In praise of (three) modern Doughface Northerners

See paleocon Paul Gottfried on this. In a review of a recent book on Calhoun Gottfried writes:

It may be that Cheek dismisses too readily the opinion expressed by Richard Hofstadter in The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It that Calhoun was “the Marx of the master class.” Unlike the denigration of Calhoun current among the current generation of American historians, the designation provided by Hofstadter was entirely respectful. Calhoun produced his speculative and interpretive writings in response to a particular set of circumstances; and when he associates “organic” government with the kind of majority expressed by the citizens of his state, he is thinking specifically about a planter class then under assault. The fact that these planters availed themselves of servile as opposed to indentured peasant labor, as was the case in Europe, to maintain their way of life is historically less relevant than their identification with a manorial economy and with other archaic features of a beleaguered social and political economy. Eugene Genovese, writing as a Marxist historian, got the picture right, and Cheek would have done well to follow Genovese’s interpretation more closely.

He even explains where Marco Bassani may be coming from:

Today European regionalists, like the Lega Nord in Italy, cite almost interchangeably Locke, Jefferson, and Calhoun to make the case for accountable government, whether regional or local.

Gottfried has some respect, even admiration for Calhoun, but he recognizes some of the limits and weaknesses of Calhoun's thought.

Hofstadter's characterization of Calhoun may have been deprecatory or it may have been respectful, but it wasn't really original. It may have been insightful, but it didn't take much originality to see that Fitzhugh, Calhoun and other defenders of slavery "stood Marx on his head," championing slavery as an alternative to free market capitalism, which they saw as the prelude to eventual socialist revolution.

“But your little smokescreen away from the fact that Calhoun BEHAVED exactly like a Marxist won’t work.”

Well you can keep beating that little drum all you want but you’re not going to find a lot of support for your position. You’re sounding a bit like Otto in a Fish Called Wanda; Otto was always spouting off about Nietzsche, but Otto didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. It was a clever joke for the movie, not sure it’s good to be like Otto.

Calhoun was an opponent of consolidated government and centralized power. Marx was the opposite.

Historians who are comparing Calhoun to Marx aren’t doing it because the two shared a high opinion of the labor theory of value, which you focus one, rather they are making the comparison because Calhoun thought in terms of social classes and economic realities.

When making comparing Calhoun and Marx’s political thought they are at opposite ends. Calhoun was a defender of the planter class, the master class. Marx was the champion of the proletariat.

Ditter: "A “doughfaced northerner” could mean someone with a very pale complexion who works inside and doesn't get very tanned."

Here is the most complete explanation I've seen of the origins and meanings of the term "Doughface".

It was coined by Southerners as a term of disparagement to describe their Northern supporters, and may have originated as "Doe face", meaning a skittish, easily frightened female deer.
The word "Dough face" first appears around 1820.

But I like your suggestion of Northerners with pasty white, untanned faces being the opposite of Southern "rednecks"
The word "redneck" goes back even further:

"In Scotland in the 1640s, the Covenanters rejected rule by bishops, often signing manifestos using their own blood.
Some wore red cloth around their neck to signify their position, and were called rednecks by the Scottish ruling class to denote that they were the rebels in what came to be known as The Bishop's War that preceded the rise of Cromwell.[21][22]
Eventually, the term began to mean simply "Presbyterian", especially in communities along the Scottish border.
Because of the large number of Scottish immigrants in the pre-revolutionary American south, some historians have suggested that this may be the origin of the term in the United States.[23]
"Dictionaries document the earliest American citation of the term's use for Presbyterians in 1830, as 'a name bestowed upon the Presbyterians of Fayetteville [North Carolina]'. "

I like that too: "Redneck" means Presbyterian. Who knew?

;-)

Actually, it works very well. It doesn't matter what end of the "class struggle" these two were on, they are playing on the same field, that of marxist doctrine. It's like saying that because Hitler hated Jews and the KKK hated blacks that it somehow meant that they didn't subscribe to the same basic fundamental principle.

Fitzhugh, whom you keep dodging, PRECISELY explained this and said that while he was a member of the "master" class, it was a "burden" and the "poor masters" had to take care of everyone else.

And I don't care WHY "historians" focus on these things. They can focus on the wrong things and still expose the truth of a subject. No, it is you neo-confederates who are seeking to defend not only slavery, but also communism (small "c") as it was understood by Fitzhugh and Marx, Owen and Calhoun. And regardless of who they "championed," everyone ended up in chains---except them, presumably.

While this is interesting, it detours us from the original point. I don’t care if Hofstadter, or Beard, or Forrest McDonald, or Allen Nevins said something, what I care about is, “Is it accurate? Is it true?” and in this case Hofstadter is correct. Calhoun was a pre-Marx Marxist; he was no friend of small government, but rather SLAVE government that protected slavery; and he would have gladly-—as he cheerfully admitted-—suppress all free speech having to do with the possibility of abolishing slavery. Real “libertarian,” that guy!

