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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - V. Politics - 21. Southern Conservatism and Liberalism - 1. The “Solid South”
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CHAPTER 21
SOUTHERN CONSERVATISM AND LIBERALISM
I. The “Solid South”
Except for the Reconstruction period and for the period after Restora-
tion culminating in the Populist movement (i890^s), the South has
consistently disfranchised the Negroes and has had to cling to the Demo-
cratic party to do So. This suppression of normal bi-partisan politics has
given the region the appellation “Solid South.” The South had a two-party
system before 1830, and it was lost in the consolidation of forces against
the North just before and during the Civil War. As we noted in the
previous chapter, it was lost again at the close of Reconstruction.^ But
already by the end of the ’seventies and increasingly up to the first half of
the ’nineties, the Populist movement divided the agrarian middle and
lower class from the Democratic party, which was led by the plantation
owners, industrialists, merchants and bankers. The rise to political impor-
tance of the agrarian radicals resulted in the fulfillment of the prediction
that all precautions taken to keep the Negroes disfranchised would crumble
if a split occurred in the ranks of the whites. Both factions appealed to the
Negro voters. The regular Democrats, who were most familiar with the
administrative machinery and who included most of the owners of planta-
tions where Negroes were employed in large numbers, are said to have
been most successful. But the agrarians were just as eager to get help
where they could find it. In 1896 in North Carolina they joined the
Republicans, and as a consequence more Negroes were appointed to offices
in that state than ever before.* For more than half a decade, the Demo-
cratic party was virtually disrupted in most states of the South.
But the reaction soon got under way. A new movement to disfranchise
the Negroes by more effective legal means—starting with the Mississippi
Constitutional Convention of 1890 and continuing with the adoption of
new constitutions in seven other states between 1895 and 1910—drew its
main arguments from the danger of a break in white solidarity, demon-
strated by the agrarian revolt. When Populism declined, and it did so
rapidly after 1896, and the unity between the Populists and the Democrats
became restored, the main dish at the love feasts was the disfranchisement
of the Negro.^
4.5a
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