The immediate post-Civil War years were crucial to the development of America’s major political parties. The Republicans emerged from the war as the victorious defenders of freedom and the Union. Their firm grip on Congress assured them of control over the direction of southern Reconstruction as well as the federal government for at least a decade. Conversely, the Civil War weakened and discredited the Democratic Party. Slavery, secession, and war had split the party, but emancipation, union, and peace settled those issues, and Democrats in the North and South reunited in opposition to Radical Reconstruction policies. As white supremacists gained control of the South and with negrophobia alive in the North, the Democratic Party had become a formidable force by 1876.
As with all major parties, there was much diversity among the Democrats. For the most part, they were Americans who were growing tired with the course of Reconstruction and were troubled by the changes to society brought on by rapid industrialization. Although Republicans were far from centralized, the Democratic Party was an especially loose collection of state and local parties. Lacking cohesion, it was difficult to impose unity on the party’s membership. Among the Democratic partisans were small farmers, industrial laborers, small businessmen, and Irish and German Catholic immigrants, but the party also included some bankers, railroad operators, and industrialists. Each of these constituencies brought their own agenda to the party, but the party’s most consistent base of political support was the Solid South and urban political machines such as Tammany Hall in New York City. Ultimately, the Democratic Party’s diversity made it unstable.
The Democrats developed neither leaders nor an agenda that could unite the disparate elements of the party. They failed because the party returned to the traditional doctrines of states rights, decentralization, fiscal conservatism, and limited government. Following such a political strategy, Democrats developed remedies to the country’s complex problems—business regulation, political reform, and labor legislation—based on local circumstances and individual initiatives. This approach succeeded on the state level, but these were limited victories. The emphasis on local and state government weakened the Democratic Party’s ability to develop national leaders. Instead, the party depended on a group of powerful regional political leaders who were unwilling to subordinate local interests to make the national party cohesive and competitive.
Because they lacked national leaders, the Democrats found themselves under the political control of one or more competing factions. By the 1880s, the views of its conservative wing, the so-called Bourbons, began to take precedence. The Bourbons were centered mainly in the Northeast and had ties to the nation’s financial and corporate communities. They called for a reduction in tariff rates, a currency system based on the gold standard, and “administrative economy.” Simply put, the Bourbons wanted to restrict government activity to a minimum. The Bourbons were joined by several southern Democrats who advocated a New South based on industrial development and laissez-faire economic principles.
The reliance on Bourbon ideology led to intraparty strife. Democrats who were concerned with the social inequities caused by the nation’s rapid industrialization believed that the Bourbons were aiding the destruction of the small
Lithograph of democratic nominees Grover Cleveland and A. G. Thurman, ca. 1888 (Library of Congress)
Family farm and the exploitation of American workers. This liberal faction led movements calling for federal regulation of large corporations and the railroads. Intraparty strife also arose over the currency issue, with Democrats in the economically depressed rural regions of the South and West advocating a policy of currency inflation by increasing the supply of paper money (greenbacks) in circulation or through the unlimited coinage of silver (Free Silver movement). Another persistent issue with Democrats in these regions, as well as in the cities of the Northeast, was the availability of federal appropriations and subsidies that the Bourbons, as advocates of administrative economy, opposed. The TARIEE issue also sparked division among the Democratic faithful.
Despite the intraparty differences, the Democrats slowly began to close the political gap between themselves and the Republicans. They won the House of Representatives in 1874 and the Senate in 1878. Samuel J. Tilden won the popular vote for the presidency in 1876 (but lost the vote in the electoral college), and the election of 1884 brought Grover Cleveland to the White House. Cleveland was the first Democrat elected president since James Buchanan in 1856, and he has the further distinction of being the only president in American history to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office (1885-89, 1893-97). For the Democratic Party, Cleveland’s election meant an end to 24 years of political impotence on the national level. Unfortunately for Cleveland and the Democrats, they controlled the presidency and Congress when the panic of 1893 inaugurated a devastating economic depression.
The erosion of Democratic power during the depression was confirmed in 1896 when the rural, southern-western faction recaptured the party under the leadership of William Jennings Bryan. Bryan and his supporters attacked both the Republicans and the Bourbons for manipulating government power for the benefit of the wealthy, industrial elite. They shared with the People’s Party (Populists) the belief that increased federal regulation of railroads and public utilities, currency inflation based on the Free Silver ideal, and the abolition of the national banking system could restore balance within America’s economic system. Such policies could especially help small farmers living under the pressure of declining agricultural prices and high shipping costs. Furthermore, Bryan espoused an antiurbanism that alienated the Democratic political machines in the nation’s major cities. These machine organizations had provided the party with a major core of constituents among immigrants and Catholics, and their lack of support for Bryan and his ideals contributed to his defeat in the 1896 presidential election. After Bryan’s defeat, the Democrats remained the minority party until the 1930s.
See also Plunkitt, George Washington.
Further reading: J. Rogers Hollingsworth, The Whirligig of Politics: The Democracy of Cleveland and Bryan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963); Horace Merrill, Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957); H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to the McKinley: National Party Politics, 18771896 (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1969).
—Phillip Papas
World History
