Bryan and the South?

[TommyC1776]

If William Jennings Bryan was more liberal than his Democratic predecessors had been more conservative, then how come the south supported him over his opponents?

[Dr. MB]

Because of the (D) next to his name. Back then almost nobody further south than Tennessee would dare vote for a Republican.

[darklordoftech]

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

[Doimper]

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

The south didn't really start to become economically conservative until some bright minds in the GOP had the idea to equate welfare with black people. George Wallace was a committed racist and general HP, but his economic policies were rooted in the New Deal.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If William Jennings Bryan was more liberal than his Democratic predecessors had been more conservative, then how come the south supported him over his opponents?

Politics is more complex then liberal versus Conservative in that era or any era. It was and frankly still is in a lot of ways, a tribalistic affair. Vermont voted for any Republican with 65% to 75% for one hundred years, whether they were liberal or Conservative. Republicans were the party of White Yankee Protestants and you don't get more, white, more Yankee or more protestant than Vermont in the late 19th century.

There were two wings within the Southern Democratic Parties. They had a pro-business bourbon wing and populist/progressive wing. WJB represented the ascendance of the populists within the Party and the long term defeat of the Bourbons. This set the stage for Wilson and then FDR. But during the Bilbo generation, which came of age just over the ten years proceeding the 1896 election, you had the most militant of unreconstructed Southerners, the most racist Southerners ever and the most anti-Republican Southerners. "Republicans afterall burned down daddy's barn, and killed your uncle at Shiloh". Of course I left out to epithets that likely would have been in front of Republicans in that line.

It is no accident that only once this generation started dying off did Republicans start to make headway in the South, first in the 1920's and again in the 1950's.

[Zioneer]

If William Jennings Bryan was more liberal than his Democratic predecessors had been more conservative, then how come the south supported him over his opponents?

Politics is more complex then liberal versus Conservative in that era or any era. It was and frankly still is in a lot of ways, a tribalistic affair. Vermont voted for any Republican with 65% to 75% for one hundred years, whether they were liberal or Conservative. Republicans were the party of White Yankee Protestants and you don't get more, white, more Yankee or more protestant than Vermont in the late 19th century.

There were two wings within the Southern Democratic Parties. They had a pro-business bourbon wing and populist/progressive wing. WJB represented the ascendance of the populists within the Party and the long term defeat of the Bourbons. This set the stage for Wilson and then FDR. But during the Bilbo generation, which came of age just over the ten years proceeding the 1896 election, you had the most militant of unreconstructed Southerners, the most racist Southerners ever and the most anti-Republican Southerners. "Republicans afterall burned down daddy's barn, and killed your uncle at Shiloh". Of course I left out to epithets that likely would have been in front of Republicans in that line.

It is no accident that only once this generation started dying off did Republicans start to make headway in the South, first in the 1920's and again in the 1950's.

Indeed. Note that Mormons/Utahns used to view themselves as so Democratic (in a tribalistic sense) that they voted 82% for Bryan in 1896. It was such a lopsided result that Mormon leaders, in an attempt to honor the promise they made for statehood, literally divided congregations down the pews, half being assigned as Democrats, half as Republicans. At least, according to popular legend here in Utah. Everyone has a grand-pappy or great-grandpappy whose family was supposedly assigned to be a Republican or a Democrat.

[AtorBoltox]

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

The south didn't really start to become economically conservative until some bright minds in the GOP had the idea to equate welfare with black people. George Wallace was a committed racist and general HP, but his economic policies were rooted in the New Deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_coalition
Southern politicians didn't support the new deal

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Because he was a Democrat, and his opponent was a former Union officer from the Party of Lincoln. Apart from odd pockets like East Tennessee, the GOP had next to no presence in the former Confederacy from the end of Reconstruction until the 1940s; it's not much of an exaggeration to say that a decomposed Confederate corpse could have been elected in the pre-Depression South as long as they ran as a Democrat. There's a reason the region was known as the "Solid South" in this period.

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

That's not really true, though. Certainly there were men like Oscar Underwood and Huey Long who emerged as leading Southern advocates for progressivism and leftism in the early 20th century; but to claim the South as a whole was "to the left of the nation economically" greatly exaggerates the pervasiveness of their position. It's important not to mistake mistrust for industrial capitalism with leftism; the pre-war South was fervent in its opposition to tariffs, the National Bank, and other pro-business measures not because they were idealistic bearded Marxists resisting 'creeping capitalism', but because such measures were seen as a threat to the slave labor economy. This Jacksonian mistrust of (primarily Northern) big money remained a prescient force in Southern politics after the war — but this was often more reactionary populism than actual leftism. In most cases, hostility to labor unions, progressive business regulations (including regulations against child labor), and leftist economics in general was the majority position. Former Confederate states comprised eight of the fifteen states to vote against ratification of the Child Labor Amendment (only one former Confederate state, Arkansas, voted for ratification); as early as 1943, Southern states were passing some of the first "Right to Work" laws in the nation (nine of the fifteen states to pass RTW by 1955 were from the South — Florida in 1943; Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia in 1947; Alabama in 1953; Mississippi and South Carolina in 1954); and Southern membership in labor unions lagged behind the rest of the nation from the end of the Civil War onward.


