Dyed-In-The-Wool History
Voting Patterns in the late 1800’s
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As author Paul Kleepner defined in historically significant work “Cross of Cultures”, ethnic and religious differences in people of European descent were all important in 19th century politics which would seem at least surprising to anyone looking at this era solely from 21st century historical paradigms. In the North, Midwest, and West Liturgical voters would vote almost entirely Democratic while Northern Evangelicals would vote entirely Republican. Liturgical voters in this context are defined as Catholics, Conservative Lutherans who were largely Germanic with the Missouri Synod being the predominant grouping, some conservative Calvinists, and conservative Presbyterians (1 pp. 65-75). Of these, Catholics were far larger than the other groups combined. Scandinavian Lutherans who started to arrive en masse in the 1890’s and settled principally in Minnesota and the Dakotas were less consistent and some accepted the activist position held by Northern Protestants. The table below shows ethno-religious voting patterns from the latter half of the 1800’s
Kleppner’s data is significantly more granular that the religious summary data from the census and is consistent across the time period up until the party realignment during the populist era. Some of the groups like Scandinavian Lutherans came in large numbers after 1890. While latecomers are included, it should be noted that they weren’t relevant initially. Looking only at ethnicity, these clear relationships would have been entirely missed while looking only at general religious classifications they could be seen but not clearly. Quoting from Kleppner’s Cross of Cultures:
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“That data suggests an explanative hypothesis. Despite the religious heterogeneity of the social groups supporting each of the major parties, it is possible to abstract an important central tendency. Those religious groups offering strong support to the Republican Party were more pietistic, or evangelical, in their orientation than those offering similar support to the Democratic… Such a proposition brings perspectives in shaping party loyalties. Historians have paid but scant attention to that role. They have attempted to explain the structure of partisan affiliations without considering their relationship to other structures within the social system.” (1 p. 71)
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Elections in this time period weren’t won by attracting swing voters because there generally weren’t any. They were won by increasing the size of the demographic block and then getting them to turn out to vote. Voter participation was high by modern standards. Because of the heavy immigration of Catholics from Germany, Ireland, and now Italy and Southern Europe, along with a smaller but steady growth of Germanic Lutherans (conservative Missouri Synod in particular), the Democrats were winning the demographic race. White Southern Evangelicals were solidly Democratic while the Black Southern vote was split but the region was a whole was solidly Democrat and not seriously contested.
The opposition to Republican policies of governmental activism based on progressive Protestantism went well beyond simple opposition to prohibition and were surprisingly sophisticated. Policies advocated by Northern Evangelicals and people of this background who were populating the west sought to create a Protestant nation and gradually convert the heathen Catholics focusing first on their children. Republican foreign policy also continued to be aggressively anti-Catholic although loyalties of Catholic Americans were more cultural and religious than national in part because the European mainland nation states were just fully forming at this time and the Irish in particular had no loyalty to Great Britain for rather clear historical reasons already addressed. The laissze faire policies of the Democrats didn’t specifically benefit Liturgicals but they left them alone and allowed them to maintain their schools and social structure including some level of healthcare and private charity.
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In modern political discourse monetary policy isn’t discussed much relative to a host of other topics and monetary policies are one of several topics what haven’t changed much in recent history regardless of what party is in power. In this time period however, monetary policy was a major topic of political debate and it correlated closely to religious alignment and was also a topic that appears to have been consistently addressed by churches. Liturgicals were strongly aligned with “sound money” and the gold standard. Liturgicals generally were engaged in economic activity that didn’t benefit greatly from cheap credit and were adversely affected by currency devaluation. Sound money policy, however, also limited the pietest ability to expand governmental reach to implement their political objectives. This issue did create a division in the Democratic Party which was soon to be very important. (2 p. 183)
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Political parties can be highly ideological but, over an extended period of time, they tend to act strategically like a business evaluating its markets and will make adjustments to prevent being overcome by demographics. The Republican Party was demographically constrained by its base while the Democratic Party had competing forces and interests and both of these situations were largely associated with religious voting patterns and the changing nature of protestant Christianity in particular creating a situation that was set for a major shift.
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Bibliography
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1. Kleppner, Paul. The Cross of Cultures A social Analysis of Midwestern Politics 1850-1900. New York, New York : The Free Press, 1970.
2. Rothbard, Murray. The Progressive Era. Auburn Alabama : Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2017.