The Mass Murderer on Your $20

I think we’re just going to have to disagree.

From what I can tell, you want to paint a history in which there is significant moral and ideological continuity between the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Stephen Douglas and today’s Part.

I don’t see it. The Democrats of 1840 or 1860 have almost nothing in common with today’s version.

The only continuity I can discern in the party systems of pre-Civil War and since is this.

The Whigs and later the Republicans have always been the party of those who are, or who see themselves as, or who wannabee, insiders in America.

The Democratic Party has always been the Party of those who were/are or who see themselves as outsiders, not fully accepted as “real” Americans.

Before the WBTS, this was (mostly) southerners, immigrants, Catholics, poorer people, etc.

The position of various groups has changed over the years, and in recent decades the split I describe has kind of fallen apart, but I think the basic notion is valid.

Republicans are American Insiders, Democrats are American Outsiders (even when they control the government, the media and the culture).

Republicans are American Insiders, Democrats are American Outsiders (even when they control the government, the media and the culture).

There's much to be said for that point of view, but in the age of Jackson, as in the age of FDR, Democrats were the majority party, so Democrats in the 1840s and 1850s or in the 1940s and 1950s weren't really isolated or on the fringe or wholly outside looking in, and the Whigs or Republicans in those years weren't sitting pretty at the center of power either. The Whigs were trying to create a more prosperous and industrial economy where they would be more at the center of things (though they didn't intend and wouldn't recognize the America that would actually be created), but they weren't there yet. The country was still overwhelmingly rural and agrarian.

Yes, the Democrats were the majority party, but their constituents were made up of people who didn’t believe themselves to be Insiders.

This is not a question of who has power, it’s the question of how people see themselves.

This is exactly why people today can think of themselves as speaking “Truth to Power” when they support what are actually the default positions in our society. They see themselves as outsiders struggling against the insiders even long after they’re in control, such as in our universities.

It’s entirely a matter of perception, not of facts.

There may be something to that in a big picture sense, but plenty of Whigs felt isolated during the Mexican War.

After the Civil War some people had the feeling that first class citizens were Northerners and that (white)Southerners were second class citizens, but that feeling just wasn't as strong before the Civil War.

If you were a wealthy planter, you may not have felt yourself to be aggrieved and put upon, and even Southern yeomen didn't feel themselves as outsiders, certainly not to the degree that they would after the war.

I don't doubt that Southern Democrats had feelings of alienation or marginalization during the Federalist era or during the 65 years of Republican domination that followed the Civil War. Such feelings might likely have persisted into the Jacksonian and post-New Deal eras, but the possession power in the government has a way of mitigating such discon oftents.

Sherman Logan: "From what I can tell, you want to paint a history in which there is significant moral and ideological continuity between the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Stephen Douglas and today’s Part.
I don’t see it.
The Democrats of 1840 or 1860 have almost nothing in common with today’s version...

"...The Whigs and later the Republicans have always been the party of those who are, or who see themselves as, or who wannabee, insiders in America.
The Democratic Party has always been the Party of those who were/are or who see themselves as outsiders, not fully accepted as “real” Americans."

Perhaps more in common, then versus now, than you realize?

Insiders versus outsiders -- can we begin at the beginning?

In 1775, with war already begun in Massachusetts, Congress in Philadelphia considered who should be the Continental Army's commander-in-chief.
Among the names advanced were Connecticut citizen Benedict Arnold, Bostonians John Hancock or William Heath and former British officer Horatio Gage.
But, Bostonian John Adams nominated and helped elect Virginian George Washington commander-in-chief.
So, I ask you: in the inner-most circle of the Revolution, at that particular moment, who was the insider, who the outsider?

And yet, this precise alliance of Northern & Southern was absolutely critical to the Revolution's success, and the Constitution's ratification.

In June of 1776, with war raging and all hope of reconciliation gone, three men worked together to write a declaration: Bostonian John Adams, Philadelphian Ben Franklin and Virginian Thomas Jefferson, so again I ask: which was the "insider" and which "outsider"?

And yet, these three men exactly represent US politics -- certainly until Civil War, and less exactly, even today.
Pre Civil War:

John Adams led the Northern Federalists, reborn as National Republicans in the 1820s, Whigs in the 1830s, then Republicans in the 1850s.
Sure, you could say they were "insiders", but they elected only three of the first 15 presidents, and certainly did not feeeeeeeel "inside", for example, at the time of the Hartford Convention in 1814.
After the Constitution's ratification, Jefferson and Madison took leadership of the old anti-Federalists (Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams -- who had opposed the Constitution), forming Jefferson's anti-Federalist party, opposed to Alexander Hamilton's plans, and renamed in 1792 Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party.
So, when Virginian Jefferson ran against Bostonian Adams in 1796, the pattern of north-south party politics was set until the Civil War, and in some ways to this day.
And now we consider Pennsylvanian Benjamin Franklin, the archetypal "doughface", the original "all things to all people" pol, whose dissembling and charming rogue-ness provided both political lubrication and cement -- the keystone, if you will -- to hold North & South united.
So Pennsylvania usually voted for Southern Democrats, but occasionally elected Whigs (Harrison 1840, Taylor 1848), and most critically in 1860 switched to elect Republican Lincoln.
So, were Pennsylvanians insiders or outsiders?
Well, a keystone is separated equally from, and lodged between, two opposing forces -- North & South.

