Monday Morning Findings

A friend of mine posted about Juneteenth and how the Republicans freed the slaves. Here is some of the things I found out, but I think I need to head to a library with history books in hand.

The Democratic Party in the first half of the 19th century largely represented agrarian economic interests and a small federal government. In the south this meant supporting slavery. In 1860 the party split along regional lines. The Republican Party replaced the Whigs in the 1850s as a party favoring free labor, a strong federal government and urban industrial development. This included tariffs to protect the young American industries from from more advanced foreign, particularly British, competition. This was directly contrary to the interests of the south in particular.

The two parties evolved considerably after the war and the Democrats eventually became a coalition of the urban north and the south. The “solid South” that reliably voted Democratic in national and state wide politics lasted from the Reconstruction down to the 1960. This started to unravel as the national Democratic Party became more attuned to black interests and promoting integration, and Truman’s order to desegregate the military in 1948 helped split the party. In 1964 with Johnson championing civil rights legislation there were disputes over setting party delegations elected to the Democratic convention on a whites only basis, and in the election Johnson lost the traditionally Democratic strongholds of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. In 1968 the Republicans actively pursued what was called the Souther Strategy of appealing to white southern voters and this has continued since then.

It must be understood that in 1859–60, “against slavery” meant being against the EXPANSION of slavery into new states & territories. Both parties understood that slavery was protected in the Constitution, in the states where it already existed. Southerners wanted to admit new slave states to the Union; the “anti-slavery” party wanted to admit only free states to the Union.

Yes, there were Abolitionists. But they were not in the majority, even in the Republican party. They were always impatient with Lincoln for being such a damned incrementalist. Abolition was a tough sell in some states, even as late as 1865.

Lincoln & the Republicans only changed from their anti-expansion stance, to their abolition stance, during the Civil War itself. Three things combined to make that happen:

1. It became clear that slaves were an important part of the Southern war effort.
2. Many, many slaves freed themselves and come over into Northern lines, and the Union needed a coherent policy toward them.
3. The war became catastrophic enough, that they wanted to remove its “spark”, prevent it from ever happening again.

The Republican party of 1860 emerged from the ashes of the Whig party, which split into pre-expansion and anti-expansion factions. Wikipedia has this:After 1850, the Whigs were unable to deal with the slavery issue. Their Southern leaders nearly all owned slaves. The northeastern Whigs, led by Daniel Webster, represented businessmen who loved national unity and a national market, but cared little about slavery one way or another. However, many Whig voters in the North thought that slavery was incompatible with a free labor, free market economy and supported the Wilmot Proviso, which did not pass Congress, but would have stopped the expansion of slavery. No one found a compromise that would keep the party united.
…
In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the new territories to slavery, was passed. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread Northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

That North-South split between the Republican & Democrat centers of gravity persisted for nearly a hundred years. Republicans were primarily the party or Northern moderate businessmen. Southern “Dixiecrats” were fervently racist, supporting segregation and Jim Crow laws.

This all shifted with surprising suddenness, in the late-1950s and the 60s. Southern politicians like Strom Thurmond & Jesse Helms switched parties, from Democrat to Republican. The Democratic party nominated a Northern liberal, JFK, to the presidency. JFK & RFK advocated for civil rights; after JFK’s murder, LBJ pushed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 thru Congress. LBJ observed that because of the act, “we might lose the South” – and they did. Five Southern stats swung Republican in 1964. In 1968 the Republican party adopted a Southern strategy - Wikipedia ; and the South became a stronghold of the Republican Party.

In 2005, Republican Natl Committee chairman Ken Mehlman addressed the NAACP natl convention in Milwaukee, and said:

"By the '70s and into the '80s and '90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out," Mehlman says in his prepared text. "Some Republicans gave up on winning the African American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong."

It’s surprising how many major shifts in American politics, have their roots in race issues.

The thing is, we have endured this in the past and there are no modern day slaves specifically targeting the black communities.  Society today is so interested in wiping out history because it is in the past, only they don't want to wipe this piece of history out because it benefits them.  Sigh!