WEBVTT NOTE 30. 1896: The Transformation of the American Party System 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.440 1896. The Transformation of the American Party System. Orthodox economic historians attribute 2 00:00:08.440 --> 00:00:13.940 the triumph of William Jennings Bryan in the Democratic Convention of 1896 and his later 3 00:00:13.940 --> 00:00:19.340 renominations for president to a righteous rising up of the people demanding inflation 4 00:00:19.340 --> 00:00:24.600 over the interests holding out for gold. Friedman and Schwartz attribute the rise of Bryanism 5 00:00:24.600 --> 00:00:29.980 to a price contraction of the last three decades of the 19th century, and the triumph of gold 6 00:00:29.980 --> 00:00:35.660 Gold and Disappearance of the quote money issue to the price rise after 1896. 7 00:00:35.660 --> 00:00:38.820 This conventional analysis overlooks several problems. 8 00:00:38.820 --> 00:00:44.420 First, if Brian represented the people versus the interests, why did Brian lose and lose 9 00:00:44.420 --> 00:00:47.940 soundly not once but three times? 10 00:00:47.940 --> 00:00:53.260 Why did gold triumph long before any price inflation became obvious, in fact at the depths 11 00:00:53.260 --> 00:00:56.580 of price contraction in 1896? 12 00:00:56.580 --> 00:01:00.940 But the main neglect of the conventional analysis is the disregard of the highly illuminating 13 00:01:00.940 --> 00:01:06.500 insights provided in the past 15 years by the quote, new political history of 19th century 14 00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:09.980 American politics and its political culture. 15 00:01:09.980 --> 00:01:15.680 The new political history began by going beyond national political issues, largely economic, 16 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:19.340 and investigating state and local political contests. 17 00:01:19.340 --> 00:01:24.820 It also dug into the actual voting records of individual parishes, wards and counties 18 00:01:24.820 --> 00:01:29.180 and discovered how people voted and why they voted the way they did. 19 00:01:29.180 --> 00:01:33.680 The work of the new political history is truly interdisciplinary, for its methods range from 20 00:01:33.680 --> 00:01:39.100 sophisticated techniques for voting analysis to illuminating insights into American ethnic 21 00:01:39.100 --> 00:01:40.880 religious history. 22 00:01:40.880 --> 00:01:44.580 In the following pages, we shall present a summary of the findings of the new political 23 00:01:44.580 --> 00:01:49.160 history on the American party structure of the late 19th century and after, and on the 24 00:01:49.160 --> 00:01:52.540 transformation of 1896 in particular. 25 00:01:52.540 --> 00:01:58.620 First, the history of American political parties is one of successive, quote, party systems. 26 00:01:58.620 --> 00:02:03.100 Each party system lasts several decades, with each particular party having a certain central 27 00:02:03.100 --> 00:02:04.260 character. 28 00:02:04.260 --> 00:02:08.400 In many cases, the name of the party can remain the same, but its essential character can 29 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:13.300 drastically change in the so-called, quote, critical elections. 30 00:02:13.300 --> 00:02:18.460 In the 19th century, the nation's second party system, the Whigs vs. Democrats, lasting 31 00:02:18.460 --> 00:02:25.680 lasting from about 1832 to 1854, was succeeded by the third system, the Republicans vs. Democrats, 32 00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:29.340 lasting from 1854 to 1896. 33 00:02:29.340 --> 00:02:33.240 Characteristic of both party systems was that each party was committed to a distinctive 34 00:02:33.240 --> 00:02:38.120 ideology clashing with the other, and these conflicting worldviews made for fierce and 35 00:02:38.120 --> 00:02:40.240 close contests. 36 00:02:40.240 --> 00:02:42.500 Elections were particularly hard fought. 37 00:02:42.500 --> 00:02:46.940 Interest was high since the parties offered a quote choice, not an echo, and so the turnout 38 00:02:46.940 --> 00:02:51.940 was remarkably high, often reaching 80% to 90% of eligible voters. 