How the Party of the Confederacy Became the Party of Civil Rights

The Democratic Party formed while George Washington was still president. If you saw Hamilton, you know that Initially the Democratic Party was called the Democratic Republicans. If you saw Hamilton, you also know Hamilton’s party was the liberal Federalist Party, and Jefferson’s party was the slave-owning Democratic Republican Party.

What you don’t know from the musical because it ends after Hamilton dies, is that after Hamilton died, his federalist party imploded. Historians give various reasons for this, but in a nutshell, the slave-owners during this era acquired so much wealth and power that a second party was unable to compete. It is often said that the Federalists “overreached” or were “elite,” but saying these things is simply repeating the accusations given by the Democratic Party, the opposing party that emerged victorious.

By the time of the Civil War, the name of the Democratic Republican Party had been shortened to the Democratic Party.

During the Civil War, the Democratic Party was the pro-slavery party of the Confederacy and agricultural America.

The Democrats wanted a limited federal government because they knew the North, if given the chance, would end slavery.

So Democrats vetoed federal funds for canals and highways and other infrastructure because they understood such infrastructure would strengthen the industrial north.

In 1855 the Republican Party, called the “Freedom Party,” was born as an anti-slavery, pro-industry, pro-federal government party. Its anti-slavery stance made it pro-labor and pro-Civil Rights.

After the Civil War and the crushing defeat of the South, the Republicans had the power to pass pro-industry legislation including the building of infrastructure. Republicans, by the way, gave us our first income tax. As a result of the building of infrastructure, the industrial revolution boomed. Now the nation’s wealthiest and most powerful people were no longer plantation owners. Now they were railroad and business tycoons.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Republican Party split  into two factions: The conservative pro-industry part and liberal civil rights part. By the 1920s, the pro-industry part took control. The Republicans dropped racial equality and labor issues from its platform and became the party of business.

Democratic Party base at the time consisted of Southern whites, agricultural America, and also factory workers.

Neither party championed racial equality.

This ushered in a long period of relative harmony between the parties—they respected each other’s “differences” because they weren’t that different. Both parties were basically ruled by white men.

President Harding (a Republican) in the 1920s deregulated business and repealed taxes. Money flowed into the pockets of business tycoons. Unregulated banks freely lent too much money. It was the age of business.

Because the Republican Party was now the party of laissez-faire economics and industry, it entirely dropped its pro-labor stance. 

Meanwhile, laborers worked long hours in dangerous jobs at poverty wages.

Then, in 1929, it all came crashing down. First the market crashed and then came the Great Depression.

Enter, stage left, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his pro-labor New Deal. Among other things, the New Deal, which added lots of alphebet-soup agencies, expanded the size and power of the federal government.

Roosevelt drew blacks into the Democratic coalition, because they liked his pro-labor stance.

The Republicans, who, after the Civil War, wanted a strong federal government, now pushed back against FDR’s expansion of the federal government through the New Deal. A cynic might say that corporations had the infrastructure they needed, so now it was in their best interest to reduce the federal government so that they would have fewer regulations to contend with.

As they saw it, government regulations were constraining innovation and taxes were unfairly taking their profits.

Meanwhile, as a result of the hard work of the NAACP during the 1940s and 1950s, by the 1960s, the Democratic Party embraced Civil Rights. Democratic President Kennedy proposed a sweeping civil rights bill in June 1963, but he was assassinated before it could be passed. After his assassination. Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed two monumental pieces of civil and voting rights legislation: the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Civil Rights movement empowered the federal government. The United Statues Supreme Court in 1954 ordered the states to desegragate, and it was left to the federal government to enforce the ruling. Similarly, the federal government was tasked with enforcing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Libertarians, who don’t want any government regulations, the White supremacists, and the party of business found themselves with a common goal: Dismantle the federal government. For some, the ideal is to return to  the 1920s, the age of business. Others want to go back even farther.

White Evangelicals, who used to be mostly Democratic, had their own reasons for opposing strong federal government. They believe that problem solving should be left to the church. Their understanding of the “establishment clause” freedom of religion is that the “establishment clause” prevents the federal government from imposing a religion, but doesn’t restrict states or local governments from enacting whatever religious laws they see fit. 

Nixon and Reagan actively lured White Southerners and rural Democrats to the Republican Party.  Nixon talked about being “tough on crime” (which was code for putting Black men in jail). Reagan talked about “welfare queens,” cynically playing into ugly stereotypes of Black women.

The divide is no longer north v. south. Today, the divide is urban v. rural.

And here we are. The party of the Confederacy is now the Party of Civil Rights.

For more (and my sources), see the notes and bibliographies of my Making of America series.