wilmot Proviso: Definition, Date, and Purpose - History Cooperative Updates? 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What Makes Southern Democrats Unique By Angie Maxwell Filed under 2020 Election A woman casts a vote in South Carolina's Democratic presidential primary last week. Who Were the Southern Democrats? | National Review Abraham Lincolns chief competitors for the nomination as the presidential candidate of the Republican Party in 1860 were front-runner William H. Seward,a U.S. senator from New York; Salmon P. Chase, the governor of Ohio; and Edward Bates, a prominent state legislator from Missouri. Although Thurmond lost the election to Truman, he still won over a million popular votes. The Democratic Party's claim to be the party of the good guys, while the Republicans are the party of the bad guys, hinges on the tale of Richard Nixon's so-called Southern Strategy.According . The Republican party was originally founded in the mid-1800s to oppose immigration and the spread of slavery, says David Goldfield, whose new book on American politics, The Gifted Generation: When Government Was Good, comes out in November. African Americans were the most ideologically moderate Democratic primary voters in the South in 2016. From the end of the Civil War to 1960 Democrats had solid control over the southern states in presidential elections, hence the term "Solid South" to describe the states' Democratic preference. (While equally entitled to receive veterans' benefits after the war, the vast majority of African American veterans were prevented from accessing most benefits due in part to Southern success in congress to have benefits administered by the states instead of the federal government. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Among those who voted for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primaries and caucuses, Clinton fared the best among African Americans in the South, who chose her over Sanders 87 percent to 13 percent, a five-point improvement over her performance among African Americans outside of the South. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Why? For example, Republican Governor Leland Stanford of California had this to say in his 1862 Inaugural Address: To my mind it is clear, that the settlement among us of an inferior race is to be discouraged, by every legitimate means. When Americans moved there after the Civil War, they kept alive the same vision of the world that had inspired Confederates. United States presidential election of 1856, United States presidential election of 1864. Still, much of the campaigning that did follow consisted of parades and rallies that boosted interest in the election (on election day some four-fifths of eligible voters turned out). The splits in the Democratic Party in the 1948 election had been expected to produce a victory by GOP presidential nominee Dewey, but Truman defeated Dewey in an upset victory. When the war was over, and the Confederacy destroyed, a deep resentment among white Southern citizens toward Republicans helped propel the Democratic Party to a majority in Congress by the 1870s and bring an end to Reconstruction. However, with the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Republicans lost the Congress in 1930 and the White House in 1932 by huge margins. Dixiecrat | Southern Democrats, 1948 Election, Segregationists )[11] Tens of thousands of black civilians at home were recruited in the labor-starved war industries across many urban centers in the country, mainly due to the promotion of Executive Order 8802, which required defense industries not to discriminate based on ethnicity or race. Although Thurmond carried four states, Truman eked out an upset victory. The disputed presidential election of 1876 was resolved with a deal that resulted in Rutherford B. Hayess assumption of the presidency and the removal of the last federal troops from the South, thus ending Reconstruction. Dixiecrats - Encyclopedia of Alabama All rights reserved. And that began the erosion of the southern influence in the Democratic party.. The Republican Party controlled the governments of almost all of them. The Dixiecrats of 1948 | Overview & History - Study.com Of more importance to the Southern strategy is that Nixon, like Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and the two Bush presidents, was from the West. Maryland was the only state south of the Mason-Dixon Line whose governor affirmed Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Super Tuesday (52). The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 split the states of the former Confederacy into five military districts and specified how new governmentsbased on manhood suffrage without regard to racewere to be constituted. It was the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that finally put an end to this coalition of interests. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). [27] In a 2016 article written by David Neiwert for the SPLC, Niewart stated that "When the members of the Klan were Democrats, as in the 1920s, as well as in the '40s when they called themselves "Dixiecrats," they were conservative Democrats. It arose due to a Southern regional split in opposition to the regular Democratic Party. What's With RFK Jr.'s Double-Digit Polling. After the election of Abraham Lincoln, Southern Democrats led the charge to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America. How Impactful Was This Supreme Court Term? Eventually "Redemption" was finalized in the Compromise of 1877 and the Redeemers gained control throughout the South. After the Civil Rights Movement successfully challenged the Jim Crow laws and other forms of institutionalized racism, and after the Democrats as a whole came to symbolize the mainstream left of the United States, the form, if not the content, of Southern Democratic politics began to change. In the 1866 mid-term congressional elections, voters in the North resoundingly rejected Johnsons Presidential Reconstruction policies, and Congress, dominated by Radical Republicans, decided to restart Reconstruction. In the 19th century, they were the definitive pro-slavery wing of the party, opposed to both the anti-slavery Republicans (GOP) and the more liberal Northern Democrats. Douglas won nearly 30 percent of the vote but won only Missouris 12 electoral votes. If they break strongly for Sanders in the South on Super Tuesday, it would indicate a major shift since the last presidential election cycle. The partys platform particularly appealed to border states in its attempt to ignore the slavery issue and focus instead on fealty to the U.S. Constitution: Resolved, that it is both the part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principles other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws; and that, as representatives of the Constitutional Union men of the country in national convention assembled, we hereby pledge ourselves to maintain, protect, and defend, separately and unitedly, these great principles of public liberty and national safety against all enemies, at home and abroad, believing that thereby peace may once more be restored to the country, the rights of the people and of the states reestablished, and the government again placed in that condition of justice, fraternity, and equality which, under the example and Constitution of our fathers, has solemnly bound every citizen of the United States to maintain a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Dixiecrat. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Dixiecrat. The electoral split between Northern and Southern Democrats was emblematic of the severe sectional split, particularly over slavery, and in the months following Lincolns election (and before his inauguration in March 1861) seven Southern states, led by South Carolina on December 20, 1860, seceded, setting the stage for the American Civil War (186165). )[7], Since the beginning of Reconstruction, Southern white voters supported the Democratic Party by overwhelming margins in both local and national elections, (the few exceptions include minor pockets of Republican electoral strength in Appalachia, East Tennessee in particular, Gillespie and Kendall Counties of central Texas) forming what was known as the "Solid South". Its members were referred to as "Dixiecrats", a portmanteau of "Dixie", referring to the Southern United States, and "Democrat". For example, in the 1990s, many Southern, white, conservative Democratic members of Congress began referring to themselves as Blue Dog Democrats (loyal Democrats who had been choked blue by the leftward lunge of the party).

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