Also, this should probably be on the History board.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Because he was a Democrat, and his opponent was a former Union officer from the Party of Lincoln. Apart from odd pockets like East Tennessee, the GOP had next to no presence in the former Confederacy from the end of Reconstruction until the 1940s; it's not much of an exaggeration to say that a decomposed Confederate corpse could have been elected in the pre-Depression South as long as they ran as a Democrat. There's a reason the region was known as the "Solid South" in this period.

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

That's not really true, though. Certainly there were men like Oscar Underwood and Huey Long who emerged as leading Southern advocates for progressivism and leftism in the early 20th century; but to claim the South as a whole was "to the left of the nation economically" greatly exaggerates the pervasiveness of their position. It's important not to mistake mistrust for industrial capitalism with leftism; the pre-war South was fervent in its opposition to tariffs, the National Bank, and other pro-business measures not because they were idealistic bearded Marxists resisting 'creeping capitalism', but because such measures were seen as a threat to the slave labor economy. This Jacksonian mistrust of (primarily Northern) big money remained a prescient force in Southern politics after the war — but this was often more reactionary populism than actual leftism. In most cases, hostility to labor unions, progressive business regulations (including regulations against child labor), and leftist economics in general was the majority position. Former Confederate states comprised eight of the fifteen states to vote against ratification of the Child Labor Amendment (only one former Confederate state, Arkansas, voted for ratification); as early as 1943, Southern states were passing some of the first "Right to Work" laws in the nation (nine of the fifteen states to pass RTW by 1955 were from the South — Florida in 1943; Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia in 1947; Alabama in 1953; Mississippi and South Carolina in 1954); and Southern membership in labor unions lagged behind the rest of the nation from the end of the Civil War onward.


Also, this should probably be on the History board.

Non-commissioned officer if I am not mistaken.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Look at the bills that Senator Huey Long D-LA introduced, and you realize that compared to that southern Senator from over 80 years ago, Bernie Sanders is a moderate.

[AtorBoltox]

Look at the bills that Senator Huey Long D-LA introduced, and you realize that compared to that southern Senator from over 80 years ago, Bernie Sanders is a moderate.

Huey Long was very much an aberration from the typical Southern democrat senator

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Look at the bills that Senator Huey Long D-LA introduced, and you realize that compared to that southern Senator from over 80 years ago, Bernie Sanders is a moderate.

Huey Long was very much an aberration from the typical Southern democrat senator

His family was also from a unionist pocket of LA.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Look at the bills that Senator Huey Long D-LA introduced, and you realize that compared to that southern Senator from over 80 years ago, Bernie Sanders is a moderate.

Huey Long was very much an aberration from the typical Southern democrat senator

His family was also from a unionist pocket of LA.

How did Acadiana lean during the civil war?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Because he was a Democrat, and his opponent was a former Union officer from the Party of Lincoln. Apart from odd pockets like East Tennessee, the GOP had next to no presence in the former Confederacy from the end of Reconstruction until the 1940s; it's not much of an exaggeration to say that a decomposed Confederate corpse could have been elected in the pre-Depression South as long as they ran as a Democrat. There's a reason the region was known as the "Solid South" in this period.

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

That's not really true, though. Certainly there were men like Oscar Underwood and Huey Long who emerged as leading Southern advocates for progressivism and leftism in the early 20th century; but to claim the South as a whole was "to the left of the nation economically" greatly exaggerates the pervasiveness of their position. It's important not to mistake mistrust for industrial capitalism with leftism; the pre-war South was fervent in its opposition to tariffs, the National Bank, and other pro-business measures not because they were idealistic bearded Marxists resisting 'creeping capitalism', but because such measures were seen as a threat to the slave labor economy. This Jacksonian mistrust of (primarily Northern) big money remained a prescient force in Southern politics after the war — but this was often more reactionary populism than actual leftism. In most cases, hostility to labor unions, progressive business regulations (including regulations against child labor), and leftist economics in general was the majority position. Former Confederate states comprised eight of the fifteen states to vote against ratification of the Child Labor Amendment (only one former Confederate state, Arkansas, voted for ratification); as early as 1943, Southern states were passing some of the first "Right to Work" laws in the nation (nine of the fifteen states to pass RTW by 1955 were from the South — Florida in 1943; Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia in 1947; Alabama in 1953; Mississippi and South Carolina in 1954); and Southern membership in labor unions lagged behind the rest of the nation from the end of the Civil War onward.