After the Civil War:

After the Civil War, the old Confederacy did not elect another president until Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and him due to Kennedy's assassination, and to our eternal regret, the most liberal pol until... well until President O.
However, the old alliance of Southern agriculture and Northern immigrants soon reasserted itself, seen clearly in 1876's near victory of New York Democrat Governor Tilden, and certainly in 1884's election of New York Democrat Governor Cleveland.

So, in what sense was this new north-south Democrat alliance the same as the old?
Really, in every sense.

In those days, the South's major issue was removing Black Republican restrictions on white rule over their now "free" black population, and that was moved along significantly with the 1876 election compromise.
With blacks removed from Southern politics, Republicans again became the party of the North & West, farmers, small businessmen and industry.
Democrats, as they had been pre-war, were again the party of Southern agriculture and Northern immigrants.

So, what about today?
Well, in 1964 Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater (never to be confused with Barry Soetoro!) first accomplished the political role-reversal that eventually made white Southerners uneasy Republicans and made over 90% of blacks Democrats.
And that would seem to eliminate any discussion of political continuity between past and present.

But not so fast...
Much as our pro-Confederates deny it, Democrats have always been the party of Big Government, pre-Civil War, post-Civil War and today.

Pre-Civil War, Democrats worked for expanded Federal powers to enforce slavery, not in their own states, but in Northern free-labor states.
Indeed, it was precisely their successes in 1850 and Dred-Scott (1857) which drove normally somnolent northerners to seek protection from anti-slavery Republicans.
Post Civil War, Southern Democrats wanted the Federal Government out of their lives until, until it came time to divvy up largess from the Federal treasury, at which point they were always at the head of the line.
Today's Democrats combine the worst of the old plantation mentality, keeping voters eternally dependent & subservient, while at the same time flooding the country with new immigrant Democrat voters, legal and illegal.
Yes, Democrats gave up white Southerners to the Republicans, but that's been mostly offset by continuing Democrat strangleholds on big cities and poor ethnic minorities.

So, as the French novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr first said in 1849: "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" -- the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Umm, the Declaration of Independence was written by a committee of five, not three, men. Those additional men were Robert Livingston of NR and Roger Sherman of CT. Meaning of course there was only one southerner on the committee, though he was obviously the dominant member.

Yes, the Democrat-Republicans of Jefferson’s day saw themselves as the underdogs fighting for their life against the money power of the Federalists.

YMMV
Sorry, you have some good parallels, but I don’t buy the basic scheme. I learned a long time ago with Toynbee that centuries or millennia long schemes of continuity in politics are almost always more an illusion than reality. They’re generated by picking and choosing which issues are “important.” Surprisingly enough, they’re always the ones that support the scheme.

I remember distinctly some nut-nut from a couple decades ago. If I remember aright it was one of the Larouche bunch. He found all political history for almost the last thousand years directly descended from the conflicts of the Neri and Bianchi (sp?) of Florence in Dante’s day.

Well, of course, that’s just stupid. I once tried to figure out where the Cavaliers and Roundheads of the English Civil War would fit on our modern left v. right scale. Turned out they didn’t.

The Democrats of 1860 were proudly racist (even in the North), pro-alcohol, pro-immigrant, in favor of the little guy, philosophically opposed to big business and big government and to expansion of government to build infrastructure.

The Republicans of 1860 were somewhat less racist, anti-alcohol, somewhat anti-immigration, in favor of big business and the government funding infrastructure.

Neither was really for big government on anything even vaguely resembling today’s scale. So who was conservative and who liberal, by the standards of the day? Or of today?

To my mind the scale doesn’t fit.

Sherman Logan: "Declaration of Independence was written by a committee of five, not three, men.
Those additional men were Robert Livingston of NR and Roger Sherman of CT.
Meaning of course there was only one southerner on the committee, though he was obviously the dominant member."

The dominant member was John Adams, who insisted that young Jefferson should write the declaration, which he did.
There is no record of any contributions from Livingston (NY) or Sherman (CT).
Master word-smith Franklin famously changed the key line to read: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with..."

Sherman Logan: "Yes, the Democrat-Republicans of Jefferson’s day saw themselves as the underdogs fighting for their life against the money power of the Federalists."

That is certainly extreme hyperbole, even for its time, since every state eventually ratified the Constitution, despite misgivings of their anti-Federalists.
That former Federalists like James Madison soon joined the anti-Federalists cum Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans does not change the fact that they fully understood ahead of time what they were voting for.

Indeed since those alleged "underdogs" elected the next six presidents in a row, and since nearly all supported everything the Federalists had originally enacted (i.e., Bank of the United States), all that whining & complaining about "fighting for their lives" seems to me hugely inappropriate.

Sherman Logan: "Sorry, you have some good parallels, but I don’t buy the basic scheme."

Sure, it's a bit like seeing actual figures in billowing clouds, but just be certain you've rejected every such interpretation, not just the ones you dislike.
For example, our pro-Confederates are hugely fond of claiming that "Ape" Lincoln is responsible for everything from LBJ's "Great Society" to Obama-care.
Republicans, they say, launched socialism in America.

I'm only saying: if we're going to play such games, I can play too, and demonstrate how today's Democrats are simply the 3.0 version of history's Slave-Power.
And that is certainly no less valid than claiming Lincoln responsible for every wrong-doing since 1860.

Thanks, excellent scholarship.