-1Week Five Handout for “Reconstruction and Recovery”
Southern Politics, 1877-1920s Mick Chantler, Instructor
With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, political power in the Southern states reverted back to
the white elites of the region: Black Belt planters, wealthy urban businessmen, and educated
professionals. Collectively, these leaders were known as the “Redeemers,” patriarchs who had
rescued Dixie from the clutches of rapacious Yankees, carpetbaggers, and dangerously assertive
blacks. Grateful southerners didn’t ask much of their saviors: just keep the northern dogooders away, and ensure white supremacy. The social amenities enjoyed by most
northerners—good public schools, libraries, decent roads—would have to wait for better days.
Southern political leaders of the 1880s vowed to “raise hogs and lower taxes” and most voters
heartily agreed. Attempts to raise the standard of living through a more progressive and
involved governmental policy risked violating the time-honored southern commitment to
Laissez Faire. A society which demanded the complete subordination of nearly half its
population to the other half couldn’t afford the luxury of an interventionist state.
The one-party system which developed throughout the South in the wake of the Redemption
had devastating consequences for both whites and blacks. With no opposition party to offer
alternatives or compete for votes, Democratic politicians became uninterested in legitimate
policy discussions. Campaigns were devoid of substantive issues, and elections degenerated
into tasteless—if colorful—personality contests. There was no genuine debate on how the
South could seriously tackle its myriad economic and social problems. Vacuous slogans and
catchy jingles replaced thoughtful discussion. South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Cole
Blease constructed a “platform” on nonsensical doggerel: “Do what you want, say what you
please, the man for the job is Coley Blease.” The flamboyant “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman billed
himself as “The Champion of Southern Women’s Virtue.”
Demagoguery flourished in such a platitudinous, content-free atmosphere. Rural candidates
heaped scorn on “city slickers,” (Georgia gubernatorial candidate Eugene Talmadge invited his
followers to come to the governor’s mansion in Atlanta, where they could have a drink on the
porch and then ‘piss over the railing on all those city bastards’) while ultra-religious politicos
accused opponents of forming alliances with Satan. One Tennessee candidate said of his
opponent, “In the art galleries of Paris there are twenty-seven pictures of Judas Iscariot—none
look alike but all resemble Gordon Browning; neither his head, heart, nor hand can be trusted;
he would milk his neighbor’s cow through a crack in the fence; of the 206 bones in his body
there isn’t one that is genuine; his heart has beaten over two billion times without a single
sincere beat.” Not a word was said concerning this man Browning’s positions—that was
-2irrelevant. Of course, all southern aspirants to public office heaped scorn on the region’s
blacks. U.S. Senators openly praised lynch mobs, and one South Carolina governor bragged that
he had buried a finger of a victim in his garden.
To be fair, southern Democratic strategists were not entirely responsible for this dismal picture.
Rank and file voters really didn’t expect government to improve their conditions. Country folk
came to campaign rallies to be entertained, not enlightened on the issues. With emotional
evangelical religion the only other source of collective entertainment, the common people
wanted high theatre from their political leaders, not logical, dispassionate discourse. An
afternoon of music, free food, and drink, laced with fiery rhetoric from the stump, was exactly
what “homo politicus Alabamacus” demanded. When a candidate for County Sherriff would
boldly declare that he would be the “first to light the faggots to roast a ‘nigrah’ who assaulted
little white girls,” tipsy crowds would swoon with delight. (Talk of “roasting” wasn’t mere
hyperbole—by the 1890s southern lynch mobs began burning blacks at the stake, finding this
form of execution more satisfying than a simple hanging.)
Given the one-party system and the absence of any substantive differences between most
Democrats, actual voter turnout was pathetically low. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and property
requirements also depressed voter participation. Most gubernatorial elections attracted only
15-20% of eligible voters, and presidential elections often drew even less, since the outcome
was usually pre-determined. (Only in 1928 did some southern states break from the
Democratic ranks and vote for the Republican Hoover, since Democrat Al Smith was both
Catholic and wet—hence, anathema to backwoods Baptists.) After the brief Populist “revolt” of
the 1890s, most white farmers had little incentive to go to the polls. Such apathy resulted in a
shockingly retrograde level of politics in the South which lasted well into the 1960s.