Also, this should probably be on the History board.

Non-commissioned officer if I am not mistaken.

According to Wikipedia, McKinley was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 23rd Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry for his service in the Battle of Antietam (he had enlisted as a private in June 1861 and was promoted to commissary sergeant, a non-commissioned rank, the following spring). He was promoted to captain in 1864 and ended the war with the rank of brevet major.

[TDAS04]

Rigid party loyalty based on racism.  In the minds of Southern whites, electing Democrats = keeping blacks "in their place".

Anger at Yankees also played a role in that partisan allegiance, but hatred towards blacks was the largest factor.  Of course, anti-Northern and anti-black prejudices were linked.

[darklordoftech]

The south was anti-big business. They saw the Civil War as big business taking and destroying their "property".

[Fuzzy Bear]

The South voted Democratic in 1896 because Bryan, for all his economic liberalism, was not going to upset the applecart that elected Hayes in the 1876 election.  That applecart continued two (2) mega-mega-delicious apples for the South:

1.  The agreement brought an end to Reconstruction, AND . . .

2.  The agreement allowed the South autonomy in its own affairs.  The National Republican Party was not going to use the Federal Government to interfere with the internal affairs of any Southern state.

The latter was the backbone of Jim Crow.  Not until the FDR years did there come any kind of real opposition to interfering in the internal affairs of the Southern states.  However distasteful Bryan's economics might have been to the economic elites at the top of Southern societies, voting Democratic was a guarantee to regional autonomy on internal issues.

And, of course, the issue was the status and place of its black citizens.  This drove Southern politics.  It was from this that the Democratic Party became (until 1944) a "white-only party in the South.  This was part of the system by which Southern elites ensured white hegemony; by ensuring finality of the Democratic Primary in electoral politics.  This is one of the major themes of V. O. Key's Southern Politics.  If you read that book, you'll see that Southern Politics today isn't as far removed from Key's models, only with a Republican White electoral majority.

[RINO Tom]

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

The south didn't really start to become economically conservative until some bright minds in the GOP had the idea to equate welfare with black people. George Wallace was a committed racist and general HP, but his economic policies were rooted in the New Deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_coalition
Southern politicians didn't support the new deal

Not sure why I'm engaging you, but any rational person can see that some Southern Democrats not supporting the New Deal in the LATE (key word: late) 1930s had absolutely nothing to do with some conservative economic philosophy.  Time and time again, Southern Democrats bartered with the White House to make sure that the New Deal helped Whites in the South but didn't threaten White supremacy; if they got their demands, they were at LEAST as loyal of votes as the North, and they usually did.  As long as they could maintain segregation and not let Blacks get ahead of Southern Whites (if you want to call that "conservative," whatever; your choice, though I think that's a little ... simplistic), Southern Democrats were perfectly fine with all the big government, regulation and pork that FDR could come up with.  They were objectively to the left of Northern Republicans - even so-called "liberal" ones, most of the time - on economic matters, and that really should be the only argument here (after all, it's not like anyone is saying Southern Democrats weren't more conservative than Northern Democrats on any issues or anything ... just that they weren't necessarily conservative Republicans with Ds next to their names).

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2013/10/tea-party-yankees/

[darklordoftech]

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

The south didn't really start to become economically conservative until some bright minds in the GOP had the idea to equate welfare with black people. George Wallace was a committed racist and general HP, but his economic policies were rooted in the New Deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_coalition
Southern politicians didn't support the new deal

The purpose of the Conservative Coalition was to oppose FDR's attempt to pack the SCOTUS, and the reason that some of the Dixiecrats opposed court-packing was that they feared that FDR would appoint pro-civil rights justices.

[America's Sweetheart ❤/𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕭𝖔𝖔𝖙𝖞 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖗]

Because he was a Democrat, and a recently dug-up corpse would have swept the South back then as long as they had a D next to their name.

[The Govanah Jake]

