Why did the Democrats support slavery and oppose civil rights for almost 200 years?

Question

Democrats politically supported slavery before the civil war and supported segregation after the civil war. Democrats opposed civil rights legislation until the late 1960's when a small minority joined with Republicans to support the civil rights amendment.

Currently the Democratic party uses the same arguments against the Iraq war that they used against the Civil war, both wars that resulted in the relief of the oppression of people of color.

The first black Senator and Congressperson were elected from the Republican party.

Why?

Anyone who thinks the civil war was not about slavery should read Georgia's letter of Secession.

From that letter:

"The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state."

The south left the union because the anti-slavery party had come to power.

Oh, and you should also take the time to read about the "draft riots" in New York City where Democrats ran through the city lynching blacks because they didn't want to fight to free them.

I guess "dixiecrats" must have lived in New York then.

If you read the arguments used by Democrats against the Civil War you will find they are exactly the same as the arguments used by the Democrats against the Iraq war. Both "Illegal" wars.

I am not living in the past, the past is repeating itself.

Apparently some people believe that living under a dictator, watching friends and relatives being tortured and murdered is less oppressive than living in a democracy where people die everyday from violence.

I think people in LA and New York and every other major city in the United States where violence kills people on a daily basis might disagree with you.

Answer 1

They still have the slave Voting Farms in the ghetto. They do all they can to keep them there.

Answer 2

This is an interesting question: the point is, because a party shares its name (and, by a torturous process, its descent) from a party founded some 200 years before, is it the same party? It's the old question about the axe: if, over time, you replace both the handle and the blade, is it really the same axe?

The Democratic Party has its origins in Jeffersonian Democracy, representing the interests of small landholders, and advocating strong federal government and a loose interpretation of the Constitution. During the slavery era, however, Democrats tended to champion the right of states to determine their position. My own view would be that the difference between Democratic and Repuublican positions as we recognise them today really emerged in the 1920s, when Republicans championed big-business, and the 1930s with the introduction of Roosevelt's New Deal. As you observe, though, there was very little interest in civil rights from either party during this time (and although Roosevelt made some gestures in that direction, the strong Democratic support among southern whites meant that there was little motive for this party to raise the question). Indeed, it was largely the championing of black civil rights by the Democratic Party in the 1960s that caused it to lose the South, a region it has never since recovered. It is true that the GOP had a 'left wing' for a time - which was much closer to the Democrats in the late 50s and early 60s - but it was doomed by the nomination of Goldwater, and the Republican left has really never made a comeback.

Your comparison between the reasons why Democrats supported the Confederacy in the Civil War (strong support among plantation owners, affirmation of the rights of states, etc.) and Democratic opposition to the War in Iraq is simply fatuous: a better comparison would be between attitudes to Vietnam and Iraq between the two main parties. Incidentally, Democrats have by no means been isolationist in their history (they are the party that gave the world Woodrow Wilson, the ineffectual angel of evangelical democracy) and Roosevelt (no dove he). The long period of American isolationism in the 1920s was championed by Republicans Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover.

You do your country's history a disservice when you distort it in starkly partisan terms. Both US political parties have long and chequered histories, but they deserve better than the bastardisation of it you offer. And, incidentally, I'm not an American: I have no vested interest in either party, and I cordially dislike both of them.

Answer 3

The Democrats go with the majority a lot of the time. You cannot really say that the Iraq war resulted in the relief of people of color because it is not over yet and the country is basically in a state of civil war. The situation could deteriorate even farther and a new dictator might emerge and oppress the people. Also, it is not people of color in Iraq it is different religions Sunni vs Shite not black vs white. as I said democrats go with the majority most of the time. I am not even sure where you found some of this information. It does not sound completely right. Oh and it is not ALL of the democrats it is the majority.

Answer 4

That's easy. Those people who called themselves Democrats, as in Jacksonian Democrats were the rural, slave state, pro war, pro western expansion anti abolition party who became Republicans
sometime between FDR and the Civil Rights movement.
Remember most of the Klan activities in Texas were supported by Democrats. Those Democrats are not the Democrats of today. Nice try, sir.

The Republicans that supported the Freed Man's Bureau, citizenship for freed slaves, Reconstruction and represented the liberal, ( formally WHIG ) north are today's Democrats.

Don't forget, the Southern states that chose to succeed, were primarily Democratic party strongholds as well as places where the Know Nothing nativists were powerful as well ..

These party labels are not describing the same political parties.
I may as well call Republicans, Tories, or if we applied the logic of the English Civil War, I could call today's Republicans the " Lobster Tails or Cavaliers " of the 1640s.

Those Democrats you refer to were under educated, substance farmers for the most part.
It makes no sense to throw these terms about as they applied to American Politics 170 years ago.

Answer 5

The Democrats you speak of all became Republicans after Eisenhower and Kennedy enforced equal rights on the south. So your point is meaningless as you are actually speaking about conservative Republicans from the south, not today's Democrats.

Answer 6

Because in the early years the Republican party was the liberal party and the Democrats who supported slavery and opposed civil rights were from the South. These former Dixicrats are now Republicans. The war in Iraq is not about liberating people of color, it is about oil.

Answer 7

The real question is, why with all this history do a majority of Black Americans still drink the kool-aid.
All Americas black population has done is to trade on Slavery for another. Instead of chains and shakles their new bondage is Welfare and as the President so eloquently put it "The soft Biggotry of Low Expectations."
Those Black Americans who rise above the past to be a self sufficient and productive citizen of today find themselves with the realization of their true liberators.

Answer 8

Bush admitted that while physical slavery is dead, the legacy is alive. 'My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over,' Bush said.
'The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation.'

That sounds like progress, except for one thing. It might be novel for American presidents to go on political safari to Africa to condemn slavery. But they are not the first to say slavery was bad.

This is not merely from the usual suspects of Cliff Notes history, like Lincoln's emancipation and Jefferson's laments of slavery even as he allegedly made a baby with one. John Adams said, '***** slavery is an evil of colossal magnitude.' The slave owner James Monroe still called the international slave trade 'abominable.' John Quincy Adams in 1820 called slavery 'the great and foul stain upon the North American union.'

Even though he was a slave-owning president, James Madison called slavery an 'evil' and a 'dreadful calamity.' After he signed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, President Millard Fillmore said, 'God knows that I detest slavery, but it is an existing evil, for which we are not responsible, and we must endure it.'

James Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln as president, said
31 years before he took office that slavery was 'a great political and a great moral evil.' He added, 'It is, however, one of those moral evils, from which it is impossible for us to escape, without the introduction of evils infinitely greater. There are portions of this Union in which, if you emancipate your slaves, they will become masters.' As president, he realized too late that his denial did not stop the infinitely greater 'evil' of disunion.

A century and a half later, presidents are still calling slavery evil, but we endure the legacy partially because presidents do not hold Americans responsible for fully understanding it.

Answer 9

Because the Democratic Party used to include the northern (liberal) faction and the southern (conservative) faction.

It was the southern (conservative faction) that did all those things you mentioned. They are all now republicans.

Answer 10

Who cares?

My brother used to rough me up when we were kids but is now my biggest supporter.

You are living in the past & are posting silly, disingenuous & divisive posts. Be a true American & try to bring people together instead of trying to tear them apart.

Answer 11

oh yes, we all know how much the south loves lincoln and his memory.

perhaps you could refresh my memory and direct me to where i can find those statues to lincoln anywhere in the south...