39 00:02:51.940 --> 00:02:55.940 More remarkably, candidates did not, as we are used to in the 20th century, 40 00:02:55.940 --> 00:02:59.940 fuzz their ideology during campaigns in order to appeal to a floating, 41 00:02:59.940 --> 00:03:03.940 ideologically different, independent voter. 42 00:03:03.940 --> 00:03:05.940 There were very few independent voters. 43 00:03:05.940 --> 00:03:08.940 The way to win elections, therefore, was to bring out your vote, 44 00:03:08.940 --> 00:03:13.940 and the way to do that was to intensify and strengthen your ideology during campaigns. 45 00:03:13.940 --> 00:03:18.580 Any fuzzing over would lead the Republican or Democratic constituents to stay home in 46 00:03:18.580 --> 00:03:22.000 disgust and the election would be lost. 47 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:26.200 Very rarely would there be a crossover to the other hated party. 48 00:03:26.200 --> 00:03:30.760 One problem that strikes anyone interested in 19th century political history is, how 49 00:03:30.760 --> 00:03:35.860 come the average person exhibited such great and intense interest in such arcane economic 50 00:03:35.860 --> 00:03:40.900 topics as banking, gold and silver, and tariffs? 51 00:03:40.900 --> 00:03:45.860 Thousands of half-literate people wrote embattled tracks on these topics and voters were intensely 52 00:03:45.860 --> 00:03:51.620 interested, attributing the answer to inflation or depression to seemingly economic interests 53 00:03:51.620 --> 00:03:56.540 as do Marxists and other economic determinists simply won't do. 54 00:03:56.540 --> 00:04:01.140 The far greater depressions and inflations of the 20th century have not induced nearly 55 00:04:01.140 --> 00:04:07.660 as much mass interest in economics as did the milder economic crises of the past century. 56 00:04:07.660 --> 00:04:11.380 Only the findings of the new political historians have cleared up this puzzle. 57 00:04:11.380 --> 00:04:15.580 It turns out that the mass of the public was not necessarily interested in what the elites 58 00:04:15.580 --> 00:04:18.420 or national politicians were talking about. 59 00:04:18.420 --> 00:04:23.440 The most intense and direct interest of the voters was applied to local and state issues, 60 00:04:23.440 --> 00:04:28.120 and on these local levels the two parties waged an intense and furious political struggle 61 00:04:28.120 --> 00:04:32.040 that lasted from the 1830s to the 1890s. 62 00:04:32.040 --> 00:04:36.100 The beginning of the century-long struggle began with the profound transformation of 63 00:04:36.100 --> 00:04:39.320 of American Protestantism in the 1830s. 64 00:04:39.320 --> 00:04:41.500 This transformation swept like wildfire 65 00:04:41.500 --> 00:04:43.200 across the Northern States, 66 00:04:43.200 --> 00:04:46.760 particularly Yankee territory during the 1830s, 67 00:04:46.760 --> 00:04:49.480 leaving the South virtually untouched. 68 00:04:49.480 --> 00:04:51.440 The transformation found particular root 69 00:04:51.440 --> 00:04:53.660 among Yankee culture with its aggressive 70 00:04:53.660 --> 00:04:55.620 and domineering spirit. 71 00:04:55.620 --> 00:04:58.640 This new Protestantism called pietism 72 00:04:58.640 --> 00:05:00.760 was born in the fires of Charles Finney 73 00:05:00.760 --> 00:05:03.760 and the great revival movement of the 1830s. 74 00:05:03.760 --> 00:05:06.200 Its credo was roughly as follows. 75 00:05:06.200 --> 00:05:09.320 Each individual is responsible for his own salvation, 76 00:05:09.320 --> 00:05:12.120 and it must come in an emotional moment of being, quote, 77 00:05:12.120 --> 00:05:13.520 born again. 78 00:05:13.520 --> 00:05:15.800 Each person can achieve salvation. 79 00:05:15.800 --> 00:05:19.260 Each person must do his best to save everyone else. 80 00:05:19.260 --> 00:05:22.960 This compulsion to save others was more than simple missionary work. 81 00:05:22.960 --> 00:05:27.020 It meant that one would go to hell unless he did his best to save others. 