The Road to Redemption, Southern Politics, 1869-1879, An Overview on Michael Perman’s Book

I am rereading Michael Perman’s The Road to Redemption for the second time and taking notes more copiously than when I read it the first time. After a bit, I might even read it a third time to pick up more that I might have missed—or points I failed to give enough thought to originally, and I’m sure I’ll always use it for reference.
 

The book was published in 1984 so it’s over thirty years old and probably familiar to many of you, so please feel free to add comments below. Professor Perman has now been retired a number of years from Chair of the History Department at the University of Illinois, Chicago (UIC), a position he had yet to attain when he wrote this book. He is British, having arrived in the United States for his graduate studies back in the mid-sixties. He earned his masters in history at UIC and his doctorate at the University of Chicago (1969). His area of expertise is Reconstruction and Southern politics and Road to Redemption is a detailed breakdown of both covering the years 1869-1879.

 

What I especially like about the work is the emphasis Professor Perman places on the politics of the Democratic Party, vice the popular narrative to recast the malfeasance and tyranny of Republican rule in the South during this period as a noble failure. (Professor Perman may be unprejudiced, but he’s a proper historian. I’m a Southerner, sure of her roots and neither a proper historian nor unprejudiced). And the book is about politics, after all, not an anachronistic judgment of right and wrong vis-à-vis the new-found (since the 1960s), and patently faux and unfair mainstream depiction of the South’s, having been brought to heel for its great sin of slavery, now giving birth to a new evil, racism, held in place by white terror and the ideology of white supremacy during a Reconstruction Period inserted into the long existing pure democracy framed by our ancestors and practiced by the superior North from the git-go. Yes, that is sarcasm you’re reading.

 

The Republican Party, of course, is addressed in the book; we couldn’t have had Reconstruction without it. In fact, we couldn’t have had...oh, never mind.

Political faction weighs heavy in Road to Redemption. I imagine one of the things that draws a historian interested in political parties to the South during this period is the clear-cut divisions within the parties themselves (Republican, Radical vs Scalawag; Democrat, New Departurist vs Bourbon; and shoot, I guess you might even say the old-line Whigs had loose factions, leaning either toward the unprincipled Republican Party, spawn of Northern Whigs, or leaning to the Democrats who still gave credence to the Constitution and the Republic [this is Charlsie’s analysis of the  Whigs, not Perman’s].

 

Perman applies Austin Ranney’s terms of “competitive” (promise voters anything, seducing as many as you can into supporting you) and “expressive” (believe in something and “don’t you potential voters even think of joining us if you don’t believe in it, too”) found in Ranney’s Curing the Mischiefs of Faction. These are clearly marked, in both Southern parties of the day, and Professor Perman identifies the factions as such and explains the why of the schisms. His study covers the entire South in general (each state had its own quirks) and makes reference to parallel events in the North as they affected the parties in the South (and vice versa).

 

More than anything, Road... is a study of the Democratic Party and its struggle for legitimacy in an altered nation where its own principles burdened its revival. This frustration led to its sometime fusion with the Southern Republicans (Scalawags) in an effort to thwart the Radicals’ quest for power (but not necessarily the Radical agenda) and its dalliance with the New Departure which advocated acceptance of Reconstruction and the amendments to the Constitution [that desecrated federalism and formally ended the Founders’ Republic—the brackets being indicative of me, not Perman]; and the subsequent rise of the Bourbon faction that eschewed fusion and New Departure politics and went on to “redeem” the South, or what was left of it. The book has a rich bibliography and copious notes, which may or may not be appreciated by us prejudiced history lovers. Me, I like them.

 

It is not my purpose here to complete a synopsis of the book; those details I anticipate folding into the narrative of future posts on Reconstruction. This particular post is a reference point, an anchor, so to speak. Professor Perman’s being a Brit among the teachers up in those Yankee educational institutions is an anchor of sorts, too. I’m comfortable with him. His objective is to explain Southern politics, not to judge them. Further, he appears untainted by the mainstream anti-Southern/drunk-on-democracy agenda rewriting “who we are as a nation.” Nor does he come across as pro-Southern. He comes across as a man with an interest in a period (Reconstruction) and a subject (politics) to which he’s devoted a great deal of study and acquired abundant knowledge.

