August 30, 2006
I would ask a favor. I have done the best I could but don't have resources
available to me.
Would you do a bit of research of "
read about this group several years ago, I found some information. Then,
when I tried to get the information again, I couldn't find what I had originally
seen.
As I understood the original information I read it was a group that merged
with the Democratic Party in the 1930's. They merged because they weren't
able to get themselves elected.
If you have the time, I would appreciate it.
# #
September 01, 2006
Douglas Democrat is a term for those politically aligned with Stephen
Arnold Douglas during the 1860
and after the civil war worked to oppose emancipation. Democrats
established the Jim Crow laws, and later in the 20th century worked
to oppose the civil rights movement. When the Democratic party
transformed itself into a party supporting the civil rights under
Johnson, the Southern Democrats (the present-day descendants of the
Douglas Democrats) moved to the Republican party. The Republican
Party was founded in 1854 as a coalition of former Whigs, Northern
Democrats, and Free-Soilers, all opposed to the expansion of
slavery. The Republican Party has undergone major realignments as
the Democratic Party has. The definition of either party is very
fluid of the long-term and apparently even interchangeable, as is
historically witnessed over and over again since the time of the
parties' respective inceptions.
More history about the Democratic and Republican Parties can be found
at
In 1858, Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, debated
Republican Abraham Lincoln on the question of slavery. Said
during one of those debates: "For one, I am opposed to negro
citizenship in any and every form. I believe this government was made
on the white basis. I believe it was made by white men for the
benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and I am in favor
of confining citizenship to white men, men of European birth and
descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians and other
inferior races."
So prevalent were these views in the Democratic Party that
was named its presidential candidate in 1860. Amazingly, Southerners
actually viewed Douglas as being too moderate on the slavery issue
and instead voted for Vice President John C. Breckinridge, a slave-
owner who also ran as a Democrat, thus splitting the pro-slavery vote
and allowing
The Democratic Party evolved from the political factions that opposed
Alexander Hamilton's fiscal policies in the early 1790s; these
factions are known variously as the Anti-Administration “Party” or
the Anti-Federalists. In the mid-1790s, Thomas Jefferson, and James
Madison organized these factions into a party and helped define its
ideology in favor of yeomen farmers, strict construction of the
Constitution, and a weaker federal government. They named it the
"Republican Party." Today the party is called the Democratic-
Republican Party (or simply the Democratic Party) to distinguish it
from the modern-day Republican Party. Following the civil war,
Douglas Democrats had constituted the southern block of the
Democratic party, and today are known as Conservative Republicans.
This is how the switch came about.
After the civil war, the Democratic Party held a lock on the South
for more than 100 years. All of the "Jim Crow" laws that prevented
blacks from voting and kept them down were enacted by Democratic
governors and Democratic legislatures. The Ku Klux Klan was virtually
an auxiliary arm of the Democratic Party, and any black (or white)
who threatened the party's domination was liable to be beaten or
lynched. Democrats enacted the first gun-control laws in order to
prevent blacks from defending themselves against Ku Klux Klan
violence. Chain gangs were developed by Democrats to bring back de
facto slave labor.
The New Deal Coalition established by Franklin Roosevelt began to
fracture as more Democratic leaders voiced support for civil rights,
upsetting the party's traditional base of conservative Southern
Democrats. After Harry Truman's platform showed support for civil
rights and anti-segregation laws during the 1948 Democratic National
Convention, many Southern Democratic delegates decided to split from
the Party and formed the "Dixiecrats", led by
Strom Thurmond (who, as a Senator, would later join the Republican
Party). Over the next few years, many conservative Democrats in the
"Solid South" drifted away from the party. On the other hand, African
Americans, who had traditionally given strong support to the
Republican Party since its inception as the "anti-slavery party",
shifted to the Democratic Party due to its New Deal economic
opportunities and support for civil rights.
The party's dramatic reversal on civil rights issues culminated when
Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil
Rights Act of 1964. Meanwhile, the Republicans were beginning their
infamous Southern strategy, which aimed to solidify the Republican
Party's electoral hold over conservative white Southerners. Southern
Democrats took notice of the fact that 1964 Republican Presidential
candidate Barry Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act, and
in the presidential election of 1964, Goldwater's only electoral
victories outside his home state of
The degree to which the Southern Democrats had abandoned the party
became evident in the 1968 Presidential election when every former
Confederate state except
Nixon or independent George Wallace, the latter a former Southern
Democrat. Defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey's electoral votes came
mainly from the Northern states, marking a dramatic shift from the
1948 election 20 years earlier, when the losing Republican
candidate's electoral votes were mainly concentrated in the Northern
states.:
No comments:
Post a Comment