Ditter: "A skittish doe doesn’t show you her nervous face she shows you her rear end, with her tail in the air.
The under side of the tail is white, thus they are White Tail Deer."

Hmmmmmm.... well....

New York "Bucktails" and northern "Doughfaces" were closely related, as LS described in post #12 above.
Lead by future President Martin Van Buren, Bucktails originated the winning Democrat strategy of supporting, "Northern men of Southern principles."
Van Buren was the first of these Bucktail / Doughface Presidents -- 1837 to 1841.
The last was President James Buchanan, 1857 to 1861.

So, it may well be that when Virginia Congressman John Randolf first referred to Northern "Dough Faces," he was thinking about the other end of people who called themselves "Bucktails".
Even though he needed their political support in Congress, Randolf despised these northerners, writing in 1820:

"They were scared at their own dough faces—yes, they were scared at their own dough faces!
—We had them, and if we wanted three more, we could have had them: yes, and if these had failed, we could have three more of these men, whose conscience, and morality, and religion, extend to 'thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude'.[4]"

Yes, the case for Randolf's meaning "doe faces" is not conclusive, but it would fit in the political terms of his day:

"John Randolph may actually have said 'doe faces' instead of 'dough faces': the pronunciation would have been identical, and Randolph was a hunter, sometimes bringing his hunting dog with him to Congress.
Ascribing 'doe faces' (or 'doe's faces') to those he despised would have been Randolph's comment on the weakness of these men.

Or, just maybe, that confusion of "doe" versus "dough" faces may have been deliberate from the beginning.
After all, don't both spellings describe a Southerner's impression of Northerners who supported his cause?

I can more easily see “dough faced Northerner” being a pasty faced white guy from the North.

I assumed it meant they were pliable and moldable.

I can see Randolph, a hunter, saying "doe face," but really, that might describe Randolph himself. Of course one would have to have been around two hundred years ago to be sure, but by all accounts John Randolph had a rather ghostly, spectral appearance himself.

A Doughface or a Copperhead was a "Northern man of Southern principles." I believe there was also a term for a "Southern man of Northern principles," but don't remember what it was. "Scalawag" came along later, of course. Maybe they were just called "unionists."

The term "doughface" lives on. Arthur Schlesinger used it to attack Henry Wallace and the Communist-influenced Progressive Party of the 1940s. Peter Beinhart used it when he wanted to stir up liberal support for the War on Terror. A commentator named David Greenberg trotted it out (unfairly) to attack Eugene McCarthy and (apparently -- it's unclear) to condemn Obama as weak-kneed and insufficiently partisan during the Clinton-Obama primary campaign.

The term originally applied to practical politicians who would always cave in on principle. "Doughfaces" were the RINOs or DINOs of the day. Schlesinger wanted to apply it to liberals or progressives who were too weak stand up to the Communists, but following his usage it came to be applied to head-in-the-clouds idealists who were inept at practical politics, something that doesn't apply well to Fillmore, or Pierce, or Buchanan.

It is interesting how these terms arise and finding the exact meaning can be difficult.

My grandfather, born in 1878 in Texas, used the term "old Texian" to refer to the original settlers. He didn't consider himself to be a Texian because he did not walk, ride a horse or come into Texas in a wagon. That term was reserved (in his mind) for the real pioneers.

John Wayne coined the term “Texican” in a movie about early Texas. I am always a little bit annoyed when I hear someone use the term Texican to refer to the first pioneers.

“Fitzhugh, whom you keep dodging, “

I’m not dodging George Fitzhugh, I’m simply not in the habit of discussing figures whose work I don’t know.

I can see how that might be an alien concept to you, considering your innovative policy of referring to all and sundry as being Marxists, irrespective of their having lived before Marx could have come their attention.

A cursory look at Fitzhugh at wikipedia indicates that the major influence on his thinking was Thomas Carlyle, and that among his acquaintances were abolitionists Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips.

When I google George Fitzhugh and Karl Marx I get references to Eugene Genovese, the marxist historian who studied the South. And an article by C Vann Woodward characterizing Fitzhugh as Sui Generi and who had this to say about him:

“It would be misleading, however, to leave the impression that George Fitzhugh was typical of the Southern thinkers of his period or representative of the pro-slavery thought or of agrarian thought. Fitzhugh was not typical of anything. Fitzhugh was an individual — sui generis. There is scarcely a tag or a generalization or a cliche normally associated with the Old South that would fit him without qualification. Fitzhugh’s dissent usually arose out of his devotion to logic rather than out of sheer love of the perverse, but evidence warrants a suspicion that he took a mischievous delight in his perversity and his ability to shock. He once wrote teasingly to his friend George Frederick Holmes, referring to his Sociology for the South, “It sells the better because it is odd, eccentric, extravagant, and disorderly.”3 He was always a great one for kicking over the traces, denying the obvious, and taking a stand on his own.”