82 00:05:27.020 --> 00:05:30.840 But since each person is alone and facing the temptation to sin, 83 00:05:30.840 --> 00:05:34.200 This role can only be done by the use of the state. 84 00:05:34.200 --> 00:05:39.440 The role of the state was to stamp out sin and create a new Jerusalem on earth. 85 00:05:39.440 --> 00:05:41.760 The pietists defined sin very broadly. 86 00:05:41.760 --> 00:05:46.480 In particular, the most important politically was, quote, demon rum, which clouded men's 87 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:50.280 minds and therefore robbed them of their theological free will. 88 00:05:50.280 --> 00:05:56.040 In the 1830s, the evangelical pietists launched a determined and indefatigable prohibitionist 89 00:05:56.040 --> 00:06:05.840 Second was any activity on Sunday except going to church, which led to a drive for sabbatarian 90 00:06:05.840 --> 00:06:07.440 blue laws. 91 00:06:07.440 --> 00:06:12.200 Drinking on Sunday was of course a double sin and hence was particularly heinous. 92 00:06:12.200 --> 00:06:17.320 Another vital thrust of the new Yankee Pietism was to try to extirpate Roman Catholicism, 93 00:06:17.320 --> 00:06:21.940 which robs communicants of their theological free will by subjecting them to the dictates 94 00:06:21.940 --> 00:06:24.960 of priests who are agents of the Vatican. 95 00:06:24.960 --> 00:06:29.400 If Roman Catholics could not be prohibited per se, their immigration could be slowed 96 00:06:29.400 --> 00:06:31.080 down or stopped. 97 00:06:31.080 --> 00:06:36.040 And since their adults were irrevocably steeped in sin, it became vital for crusading pietists 98 00:06:36.040 --> 00:06:41.920 to try to establish public schools as compulsory forces for Protestantizing society or, as 99 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:46.580 the pietists like to put it, to quote, Christianize the Catholics. 100 00:06:46.580 --> 00:06:51.040 If the adults are hopeless, the children must be saved by the public school and compulsory 101 00:06:51.040 --> 00:06:53.120 attendance laws. 102 00:06:53.120 --> 00:06:56.260 First was the political program of Yankee pietism. 103 00:06:56.260 --> 00:06:57.840 Not all immigrants were scorned. 104 00:06:57.840 --> 00:07:02.240 British, Norwegian, or other immigrants who belonged to pietist churches, whether nominally 105 00:07:02.240 --> 00:07:06.860 Calvinist or Lutheran or not, were welcomed as, quote, true Americans. 106 00:07:06.860 --> 00:07:11.640 The Northern pietists found their home almost to a man, first in the Whig Party and then 107 00:07:11.640 --> 00:07:13.360 in the Republican Party. 108 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:17.640 And they did so, too, among the Greenback and Populist parties, as we shall see further 109 00:07:17.640 --> 00:07:18.960 below. 110 00:07:18.960 --> 00:07:23.040 There came to this country during the century an increasing number of Catholic and Lutheran 111 00:07:23.040 --> 00:07:31.040 The Catholics and High Lutherans, who have been called, quote, ritualists or liturgicals, 112 00:07:31.040 --> 00:07:33.680 had a very different kind of religious culture. 113 00:07:33.680 --> 00:07:37.160 Each person is not responsible for his own salvation directly. 114 00:07:37.160 --> 00:07:42.160 If he is to be saved, he joins the church and obeys its liturgy and sacraments. 115 00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:46.920 In a profound sense, then, the church is responsible for one's salvation, and there was no need 116 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:50.080 for the state to stamp out temptation. 117 00:07:50.080 --> 00:07:54.720 These churches then, especially the Lutheran, had a laissez-faire attitude toward the state 118 00:07:54.720 --> 00:08:01.320 and morality. Furthermore, their definitions of sin were not nearly as broad as the pietists. 