Posted on 03/17/2012 4:12:31 AM PDT by BroJoeK
Has anyone else noticed that all three of our non-Romney Republican candidates for President grew up in Southern Pennsylvania?
Does anyone suppose this is a historical coincidence?
It's not.
Unless you are some kind of history nut, you've never even heard the term "doughface Northerner", since it hasn't been politically current in 150 years.
And if you have heard it, then you know it was an old term of mocking and scorn -- for Northerners who loved the ante-bellum South and supported the South's legal, ahem, "institutions".
Indeed, the term itself, "doughface" was derisively coined by Southerners to describe their northern allies, and may well have originally been intended to mean "doe face", a reference to a skittish, easily frightened deer.
Northern doughfaces were essential to making the great Southern Slave Power a dominant political force in all the decades before 1860.
And of all the doughfaces, perhaps the epitomy, the highest achievement of that art-form was Abraham Lincoln's predecessor: Democrat President James Buchanan from Chambersburg, in south-central Pennsylvania.
Buchanan loved the South, and staunchly supported its values, including the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred-Scott decision which made it more difficult to effectively outlaw slavery in non-slave states.
When the Deep South began to secede in late 1860, outgoing President Buchanan recommended against secession, but took no actions to stop it.
So, in the long arc or history, Doughface Northerners were essential to Southern Slave Power and thus to preserving the Union itself.
Indeed, it was precisely the moment in time when Doughfaces were overthrown in the North, with the election of Lincoln's Republicans, that the Deep South chose to begin seceding.
But remember, this happened in 1860, after the North's population and economy had grown overwhelmingly dominant.
Had the South seceded earlier in, say, 1830 and been lead by the likes of, say, Andrew Jackson, the North could not have defeated them militarily.
Of course, Jackson himself opposed secession, but then Jackson never imagined the government in Washington might subvert slavery.
So Doughface Northerners are the reason Southern Slave Power did not feel seriously threatened before the Republican election victory in 1860.
Historically, they served the vital function of keeping the South in the Union, until the North grew strong enough for military victory.
Now, for purposes of this analysis, I equate the old Democrat Slave Power with today's Democrat Progressive agenda -- yes an outrageous idea, until you think about it...
Both the Old and Modern Democrats used the force of law to grant special privileges to selected groups based on race, or some other group identifier -- gender, ethnicity, economic "class", sexual orientation, you name it.
Indeed, arguably, modern equivalents of "slaves" are the economically vigorous producers of wealth, and our Master Class are politicians who redistribute the wealth of others to their own favored supporters.
So we are becoming, in a sense, one big plantation with its great Plantation House in Washington, DC.
In today's upside down world, the Old South most strongly supports our traditional Christian values, devotion to constitutionally limited government, private enterprise and equal justice under the law as opposed to special privileges for the politically connected.
As such the Old South is today's heart and soul of Conservatism and essential to any Republican strategy for election victories.
But now, as always, the South needs allies they can trust, and who can they trust more than modern-day Doughface Northerners?
And where do you find real Doughfaces, who grew up in the North and love the South?
Why, just as in times past, in Southern Pennsylvania, of course.
And so today we have an abundance of non-Romney candidates who grew up in Southern Pennsylvania and are hoping to appeal to enough conservative Southerners to overturn the votes of more traditional Northern "establishment" Republicans.
Oh? You didn't know the non-Romney's are all Southern Pennsylvanians?
Ron Paul: born and raised in Pittsburg, southwestern Pennsylvania.
Rick Santorum: born in Virginia, raised in Butler, near Pittsburg, represented southwestern Pennsylvania in Congress.
Newt Gingrich: born in Harrisburg, south central Pennsylvania, raised in nearby Hummelstown.
All modern-day Southern Pennsylvania "Doughface Northerners" who love the South, it's people and it's conservative values.
God bless them one and all.
I doubt we disagree.
Certainly Southerners saw Republicans as a threat to slavery in the South.
But I would challenge you to look at the Republican party 1860 platform itself and find anything there which threatened slavery in slave states.
No, the issue for Republicans in 1860 was not rolling back slavery, but rather preventing the expansion of slavery into non-slave territories, plus the enforcement of fugitive slave laws in non-slave states, as directed by the Supreme Court's Dred-Scott decision.
Yes, of course, the old Southern Democrat Slave Power (S.P.) claimed that any legal restrictions on expansion were an attack on SLAVERY, just as today the new Democrat Secular Progressives (S.P.) claim that any restrictions on the Power of Government is a "war on women", or racism, or "throw grandma off the bridge," etc.
In short, the Constitution had survived for 70+ years recognizing the rights of some states to legalize slavery and others to outlaw it.
What changed by 1860 was not Northerners' intentions to attack Southern slavery, but rather the Slave Power's insistence that slavery should not be restricted anywhere.
Now, do you still say we disagree?
So would you with “your guys”.
Pretty much I guess we agree. But again, you have to see Huston’s book to see, regardless of what the Republicans said, how inevitable the fight over the definition of property rights was and how, eventually, this would force the Republicans to act. Hey, I’m not trying to argue that the North was at fault, but I do not think the South’s interpretation of the near future was wrong. When you say “we lasted 70 years,” well, that included a ban on doing anything about the slave trade for 20 of those years, then of the remaining 50, the Van Buren party system accounted for 42 of them. The surprise is not that it fell apart, but that Van Buren’s shenanigans actually kept it together so long.
Lincoln started a war of self-interest, not of Jeffersonian principles.
Fire Eaters had already split the party.
But Rusty, if you are hoping to convince me that historically Democrats are dishonest, underhanded and back-stabbing, I'm already sold -- don't need any convincing. ;-)
As to which one of those dirty-dealers was dirtier than the other, well, no way am I going to defend Democrats.
You may as well ask me about Obama versus Hill & Bill: one is the pot, the other kettles, as far as I'm concerned.
But... yes, no doubt that in 1860 Stephen Douglas felt "entitled" to the nomination, more-or-less the way a certain, ahem, candidate today runs as the "inevitable" choice.
Douglas had by far the most support and was willing to do whatever necessary.
That Southern Fire Eaters could not accept Douglas, and walked out of the April 1860 Charleston convention was their choice to split the party, and nominate their own candidate.
Whether Douglas could have, or should have stepped aside for a "compromise" candidate (and who might that be?), the split was initiated by Fire Eaters.
From my perspective, here's the key point: despite the split, the combined Democrat share of the popular vote increased from 45% in 1856, when they easily won electorally, to 48% in 1860, when they were defeated by the smaller Republican vote.
Further note that three normally Democrat slave-states, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, went for the 4th party, the Constitutional Unionists.
Combined, 60% of Americans voted against Republicans in 1860, so that should have been and would have been an easy Democrat victory, had not the Southern Fire Eaters walked out of their Democrat convention.
The equivalent today would be one or more of the non-Romneys suddenly claiming they couldn't accept the party's nominee, walking out, forming their own party, nominating their own candidate, then demanding Romney step aside.
Regardless of what Romney did, any such actions would only guarantee Democrats' victory in November.
Well, isn't this the same thing we see with anti-gay "hate speech?" Merely quoting the Bible is now considered a "hate crime" in Canada and Scandinavia when it comes to homosexuality.
By the way, when I argue that the South saw a Republican election as threatening slavery itself, even though the Republicans never said that, consider even then the power of appointment that a U.S. president had (You mentioned Stanton, for example): U.S. marshals (no more federal slave-catching possees), federal judges (might not look so favorably upon cases involving slaves that come before them), customs officials and port authorities (who might let free blacks off ships in southern ports-—something the Dem officials had prohibited), and postmasters (who might lift the ban on abolitionist materials).
Once is an accident.
Twice is a coincidence.
Three times is a pattern.
So the question is, what pattern are we looking at here?
I think LS named it precisely.
In the old days beginning with Martin Van Buren they said, "Northern men of Southern principles."
It was a winning strategy that elected Democrats to power for many decades before 1860.
In 1856 it elected a Northern Doughface from Southern Pennsylvania: James Buchanan.
The strategy only failed when Southern Fire Eaters refused to accept the "Southern principles" of 1860's leading Democrat candidate, Stephen Douglas.
Fire Eaters walked out of their convention and split their party.
Today all three remaining non-Romney candidates have both Northern and Southern roots, and all are highly sympathetic to the South's conservative values.
And if you stop to consider those who've already dropped out, none quite match those criteria.
Well, I think Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie fit that pattern, but technically they didn’t “drop out” as they never ran in the first place.
Something fundamental had changed between the Democrat victory in 1856 and their downfall in 1860.
What was it?
Answer: First of all, the Supreme Court's 1857 7-2 Dred-Scott Decision denying the rights of non-slave states to grant citizenship to people of African descent.
This decision, supported by Doughface President Buchanan was a huge victory for "Southern principles", and it fundamentally changed both sides:
To my knowledge, neither has serious Southern roots.
That makes them, in a sense, just "Romney lite".
I see you are still using insults instead of facts.
By the way, the Dred Scott decision also triggered the Panic of 1857. Guys in black robes can screw up an awful lot.
Well, they don’t have southern roots, but Christie and Daniels both are “northern men of southern principles” in the sense that they can be counted on not to rock the boat in terms of serious reform.
Here's an 'inconvenient fact for you to ponder..
I am not afraid to attack error, however deeply it may be entrenched, or however widely extended, whenever it becomes my duty to do so, as I believe it to be on this subject and occasion. John C. Calhoun June 27, 1848If he should possess a philosophical turn of mind, and be disposed to look to more remote and recondite causes, he will trace it to a proposition which originated in a hypothetical truism, but which, as now expressed and now understood, is the most false and dangerous of all political errors. The proposition to which I allude, has become an axiom in the minds of a vast majority on both sides of the Atlantic, and is repeated daily from tongue to tongue, as an established and incontrovertible truth; it is that "all men are born free and equal."
So he rejects the Declaration and therefore Jefferson, but he's still your buddy.
Want me to post some stuff on any other of your sainted ancestors?
http://www.indiana.edu/~kdhist/H105-documents-web/week14/CalhounreOregon1848.html
Thanks for the link. It oh so clearly shows calhoun to be the same sort of garden variety hair-splitting leftist democrat we’re all too used to suffering through in the Øbongo administration.
Considering that the Speaker of the House was a Republican, the Democratic splintering of the party was not the only cause for the Democratic loss. Slavery was failing, beating what is called an ‘up market retreat’ as free states were growing faster than slave states from immigration, and Texas’ demand to come in as a large state, and California’s demand to come in as a free state.
The situation was akin to IBM being chased out of the PC market. They withdrew to their server and mainframe markets, which are not bad markets, but market share is much lower.
So the slave owners thought, given their failure to spread over the wider country that they would just be rich in a smaller country. But there was no constitutional provision for them to break the preexisting union. They couldn’t convince enough people that they should do such a thing. They couldn’t get foreign countries to support them. So they lost.
Or if you prefer, Alabama would have to accept the property rights of Iowa. Southern slave holders would have to accept NY limitations on property rights when the slave holders brought their slaves to the Hamptons to get away from oppressive southern heat, and when they did that, their slaves would become free. That is what the owner of Dred Scott did: He took a slave to a free state, and wanted to overturn state limitations on property rights.
Too bad it took a war to correct that bad court case.
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