Southern Democrats - American Civil War and Post-Reconstruction

American Civil War and Post-Reconstruction

After the election of Abraham Lincoln, Southern Democrats led the charge to secede from the Union and form the Confederate States of America. The Congress was dominated by Republicans, save for Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, the only senator from a state in rebellion to reject secession. The Border States of Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri were torn by political turmoil. Kentucky and Missouri were both governed by pro-secessionist Southern Democratic Governors who vehemently rejected Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops. Kentucky and Missouri both held secession conventions and seceded while under Federal occupation. Southern Democrats in Maryland faced a Unionist Governor Thomas Holliday Hicks and the Union Army. Armed with the suspension of habeas corpus and Union troops, Governor Hicks was able to stop Maryland's secession movement. Maryland was the only state south of the Mason-Dixon Line whose governor affirmed Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops.

After secession, many Northern Democrats fled the party to join the Republicans. When the war was over, and the Confederacy destroyed, a deep resentment among white Southern citizens toward Republicans helped propel the Democratic Party to a majority in Congress by the 1870s and bring an end to Reconstruction. The Democrats were now the party of states rights, the party of the South, and would remain that way until the mid-1960s. Their dominance in Southern politics would give rise to the phrase the "Solid South".

At the beginning of the 20th century the Democrats, led by the dominant Southern wing, had the majority in both houses of Congress. In 1912 incumbent Republican William Howard Taft was defeated in an electoral landslide, losing to Woodrow Wilson, a Democratic Governor of New Jersey (though he was from Virginia). And from 1912 through 1918, the three branches of government were controlled by the Democratic Party. However when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, and with isolationism running high, the Republicans ran the 1918 elections on a platform that rejected the internationalist sentiment favored by Wilson. (See U.S. House election, 1918 and U.S. Senate election, 1918.) The Democrats lost the Congress, and in 1920, Warren Harding was elected president in a landslide, which was widely viewed as a repudiation of Wilson's policies.

From 1918 until 1932, the Democrats were relegated to second place status in politics, controlling no branch of the government. However, with the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Republicans lost the Congress in 1930 and the White House in 1932 by huge margins. By this time, however, the Democratic Party leadership began to change its tone somewhat. With the Great Depression gripping the nation, and with the lives of most Americans disrupted, the assisting of African-Americans in American society was seen as necessary by the new government.