119 00:08:01.320 --> 00:08:05.460 Liquor is fine in moderation, and drinking beer with the family in beer parlors on Sunday 120 00:08:05.460 --> 00:08:10.960 after church was a cherished German tradition, Catholic and Lutheran. And parochial schools 121 00:08:10.960 --> 00:08:15.160 were vital in transmitting religious values to their children in a country where they 122 00:08:15.160 --> 00:08:16.920 They Were in a Minority 123 00:08:16.920 --> 00:08:21.800 Virtually to a man, Catholics and high Lutherans found their home during the 19th century in 124 00:08:21.800 --> 00:08:23.440 the Democratic Party. 125 00:08:23.440 --> 00:08:27.200 It is no wonder that the Republicans gloried in calling themselves throughout the period 126 00:08:27.200 --> 00:08:32.520 quote the party of great moral ideas, while the Democrats declared themselves to be quote 127 00:08:32.520 --> 00:08:34.680 the party of personal liberty. 128 00:08:34.680 --> 00:08:39.280 For nearly a century, the bemused liturgical Democrats fought a defensive struggle against 129 00:08:39.280 --> 00:08:44.420 people whom they considered pietist fanatics, constantly swooping down trying to outlaw 130 00:08:44.420 --> 00:08:52.580 How did all this relate to the economic issues of the day? 131 00:08:52.580 --> 00:08:56.220 Simply that the leaders of each party went to their voting constituents and raised their 132 00:08:56.220 --> 00:09:00.820 consciousness to get them vitally interested in national economic questions. 133 00:09:00.820 --> 00:09:05.940 Thus, the Republican leaders would go to their rank and file and say, just as we need big 134 00:09:05.940 --> 00:09:10.340 paternalistic government on the local and state level to stamp out sin and compelled 135 00:09:10.340 --> 00:09:15.160 Morality, so we need big government on the national level to increase everyone's purchasing 136 00:09:15.160 --> 00:09:19.720 power through inflation, keeping out cheap foreign goods through tariffs, or keeping 137 00:09:19.720 --> 00:09:23.260 out cheap foreign labor through immigration restrictions. 138 00:09:23.260 --> 00:09:27.380 And for their part, the Democratic leaders would go to their constituents and say, just 139 00:09:27.380 --> 00:09:31.500 as the Republican fanatics are trying to take away your liquor, your beer parlors and your 140 00:09:31.500 --> 00:09:35.940 parochial schools, so the same people are trying to keep out cheap foreign goods through 141 00:09:35.940 --> 00:09:49.860 So, stateism and libertarianism were expanded to other issues and other levels. 142 00:09:49.860 --> 00:09:54.860 Each side infused its economic issues with a moral fervor and passion stemming from deeply 143 00:09:54.860 --> 00:09:56.960 held religious values. 144 00:09:56.960 --> 00:10:01.940 The mystery of the passionate interest of Americans in economic issues in the epic is 145 00:10:01.940 --> 00:10:03.580 solved. 146 00:10:03.580 --> 00:10:07.920 Both in the second and third party systems, however, the Whigs and then the Republicans 147 00:10:07.920 --> 00:10:10.180 had a grave problem. 148 00:10:10.180 --> 00:10:15.340 Partly because of demographics, greater immigration, and higher birth rates, the Democratic liturgicals 149 00:10:15.340 --> 00:10:18.980 were slowly but surely becoming the majority party in the country. 150 00:10:18.980 --> 00:10:24.620 The Democrats were split asunder by the slavery question in the 1840s and 1850s. 151 00:10:24.620 --> 00:10:29.580 But now, by 1890, the Republicans saw the handwriting on the wall. 152 00:10:29.580 --> 00:10:34.020 The Democratic victory in the Congressional races in 1890, followed by the unprecedented 153 00:10:34.020 --> 00:10:39.760 landslide victory of Grover Cleveland carrying both houses of Congress in 1892, indicated 154 00:10:39.760 --> 00:10:44.420 to the Republicans that they were becoming doomed to be a permanent minority. 155 00:10:44.420 --> 00:10:49.780 To remedy the problem, the Republicans, in the early 1890s, led by Ohio Republicans William 156 00:10:49.780 --> 00:10:54.420 McKinley and Mark Hanna, launched a shrewd campaign of reconstruction. 157 00:10:54.420 --> 00:10:58.780 In particular, in state after state, they ditched the prohibitionists, who were becoming 158 00:10:58.780 --> 00:11:04.260 In an embarrassment and losing the Republicans large numbers of German Lutheran votes, also 159 00:11:04.260 --> 00:11:07.140 they modified their hostility to immigration. 160 00:11:07.140 --> 00:11:11.820 By the mid 1890s, the Republicans had moved rapidly toward the center, toward fuzzing 161 00:11:11.820 --> 00:11:14.360 over their political pietism. 162 00:11:14.360 --> 00:11:18.440 In the meanwhile, an upheaval was beginning to occur in the Democratic Party. 163 00:11:18.440 --> 00:11:23.740 The South, by now a one-party Democratic region, was having its own pietism transformed by 164 00:11:23.740 --> 00:11:25.180 the 1890s. 165 00:11:25.180 --> 00:11:31.180 The quiet pietists were now becoming evangelical, and southern Protestant organizations began to call for prohibition. 166 00:11:32.180 --> 00:11:37.180 Then the new, sparsely settled mountain states, many of them with silver mines, were largely pietists. 167 00:11:38.180 --> 00:11:44.180 Moreover, a power vacuum, which would ordinarily have been temporary, had been created in the National Democratic Party. 168 00:11:45.180 --> 00:11:50.180 For Grover Cleveland, a hard-money laissez-faire Democrat was blamed for the Panic of 1893, 169 00:11:50.180 --> 00:11:56.340 and many leading Cleveland Democrats lost their gubernatorial and senatorial posts in the 1894 elections. 170 00:11:56.740 --> 00:12:01.460 The Cleveland Democrats were temporarily weak and the Southern Mountain Coalition was ready to hand. 171 00:12:02.140 --> 00:12:10.780 Seeing this opportunity, William Jennings Bryan and his pietist coalition seized control of the Democratic Party at the momentous convention of 1896. 172 00:12:11.420 --> 00:12:14.580 The Democratic Party was never to be the same again. 173 00:12:15.380 --> 00:12:19.900 The Catholics, Lutherans and laissez-faire Cleveland Democrats were in mortal shock. 174 00:12:20.180 --> 00:12:22.820 The quote, party of our fathers was lost. 175 00:12:23.300 --> 00:12:26.740 The Republicans who had been moderating their stance anyway, saw the 176 00:12:26.740 --> 00:12:28.460 opportunity of a lifetime. 177 00:12:29.300 --> 00:12:33.260 At the Republican convention, representative Henry Cabot Lodge, representing the 178 00:12:33.260 --> 00:12:37.500 Morgans and the pro gold standard Boston financial interests, told McKinley and 179 00:12:37.500 --> 00:12:41.620 Hannah, pledge yourself to the gold standard, the basic Cleveland economic 180 00:12:41.620 --> 00:12:45.780 issue, and drop your silver right and greenback tendencies, and we will all 181 00:12:45.780 --> 00:12:49.780 back you, refuse, and we will support Brian or a third party. 182 00:12:50.180 --> 00:12:56.980 McKinley struck the deal, and from then on, the Republicans, in 19th century terms, were a centrist party. 183 00:12:56.980 --> 00:13:03.380 Their principles were now high tariffs and the gold standard, and prohibition was quietly forgotten. 184 00:13:03.380 --> 00:13:05.580 What would the poor liturgicals do? 185 00:13:05.580 --> 00:13:15.580 Many of them stayed home in droves, and indeed the election of 1896 marks the beginning of the great slide downward in voter turnout rates that continues to the present day. 186 00:13:15.580 --> 00:13:24.580 Some of them, in anguish at the pietist, inflationist, and prohibitionist brianites, actually conquered their anguish and voted Republican for the first time in their lives. 187 00:13:24.580 --> 00:13:29.580 The Republicans, after all, had dropped the hated prohibitionists and adopted gold. 188 00:13:29.580 --> 00:13:34.580 The election of 1896 inaugurated the fourth party system in America. 189 00:13:34.580 --> 00:13:44.580 From the third party system of closely fought, seesawing races between a pious status Republican party versus a liturgical libertarian Democratic party, 190 00:13:44.580 --> 00:14:14.580 A charming anecdote told to us by Richard Jensen sums up much of the 1896 election. 191 00:14:14.580 --> 00:14:18.980 The heavily German city of Milwaukee had been mainly democratic for years. 192 00:14:18.980 --> 00:14:26.280 The German Lutherans and Catholics in America were devoted, in particular, to the gold standard and were bitter enemies of inflation. 193 00:14:26.280 --> 00:14:32.580 The Democratic nomination for Congress in Milwaukee had been obtained by a populist Democrat, Richard Schilling. 194 00:14:32.580 --> 00:14:36.580 Sounding for all the world like modern monetarists or Keynesians, 195 00:14:36.580 --> 00:14:41.380 Schilling tried to explain to the assembled Germans of Milwaukee in a campaign speech 196 00:14:41.380 --> 00:14:47.580 that it didn't really matter what commodity was chosen as money, that gold, silver, copper, 197 00:14:47.580 --> 00:14:52.620 paper, sauerkraut or sausages would do equally well as money. 198 00:14:52.620 --> 00:14:57.180 At that point, the German masses of Milwaukee laughed Schilling off the stage and the shrewdly 199 00:14:57.180 --> 00:15:02.820 opportunistic Republicans adopted as their campaign slogan Schilling and Sauerkraut and 200 00:15:02.820 --> 00:15:04.700 swept Milwaukee. 201 00:15:04.700 --> 00:15:09.140 The Greenbackers and later the pro-silver inflationist Brianite populist party were 202 00:15:09.140 --> 00:15:11.240 not quote agrarian parties. 203 00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:15.480 There were collections of pietists aiming to stamp out personal and political sin. 204 00:15:15.480 --> 00:15:21.320 Thus, as Kleppner points out, quote, The Greenback Party was less an amalgamation of economic 205 00:15:21.320 --> 00:15:25.080 pressure groups than an ad hoc coalition of true believers. 206 00:15:25.080 --> 00:15:30.000 Ideologues who launched their party is a quasi-religious movement that bore the indelible hallmark 207 00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:33.400 of a transfiguring faith, end quote. 208 00:15:33.400 --> 00:15:37.260 The Greenbackers perceived their movement as the quote, religion of the master in motion 209 00:15:37.260 --> 00:15:39.400 among men, end quote. 210 00:15:39.400 --> 00:15:44.300 And the populists described their 1890 free silver contest in Kansas not as a political 211 00:15:44.300 --> 00:15:50.440 campaign but as quote, a religious revival, a crusade, a pentecost of politics in which 212 00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:56.360 a tongue of flame sat upon every man and each spake as the spirit gave him utterance, end 213 00:15:56.360 --> 00:15:57.360 quote. 214 00:15:57.360 --> 00:16:01.800 The people had quote, heard the word and could preach the gospel of populism. 215 00:16:01.800 --> 00:16:07.320 It was no accident we see now that the Greenbackers almost invariably endorsed prohibition, compulsory 216 00:16:07.320 --> 00:16:25.720 The Transformation of 1896 and the death of the third party system meant the end of America's 217 00:16:25.720 --> 00:16:29.560 great laissez-faire, hard-money libertarian party. 218 00:16:29.560 --> 00:16:34.420 The Democratic Party was no longer the party of Jefferson, Jackson and Cleveland. 219 00:16:34.420 --> 00:16:39.120 With no further political embodiment for laissez-faire in existence and with both parties offering 220 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:44.700 quote an echo, not a choice, public interest in politics steadily declined. 221 00:16:44.700 --> 00:16:49.660 A power vacuum was left in American politics for the new corporate statist ideology of 222 00:16:49.660 --> 00:16:54.720 progressivism which swept both parties and created a short-lived progressive party in 223 00:16:54.720 --> 00:16:57.300 America after 1900. 224 00:16:57.300 --> 00:17:03.240 The progressive era of 1900 to 1918 fastened a welfare warfare state on America which has 225 00:17:03.240 --> 00:17:06.440 to set the mold for the rest of the 20th century. 226 00:17:06.440 --> 00:17:11.440 Statism arrived after 1900 not because of inflation or deflation, but because a unique 227 00:17:11.440 --> 00:17:16.360 set of conditions had destroyed the Democrats as a laissez-faire party and left a power 228 00:17:16.360 --> 00:17:21.680 vacuum for the triumph of the new ideology of compulsory cartelization through a partnership 229 00:17:21.680 --> 00:17:27.870 of Big Government, Business, Unions, Technocrats and Intellectuals.