It was called the Solid South for a reason. As mentioned by other posters, the Solid South was a Solid Democratic voting block broadly from the rise of Jackson to the start of the Southern Strategy in the 1960s though 1980s. There was swing states like the Upper South with sometimes the inclusion Texas  and more suburban oriented deep south states like Louisiana and Florida. Missouri is a famous example of such having voting for the correct winner for decades on end with the exception of 1956 and 2008-2012. States like Alabama were voting 80 plus percentage for the democrats in national races and in state races most of the times in the deep south, the election was between too of the same democrats (with it often being a fight of extremist or moderate on the issue of segregation and Klan V Non-Klan supported candidates from the 1880s to the 1930s). In Federal Elections even states like South Carolina and Mississippi consistently went 90%+ democratic and often never even had a republican option due to southern corruption and the Klan. In 1924 for example, while the nation went to Coolidge in one of the biggest landslides in history and John Davis was being crushed with less then 10% of the vote in south Northern and Western States, he won 96% of the vote in South Carolina sweeping the competition away. Simply the South, and the deep south to be specific, was very democratic and would go to there candidate no matter what for decades on end unless there was a third party. The reason for this domination by the Democrats was wide ranging but mostly came down to cultural issues and race: The Republicans to much of the agrarian south was considered a elitist northern party of Lincoln who wanted to disrupt the social order of the south, Whites above the inferior black peoples. Republicans were at least portrayed by many to a successful extent as the party of civil rights of the black man which didn't play well in the old white Anglo Saxon Protestant dominated Southern United States. Meanwhile the Democrats on the other hand were the party of the South, the farmer, and of keeping the social hierarchy in the south. The Democrats national politics were those of racialized politics and against social equality except for the few Northern Liberal Democrats that spoke up against this, though often failed up to FDR (who even then backed down a lot of the time to the Southern Dominated Coalition. Bryan in his presidential runs was a Democrat and so won these states no matter what. However his more liberal views on race were somewhat cancelled out by his populism and support for the agrarian and region lifestyle. The Business elites in the South and Ruling Class not being fond of WJB was shown in the results with McKinley nearly getting 40% of Georgia's vote in 1896 almost unprecedentedly. But again this was not enough and he won in great landslides throughout the south with the support the average white rural voter and farmer and the old populists of the Upper South.

[Lechasseur]

Because he was a Democrat, and a recently dug-up corpse would have swept the South back then as long as they had a D next to their name.

This

[The Mikado]

This is one of those threads where I could either write a lengthy essay and waste an hour of my time, or just post a few throwaway lines.

I'll do the latter now and just say that the South was the epicenter of the Populist movement at the time (so much so that Jim Crow had to be instituted to fend off the Southern fear of poor whites and poor blacks aligning into one party) and it was not at all undesirable for Southern whites when the Populist movement coopted the Democratic Party, especially compared to Cleveland's goldbug faction that was rooted in New York City financial elites. Bryan's agrarian protest wing was far closer to the average southern voter than the Democratic Party of the 1880s-1890s had been.

[The Mikado]

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

The south didn't really start to become economically conservative until some bright minds in the GOP had the idea to equate welfare with black people. George Wallace was a committed racist and general HP, but his economic policies were rooted in the New Deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_coalition
Southern politicians didn't support the new deal

More like every Southern state in the 1930s had its entire political spectrum included within the Democratic Party and that the politics in every Southern state was between pro-New Deal Democrats and anti-New Deal Democrats. For example, my home state of Texas produced both Sam Rayburn, a major FDR loyalist and ally who was a passionate supporter of the New Deal, and John Nance Garner, FDR's first VP who undercut Roosevelt at every turn. Both were Texas Democrats and represented different wings of the same party. You can find that same pro-New Deal vs anti-New Deal dynamic playing out in every state in the South, with politicians aligned with either faction.

Maybe don't make absurd generalizations like "all Southern Democrats were conservatives" and actually study political history.

[DIXIECRAT]

The south was to the left of the rest of America economically and extremely anti-business in 1896-1908.

The south didn't really start to become economically conservative until some bright minds in the GOP had the idea to equate welfare with black people. George Wallace was a committed racist and general HP, but his economic policies were rooted in the New Deal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_coalition
Southern politicians didn't support the new deal

More like every Southern state in the 1930s had its entire political spectrum included within the Democratic Party and that the politics in every Southern state was between pro-New Deal Democrats and anti-New Deal Democrats. For example, my home state of Texas produced both Sam Rayburn, a major FDR loyalist and ally who was a passionate supporter of the New Deal, and John Nance Garner, FDR's first VP who undercut Roosevelt at every turn. Both were Texas Democrats and represented different wings of the same party. You can find that same pro-New Deal vs anti-New Deal dynamic playing out in every state in the South, with politicians aligned with either faction.

Maybe don't make absurd generalizations like "all Southern Democrats were conservatives" and actually study political history.

This.

In general terms, Jim Crow South´s political position relative to the rest of the country tracks pretty well its economic position relative to the rest of the country. Although Marxists and their ilk talk about it as some kind of class-counciousness-abating device, Jim Crow was arranged and served to a great degree to put away the race bait in the politics of the region. Of course, many poor whites were disenfranchised for some time and a biracial coalition might had been (was, indeed) majoritarian. However, those rednecks were both racist and class-councious, and they didn't want to choose if the didn't have to. Moreover, redistribution only between whites was clearly on their materialistic interest.