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HISTORY THREAD:
Despite the popular fantasy of America as a flourishing democracy, a handful of scholars have long held that the South – particularly the Deep South – was an aberration.
Bernard Mandel proclaimed that the South was nothing close to a democracy, /1 https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1326005858535354370
Despite the popular fantasy of America as a flourishing democracy, a handful of scholars have long held that the South – particularly the Deep South – was an aberration.
Bernard Mandel proclaimed that the South was nothing close to a democracy, /1 https://twitter.com/ashtonpittman/status/1326005858535354370
....and @ProfMSinha further asserted that “the proslavery, antidemocratic discourse pioneered by Carolinian planter politicians during nullification would form the theoretical foundation of southern nationalism.” /2
As the National Era reported, many southern politicians believed that popular suffrage was the “root of all the mischief” over the question of slavery. “This is a favorite theory with the Slaveholding Caste,” the article continued, as “They dislike popular institutions.” /3
South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler had recently called the ballot-box “Pandora’s box,” a conviction rather common among the master class. /4
“For we are all aware,” the Era concluded, “that by various constitutional contrivances in that State, popular power is greatly restricted, and all but slaveholders are rendered virtually ineligible to a seat in the Legislature or to the office of Governor.” /5
During the few years prior to secession the call for a southern political system other than democracy grew stronger. /6
The southern slave power, of course, had long dominated the federal government. Controlling the presidency, the legislature, and even the judiciary, slaveholders and their allies wielded wildly disproportionate power. /7
As DuBois pointed out, slaveowner aims to protect the peculiar institution directly infringed upon the civil rights of non-slaveholding whites at both federal and state levels. Indeed, the 3/5ths compromise greatly skewed legislative apportionment in the favor of slaveholders/8
DuBois: “It is singular how this ‘three-fifths’ compromise was used, not only to degrade Negroes in theory, but in practice to disenfranchise the white South.” /9
Unequal representation, however, was only a small part of a much larger issue, one encompassing (among other things) property ownership clauses, poll taxes, residency requirements, felon disfranchisement, intimidation, and outright fraud. /10
One anti-slavery newspaper reported that poor southern whites were particularly “degraded” bc they were “deprived of a vote, unless he possesses a certain amount of property, whilst his neighbor, the wealthy planter, often controls an entire county by voting on his slaves.”/11
Certainly many pro-slavery men openly endorsed the tenets of aristocracy and oligarchy, especially on the eve of secession. One planter proudly wrote that “The power in the South is where it ought to be always, in the hands of the men of property and education.”/12
By the 1850s, a growing group of incredibly wealthy men, usually born into slaveholding families of great privilege, were brazenly identifying themselves as aristocrats or oligarchs – they simply did not believe in the benefits of “pure democracy.” /13
Even female planters like Keziah Brevard, who did not have the right to vote herself, prayed that “some thing be done to check this mobocracy…Democracy has brought the South I fear into a sad, sad state.” /14
The fire-eaters of the slave South envisioned something more than just a slave-ridden country modeled on the principles of the United States. They wanted a return to hereditary privilege, caste systems, and rule by the wealthy few. /15
Indeed, James De Bow obstinately declared that property alone was “the basis of sound representation,” since the poor’s right to vote so often “degenerates into licentiousness.” /end
(now off to write another #oped to help #Georgia #flip the #Senate....
(now off to write another #oped to help #Georgia #flip the #Senate....
PS - this is all from my book #MasterlessMen: https://www.amazon.com/Masterless-Men-Antebellum-Cambridge-American/dp/1316635430/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