 

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

So, What About Those Mississippi Democrats in 1869?

This post is number forty in a historical series studying Mississippi’s Whig/Republican governor and senator, James Alcorn, following the War Between the States and continues the “saga” resulting from the Democratic victory over the Republican progressive constitution framed during the Black & Tan Convention in the winter/spring of 1868, which resulted in a second election. For earlier posts in this Alcorn-driven series see the sidebar on the right.

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The Democratic Party (which at the time called itself the Democratic-Conservative Party) is credited for the defeat of the progressive constitution and the Republican ticket in the summer of 1868 and rightly so, but here, too, something is missing from the record. James Lusk Alcorn is on record for stating it was the Scalawag J. L. Wofford, ex-Confederate and founder of the Republican Party in Mississippi, who led the charge that defeated both. It’s important for the reader to understand there was a great divide between Southern Republicans (Scalawags/conservatives) and Northern Republicans (Carpetbaggers/Radicals). It wasn’t a pure delineation. There were Northern conservatives as well as Southern Radicals, but generally the line was clear. Yes, they worked together to their mutual benefit, but the Northerners learned early on that they couldn’t trust the Southern wing when it came to telling Southerners how things were gonna be. The Scalawags wanted a Southern party not a Northern one, and only a brief perusal of the history of those dark days tells the story written between the lines. It also probably explains, at least in part, the “encourage immigration” point in the Carpetbag platform. 

Now a lot of this is my opinion, but for sure Wofford managed his victory over the Radicals with lots of Democratic-Conservative help. He teamed up with like-minds (and by like-minds I mean those opposed to the Radicals and the proscription clauses) within the Democratic leadership, which would have included the Bourbons who would have played a critical role in the 1868 victory. Analyzing what happened in 1869, I’m of the opinion it was the Bourbons who got the constituents to the polls in 1868 and defeated the Republican agenda across the board. This “conservative” alliance rocked the Radicals’ world—for a hiccup in time. And how different things might have been in Mississippi and across the entire South in the decades following the war had there been only a Southern Republican Party opposing the old Democrats, a healthy choice between two diametrically opposed philosophies on the role of state government that from election to election could have kept the overall political atmosphere balanced. That was, in fact, what Alcorn originally envisioned and was what Wofford had created, but the spectre of the arrogant, self-righteous Radical invaders from a despised section of the nation and their ancillary corruption in tandem with the willingness of the Scalawags to cooperate, all too often, with them for pragmatic reasons (and yes, self-aggrandizement) proved the fodder that fueled the Bourbon resurgence and leaves me unable to find do-diddily-squat on the likes of J. L. Wofford today. 

No doubt, at least in my mind, these two “conservative” bodies thought they could pull off the same victory the second time around. As stated in my last post, in June of 1869 the Scalawag Party had invited many from that same cabal to its “steering committee” meeting. How many Democrats attended, I do not know, but I surmise the “regular” Democrat leadership was represented—Bourbons probably showed up to get a feel for what was going down, though I’m confident they already knew. 

As of the spring of 1869, the Democratic-Conservative Party saw little hope for forward progress as things stood, but did organize as such. It declared itself in favor of ratifying the progressive constitution with the proscriptive clauses removed. As early as 22 April, ex-governor A.G. Brown (Democrat) wrote a letter to the Jackson Clarion, which was then favorably discussed by leading newspapers throughout the state as well as meetings of conservatives in different parts of the state. In the letter, Brown proposed:

-acceptance of the Fifteenth Amendment

-guarantee of civil and political rights of the freedmen

-no “partisan” opposition to the new president (Grant)
 

-hostility to men who come into the state to make mischief (we’re back to the Carpetbagger’s “immigrants” here)

-good will to all who come to Mississippi in good faith to share in the fortunes of the Southern people 

So, this Conservative-Democratic Party platform had much in common with the Scalawag Party platform, and the two groups soon entered negotiations based on their common opposition to the Radicals and the proscription clauses.  

