It’s remarkable how prevalent that “switched sides” garbage is (on both sides).
I heard it as a kid from some *itch at the Chicago Historical Society (Lincoln would be a rat and Douglas a Republican she said.)
I believed it myself not all that long ago, after all I kept hearing it around here, Lincoln was tyrant blah blah blah. I figured it happened in 1896, by magic. The people that think the rats were awesome before the 1960’s are insane, or trolls. Those conservative Southern democrats were known as Southern Whigs before the civil war.
In reality you can trace the democrats ideological ancestry back to Jefferson’s ‘Republicans’, despite his modern popularity with conservatives and libertarians. I don’t mean to bash him because he and Andrew Jackson would pump todays rats full of lead, but that’s a fact.
Whereas the Federalists were the progenitors to the Whigs and Modern Republicans (named to evoke Jefferson’s Republicans in a clever electoral ploy). We’ve basically always had the same 2 parties, the names just changed. Federalists/National Republicans/Whigs/GOP has always been the party that supported commerce and the Jeffersonian Republicans/Jacksonians/Rats have always been pseudo-populist rabble rousers.
With the rats turning to socialism in the late 19th Century the differences became more clear, that’s all.
Yeah, the one position in which the parties have switched sides is on free trade, for the simple reason that, in the 19th century and early 20th century, commercial interests were protectionists (and thus Republicans were in favor of tariffs) while labor and certain agricultural interests favored free trade (and thus so did Bourbon Democrats), while in modern times commercial interests favor free trade (and thus so do Republicans) and labor interests are are protectionist (and thus so are labor Democrats).
I get a kick out of the Neo-Confederates, of which there are ‘x’ of on this site.
The Confederates were RATS then and they’re RATS now.
It’s one of the “big lies” perpetrated by Democrats to try to disassociate the party’s historical record (despite the fact that they still practice the same methods with different players). Even Andrew Jackson was the “Yes We Can” candidate of the 1820s/30s, the “proclaimed” King of the Rabble. If FR had been around those days, we’d have considered him a thug and a loose cannon (not to mention a killer). His conduct in office was enough that here in Tennessee, which had been a one-party Jeffersonian state from its creation clear up until Jackson (not a single solitary Federalist-aligned or even Adams candidate elected to federal office), split in two and led to us being a strong Whig state for a time (more supportive of Henry Clay in KY than Jackson).
As for Sen. Stephen Douglas, given that he died quite early during the Civil War, he was already moving towards the Republicans (the group known as Douglas Democrats, some of its adherents did become Republicans), and might very well have switched parties before long.
It’s disingenuous for anyone to make the claim “Lincoln would’ve been a Democrat today.” I think had any 18th or 19th century political figure (of either party) saw 21st century America, would’ve been horrified with its out-of-control size, spending and moral/anti-Christian degeneracy. I can even picture Benjamin Franklin raging like Charlton Heston at the end of “Planet of the Apes” when he saw Lady Liberty’s ruins on the beach.