Short Post: An Ironic Fact About the Pre-Civil War South
I’m keeping this one short again because I’m a little behind on homework at the moment. Tuesday and Thursday posts are going away for now because short posts might take over my normal three posts a week until I get the hang of college.
The pre-Civil War South was mainly under the Democratic party until they lost the Civil War and Reconstruction began. One Andrew Johnson (not Andrew Jackson) made it so that the white rich of the South could never vote or hold office again, crippling their ability to influence the politics they had dominated for so long. Thus by the end of the Reconstruction, with the Compromise of 1877 (and people like carpetbaggers and scalawags), most states slowly became Republican and have stayed so to this day.
One of these is not like the other.
This is something I find incredibly ironic, given how staunchly Republican the South is currently and how desperate the current Republican nominees (I’m looking at you two, Gingrich and Romney) seem to be to prove their Republican roots.
What do you think? Did you know this about the South? Because I sure didn’t until yesterday. History classes are fun, yes?
Those are true but a generation or two after Reconstruction, the 13 Southern states became a Democratic voting bloc, even referred to as “the Solid South” at times. They didn’t swing back to voting Republican until the Reagan years.
I didn’t know that, actually! It seems like they’ve always been Republican. Then again, for my entire lifetime they have been.
You might also be interested to know that the Republican and Democrat “values” have switched several times in history. Like what used to be considered democrat was called republican and visa versa…
Both political parties are the same these days anyways – they both represent corporate interests… I doubt you will learn that in your history class though.
So back in Lincoln’s day, Republicans had a different agenda than they do now, as did the Democrats? And I agree with you on corporate interests, though I doubt my history professor would ever outright mention that in lecture. As an offhand comment, maybe, haha.
Thanks for commenting.