Ah, but here’s the problem: Even though the “regular” Democratic platform had much in common with the Scalawag platform, the Scalawag platform also had much in common with the Radical platform, minus that “mischievous men” business. Simple deductive reasoning, therefore, concludes that the “regular” Democrat platform had much in common with the Radicals, too. I stated in an earlier post that there was more wrong with that progressive constitution than the proscriptive clauses, and the Mississippi taxpayer was aware of it—his Democratic-Conservative leadership had drummed it into him in the months and final weeks leading up to the election in 1868, if nothing else. And the Fifteenth Amendment was a desecration, as was the Fourteenth, to the Constitution. One year later that same leadership is saying neither really mattered, but getting back into the Union at any price and reentry under present conditions was the best to be hoped for.  

On 7 August 1869, 33 (Democratic) papers across the state endorsed the policy of cooperation with the Scalawags and urged the people to “support” the plan, an appeal echoed on 9 September when the Democratic Party officially announced its intention not to field a ticket, but to support the Scalawag ticket and the progressive constitution with the proscriptive clauses removed. The name agreed upon for the gubernatorial candidate of the conservative Republicans (the coalition, actually) was Lewis Dent, brother-in-law to Ulysses Simpson Grant. Oh my, the beds politicians fall in and out of. “Ain’t” no wonder, is it, that they disgust the people so? 

Unfortunately, there was too much assumption between the Scalawags and the Democratic-Conservatives as to what was and was not acceptable to the Mississippi taxpayer in that Scalawag platform, and my bet is that constitution most certainly was an issue as was the Fifteenth Amendment. That platform was a capitulation to everything they’d fought, suffered, and died opposing between 1861 and 1865. The Conservative-Democratic Party attitude had degenerated to: “Well, boys, we did lose the war.” Not the best expression to make in the face of a proud and stubborn people who never stopped believing they were right and the antics of their occupiers reinforced that conviction every day, and who had, only a year before at those same leaders’ urging, rallied to defeat and expose the forces of tyranny for what they were. Now they were supposed to capitulate? Talk about surrender in the wake of victory! 

The “Bourbons,” the old marginalized Democrats, were waiting in the wings, watching all this. It’s my personal belief they were the force who actually got the rank and file to the polls the year before. One year later, these stubborn leaders have not capitulated to exigency, to the sacrifice of principle in return for representation in a corrupt, tyrannical, and unconstitutional Congress. So on 20 October 1869, the Democrats opposed to the “Dent Movement” held a convention in Canton, Mississippi (Madison County) north of Jackson stating the Democratic Party could not be committed to support either wing of the Republican Party. The statement further said that “this” leadership would not tell people what to do, but the “opposed-to-the-Dent-Movement” faction would remain firm in its devotion to state rights and leave responsibility for the establishment of Republican hegemony in Mississippi to rest where it properly belonged. But, the faction further stated, that in view of the dissention within the Democratic Party itself it would not put forth a candidate in the 1869 election. The Democratic Party, like the Republican, had split. With the Democrats, the split was over principle, or lack of. With the Republicans, who were generally lacking in principle, particularly in regard to the U. S. Constitution and the Founder’s Republic, the split was over which branch would get the spoils. 

Much has been written on the factions within the Republican Party in the South during Reconstruction to the detriment of historical detail on what was happening within the Democratic Party during these years—not just in Mississippi, but across the South. Similar images exist in every Southern state [shoot, perhaps the Northern ones, too, but today, no one seems to care]. With the idealistic deflection by the left on the faux narrative of slavery and “democracy” being “who we are as a nation” it might never be sorted out. Indeed, the perspective is disappearing. Southerners, certainly, should not let that happen.  

What we’re seeing here within the Democratic-Conservative Party is a movement known as the New Departure. As of 1870, it was in vogue across the South and would also come to dominate the Northern  wing of the Democratic Party.

Actually, I think it still dominates the Northern party only now it’s exponentially worse.
 

Kidding aside, it basically advocated acceptance of Reconstruction and the Republican program. I plan to delve into more detail about the Southern Democrats and the internal turmoil caused by the New Departure in my next post.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie