How did the Democrats turn toward the left and how did the GOP turn right?

[Beet]

The Panic of 1893.

[Beet]

It's pretty left wing.

The Democratic party in 1896 was in transition from Jacksonianism to what we would today recognize as leftism. The fact that much Jacksonian anti-government rhetoric sounds right wing to today's ears is confusing, but it was considered left-wing at the time because government was still identified with the interests of elites. Because of this 19th century leftism is what we would today call libertarianism. Its origins lie with the radical (Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Paine) and agrarian (Jefferson) wings of the American revolution, with antifederalism, with the first Republican party, with the Democratic-Republican party, and finally with Jacksonian Democracy, which cast a shadow on the 19th century Democratic party almost as long as FDR did on the 20th. After the Civil War, the agrarian ideal was permanently crushed and the guts of the Jacksonian legacy ripped out with it, but the Democratic party continued on in a zombie-like state, under the Bourbon Democrats, until 1896. At that time it was swallowed by the Populist party. The 1896 platform is fascinating because it combines traditional Jacksonian attacks on big government and the centralization of power with the beginnings of usage of government for progressive purposes through the regulatory ICC.