Somehow there is a paucity of information on George Fitzhugh, Marxist. Go figure. There’s an opportunity for you to break new ground and put an end that historical lacuna.

Ditter: "I am still having trouble with “dough” meaning a nervous “doe” deer, but whatever you say."

Yet further googles turned up this link with a great explanation.

The original discussion came from Theodore Dwight Weld's 1839 book: American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses.
Weld wrote:

" 'Doe face,' which owes its paternity to John Randolph, age has mellowed into 'dough face' – a cognomen quite as expressive and appropriate, if not as classical."

But Weld and all other historians commenting on this question end up punting and straddling both sides.
Leonard Richards (Slave Power) put it this way:

"Not everyone understood Randolph’s reference, and no one dared to ask for an explanation.
A few apparently thought the sardonic Virginia aristocrat had a female deer in mind and the word he used was doe.
Others thought he was referring to a child’s game where children put dough on their faces, worked it into strange configurations, and then looked at their reflections.

"Whatever Randolph had in mind, his words stuck."

The key point is that "Doughface" was a derogatory term, used by Southerners to insult Northerners who were trying to please them by giving into Southern demands.

Of course, in my context on this thread, I mean nothing of the sort.
Instead, I mean Northerners who share the South's commitment to true conservative principles.
So I'm not trying to insult anyone, but perhaps to rehabilitate the term "Doughface" in a modern, positive sense.

Been there, done that: see my article “Brothers in Chains: Emerson and Fitzhugh on Economic and Political Liberty,” Reason Papers, 1988, which, with full disclosure, is to a great extent a summary and analysis of an excellent larger work by Robert Loewenberg on Fitzhugh, “Freedom’s Despots” (Carolina Academic Press).

There is a reason most leftists want to avoid Fitzhugh-—he clearly shows how slavery is the quintessential form of socialism. Precisely because the “mainstream” historians avoided Fitzhugh, Loewenberg and I wrote about him. It’s the same reason they avoid Mercy Otis Warren in discussions about the Constitution-—because she shows how the preponderance of power will drift to the federal government, and, after all, don’t ALL women want a bigger federal government? In fact, he was NOT “sui generis” as Woodward claims (Woodward only had to quote Calhoun, after all) but was in fact “ahead” of most in admitting that slavery was socialism writ large.

As to calling concepts “Marxist” before Marx, it’s a shorthand way of stating what I’ve said 50 times now: that the essence of Marx, WHICH HE STOLE FROM OWENS, is the Labor Theory of Value. Thomas Sowell arrives at the same conclusions. Marx was not original. But that doesn’t change the fact that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s a duck. Most people wouldn’t understand it if I said Calhoun was an “Owenite,” but either way, he’s a “marxist” (small “m” if that makes you feel better.

‘“Improper meddling,” such as the barring of any anti-slave commentary, publications, or public speech so that, as he said, the south could hold its slaves “in peace?”’

You do something very curious here, with this quote from Calhoun about “improper meddling”.

You characterize it as having to do with Calhoun arguing for banning free speech in order to shut down discussions of slavery.

Well I looked up the quote in its context; Liberty Fund offers Calhoun’s “South Carolina Exposition” in PDF here:

http://files.libertyfund.org/files/683/0007_Bk.pdf

and the “improper meddling” quote is to be found on page 335.

So, is the topic of page 335 about slavery and banning its public discussion?

No, not in the slightest. It is part of a lengthy discussion about the unfairness of the tariff to agricultural States. There is no mention of slavery at all:

“Industry cannot be forced out of its natural channel without loss; and this, with the injustice, constitutes the objection to the improper meddling of the Government with the private pursuits of individuals, who must understand their own interest better than the Government. The exact loss from such intermeddling, it may be difficult to ascertain, but it is not, therefore, the less certain. The committee will not undertake to estimate the millions, which are annually lost to our country, under the existing system; but some idea may be formed of its magnitude, by stating that it is at least equal to the difference between the profits of our manufacturers, and the duties imposed for their protection, where these are not prohibitory. The lower the profit, and the higher the duty (if not, as stated, prohibitory) - the greater the loss.”

Had I not bothered to look up this quote I likely would have taken your characterization at face value. This wouldn’t have been a wise course, because it’s clear that you misrepresented Calhoun’s writing, I suppose to ‘win’ an internet debate. An unfortunate policy for a professional historian; I would think that you would hold yourself to a higher standard even on an amateur forum like this one.

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