RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION: Religion and the Populist Revolution

5. "Pure Democracy and White Supremacy": The Democratic Party and the Farmers' Alliance

5. “Pure Democracy and White Supremacy”: The Democratic Party and the Farmers’ Alliance The Populist revolt among white farmers was a protest against the state’s Democratic Party; for blacks, it was against the Republican Party. As an instance of political fratricide,the Populist drama played itself out against the backdrop of thirty years of geographical, social, religious, and cultural tensions that became politicized in 1892.As it entered the political fray, the white Alliance joined with urban reformers who comprised the reform or“progressive ” wing of the state Democratic Party in order to enact its legislative agenda. But that partnership was tenuous. After an open break between the Alliance and the non-Alliance members of the reform wing over the 1890 senatorial campaign of Zebulon Vance, the path was set for open schism in 1892 as Alliancefolk remained loyal to their principles while“straight-out”or nonAlliance Democrats remained loyal to white supremacy and the party unity necessary to ensure it. * * * During the antebellum period, North Carolina politics played out along an east/west political divide with Whigs in the mountains and in the Piedmont (many of whom became antisecessionists) vying for power with eastern planters who, along with Piedmont Jacksonians, supported the Democrats. After the Civil War, the Republican Party built a coalition based on this prewar divide by linking blacks in the east with white antisecessionists in the mountains and Quaker Belt. Added to this Republican coalition were some Piedmont manufacturers and a few white Jacksonians in counties like Davidson who resented the way ex-Whigs had gained control of the postwar Democratic Party. With this coalition, and with the help of Reconstruction 050 s3c5 (93-121) 2/7/06 9:19 AM Page 103 limits on white voting, the Republicans held sway in the state through much of the Reconstruction period. While this coalition of manufacturers, eastern blacks, mountain antisecessionists , and old Piedmont Jacksonians made the state’s Republican Party one of the strongest in the South, it nevertheless created interparty strife along axes of race and policy. While blacks in the east saw the party of Lincoln as their only viable option for political freedom, wealthy Republican manufacturers like Washington Duke of the American Tobacco Company were interested primarily in the party’s national probusiness fiscal policies and hoped the state would foster economic growth through similar legislation aimed at attracting business. Old Piedmont Jacksonians and antisecessionist yeomen in the west, however, had little regard for blacks’ rights or probusiness policies; they primarily opposed the Democrats’ ironclad control over local government and election procedures—policies put into place after the Democrats“redeemed”the state in 1876 to keep Republican and black influence to a minimum. Moreover, the presence of blacks in the party, along with the party’s association with Reconstruction, made many whites who might otherwise have favored Republicans’ national or state platforms eschew association with the party. Although this Republican coalition could not mount a statewide majority between the Democratic “redemption” of 1876 and the Populist fusion election of 1894, it was able to keep margins of victory just slim enough throughout this period that North Carolina Democrats necessarily resorted to centralized control and election fraud to maintain their hold on the state. In the end, for whites in the west as well as for blacks in the east, the Republican Party became a party of opposition—opposition especially to the white Democratic east’s political hegemony.1 In order to secure “redemption” from the Reconstruction Republicans in 1876, the Democratic Party also needed to build a coalition that combined different interests and that could woo up-country white farmers and nascent manufacturers and merchants who might favor the Republicans. To do so, the Democratic Party’s strategy was simple and effective: cast the“horrors”of Reconstruction under Republican rule as “black domination” and demand that whites unite in one party to ensure white supremacy. The strategy paid off in 1876, and the Democrats elected Zebulon Vance governor and subsequently maintained political hegemony until 1894. This call for political control by whites gained its power of persuasion by tapping into deeply held, commonsense convictions about the proper relations of blacks to whites. Specifically, most whites could not fathom the idea of standing before a black judge, appealing to a black commissioner, having 104 vox populi, vox dei 050 s3c5 (93-121) 2/7/06 9:19 AM Page 104 their local...