Bourbon Democrat
Bourbon Democrats | |
---|---|
Elections There was no term fiscal conservatism at the time, but in the context of modern American politics, Bourbon Democrats is called "fiscal conservatives" in that it was in the opposite position to "progressives" or "radical liberals".[1] |
Bourbon Democrat was a term used in the
After 1904, the Bourbons faded away. Southerner
The term "Bourbon Democrats" was never used by the Bourbon Democrats themselves. It was not the name of any specific or formal group and no one running for office ever ran on a Bourbon Democrat ticket. The term "
Factional history
Origins of the term
The nickname "Bourbon Democrat" was first used as a pun, referring to bourbon whiskey from Kentucky and even more to the Bourbon Dynasty of France, which was overthrown in the French Revolution, but returned to power in 1815 to rule in a reactionary fashion until its overthrow in the July Revolution of 1830.[5] A cadet Bourbon branch, the House of Orléans, then ruled France for 18 years (1830–1848), until it too was overthrown in the February Revolution. Other branches of the House of Bourbon ruled Spain from 1700 and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily) from 1759. The latter was overthrown in 1861 when Italian troops under the command of Giuseppe Garibaldi overthrew Francis II, a major advance for the Italian Risorgimento. Spain's Queen Isabella II was overthrown in 1868 when liberal democrats seized power in the Glorious Revolution. Isabella's son returned to take the throne as King Alfonso XII six years later. A widely quoted aphorism at the time had it that the Bourbons "have learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing." During Reconstruction, the term "Bourbon" would have had the connotation of a retrogressive, reactionary dynasty out of step with the modern world.
The term was occasionally used in the 1860s and 1870s to refer to conservative Democrats (both North and South) who still held the ideas of
Gold Democrats and William Jennings Bryan
The electoral system elevated Bourbon Democrat leader
The delegates at the 1896 Democratic National Convention quickly turned against the policies of Cleveland and those advocated by the Bourbon Democrats, favoring bimetallism as a way out of the depression. Nebraska Congressman William Jennings Bryan now took the stage as the great opponent of the Bourbon Democrats. Harnessing the energy of an agrarian insurgency with his famous Cross of Gold speech, Congressman Bryan soon became the Democratic nominee for president in the 1896 election.[6]
Some of the Bourbons sat out the 1896 election or tacitly supported
Decline
The nomination of Alton Parker in 1904 gave a victory of sorts to pro-
State histories
West Virginia
West Virginia was formed in 1863 after Unionists from northwestern Virginia establish the
Louisiana
In the spring of 1896, mayor
Mississippi
Mississippi in 1877–1902 was politically controlled by the conservative whites, called "Bourbons" by their critics. The Bourbons represented the planters, landowners and merchants and used coercion and cash to control enough black votes to control the Democratic Party conventions and thus state government.[12] Elected to the House of Representatives in 1885 and serving until 1901, Mississippi Democrat Thomas C. Catchings participated in the politics of both presidential terms of Grover Cleveland, particularly the free silver controversy and the agrarian discontent that culminated in populism. As a "gold bug" supporter of sound money, he found himself defending Cleveland from attacks of silverite Mississippians over the 1893 repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and other of Cleveland's actions unpopular in the South. Caught in the middle between his loyalty to Cleveland and the Southern Democrat silverites, Catchings continued as a sound money legislative leader for the minority in Congress while hoping that Mississippi Democrats would return to the conservative philosophical doctrines of the original Bourbon Democrats in the South.[13]
Prominent Bourbon Democrats
See also
- Blue Dog Coalition
- Classical liberalism
- Conservative Democrat
- History of the United States Democratic Party
- Libertarian Democrat
- Southern Democrats
Footnotes
- ^ a b Alexandra Kindell; Elizabeth S. Demers Ph.D., eds. (2014). Encyclopedia of Populism in America: A Historical Encyclopedia [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. p. 86.
Bourbon Democrats were a combination of several constituencies including southerners, political and fiscal conservatives, and classical liberals.
- ^ a b Thomas E. Vass (2006). Reclaiming The American Democratic Impulse. GABBY Press.
- ^ Morton Keller (2007). Americas Three Regimes: A New Political History. Oxford University Press.
- ^ Horace Samuel Merrill, Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party. Boston: Little, Brown, 1957, pp. 18, 45, 83, 92, 151, 202.
- ^ a b c Hans Sperber and Travis Trittschuh. American Political Terms: An Historical Dictionary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962.
- ^ a b c H. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University, 1969; pp. 449–459.
- ^ Horace Samuel Merrill, Bourbon Democracy of the Middle West, 1865–1896, Baton Rouge LA: Louisiana State University, 1953; p. –.
- ^ "Henry Mason Mathews". Addkison-Simmons, D. (2010). e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 11, 2012.
- ^ "Virginia: The Restored Government of Virginia – History of the New State of Things". The New York Times. June 26, 1864.
- ^ "Declaration of the People of Virginia". wvculture.org.
- ^ Edward F. Haas, "John Fitzpatrick and Political Continuity in New Orleans, 1896–1899", Louisiana History, vol. 22, no. 1 (1981), pp. 7–29.
- ^ Willie D. Halsell, "The Bourbon Period in Mississippi Politics, 1875–1890", Journal of Southern History, vol. 11, no. 4 (November 1945), pp. 519–537.
- ^ Leonard Schlup, "Bourbon Democrat: Thomas C. Catchings and the Repudiation of Silver Monometallism", Journal of Mississippi History, vol. 57, no. 3 (1995) pp. 207–223.
- ^ "Lieutenant General Wade Hampton III, C.S.A. (1818–1902)", This Week in the Civil War, January 27, 2012.
- ^ Leonard Schlup, "Isham Green Harris", Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, 2009. Retrieved 5 October 2012.
- John M. Cooper (November 3, 2009). Woodrow Wilson. Random House. p. 720.
Further reading
- David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, "Gold Democrats and the Decline of Classical Liberalism, 1896–1900", Independent Review 4 (Spring 2000), 555–575.
- Allen J. Going, Bourbon Democracy in Alabama, 1874–1890, Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1951.
- Roger L. Hart, Redeemers, Bourbons and Populists: Tennessee, 1870–1896, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1975.
- Allan Nevins. Grover Cleveland A study in courage (1938).
- C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877–1913, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1951.
- William Ivy Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest: Louisiana Politics, 1877-1900, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1969.
Primary sources
- Allan Nevins (ed.), The Letters of Grover Cleveland, 1850–1908, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1933.
- William L. Wilson, The Cabinet Diary of William L. Wilson, 1896–1897, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1957.
- Democratic Party National Committee. Campaign Text-book of the National Democratic Party (1896). This was the campaign textbook of the Gold Democrats and is filled with speeches and arguments.
- Encyclopedia of Alabama, "Alabama Bourbons" Archived October 30, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.