AHC: Maintain the relevence of "Marching Clubs" in U.S politics until 1900

For those who don't know, marching clubs like the Wide Awakes were paramilitary Lincolnites dressed in black capes and with military caps. Who protected Republican rallies and ran military drills and drills in antebellum America before the 1860 election.

The parallels to the Blackshirt squadristi of Fascist Italy are enough to make me wonder if, out of curiosity they can be kept relevant after the civil war?
 

Towelie

Banned
American society was hyper politicized in the time period of around 1840-1880, with people frequently socially associated with and through a political party in a local area and jobs being lost or won though professed politics. Politics was really the core of social interactions and connections in the period, and as a result, marching clubs became popular in most election cycles in some forms or another.

To keep things at a 1860 level would require constant political tension that threatened the fabric of the Republic constantly.

Militia clubs however existed long after the civil war.

But for marching clubs to reach their 1860 peak, you are going to need political tension that verges on disaster and war to be common in the US all the time.
 
But for marching clubs to reach their 1860 peak, you are going to need political tension that verges on disaster and war to be common in the US all the time.

Not necessarily. A lot of social life was conducted through political clubs. The clubs would parade at election time and on other civic occasions. Also, club members pooled their money for pots of stew or chowder. Thus "Chowder and Marching Society".

However, after 1900, explicit partisan affiliation became increasingly unfashionable, and other social opportunities arose.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
In the Netherlands, there existed so-called 'pillarisation' ('verzuiling') from the late 1800 onward, which only began to disappear after World War II. Society was vertically segregated, and the main political and religious groups within society were explicitly viewed as separate 'pillars' of society. Protestants, catholics, social-democrats etc. all had their own newspapers, radio channels (and later TV channels), trade unions, political parties, schools, insurance companies... even banks, hospitals and universities were often aimed at one 'pillar' in particular. Society, needless to say, was extremely segregated (though in a rather voluntary way, that was explicitly not aimed at placing one group above the others - they were all equal pillars, needed to uphold society as a whole).

A similar system existed in Belgium, and has existed in various other countries.

If such a system were to become the fashion in the USA after the Civil War, one can easily imagine the various highly segregated social groups to also have their own militia forces. These would likely evolve from existing Marching Clubs and similar organisations. In fact, these might in some cases largely replace the police. (The idea being that every community/'pillar' organises its own police to take care of its own people.) I don't think the implementation of such a system is very likely in the USA - largely because it will probably end the two-party system and cause all 'pillars' to establish their own parties - but it might just come up as an ATL solution to relieve social and racial tensions post-Civil War. (The age-old "let's just all stick to our own"-approach.)

Furthermore, a single POD - increased social and racial tension, compared to OTL, in the postbellum period - can justify both the stronger position of the Marching Clubs and increased support for pillarisation (which would serve to keep the Marching Clubs going later on, even after tensions die down).
 
In the Netherlands, there existed so-called 'pillarisation' ('verzuiling') from the late 1800 onward, which only began to disappear after World War II. Society was vertically segregated, and the main political and religious groups within society were explicitly viewed as separate 'pillars' of society. Protestants, catholics, social-democrats etc. all had their own newspapers, radio channels (and later TV channels), trade unions, political parties, schools, insurance companies... even banks, hospitals and universities were often aimed at one 'pillar' in particular. Society, needless to say, was extremely segregated (though in a rather voluntary way, that was explicitly not aimed at placing one group above the others - they were all equal pillars, needed to uphold society as a whole).

A similar system existed in Belgium, and has existed in various other countries.

If such a system were to become the fashion in the USA after the Civil War, one can easily imagine the various highly segregated social groups to also have their own militia forces. These would likely evolve from existing Marching Clubs and similar organisations. In fact, these might in some cases largely replace the police. (The idea being that every community/'pillar' organises its own police to take care of its own people.) I don't think the implementation of such a system is very likely in the USA - largely because it will probably end the two-party system and cause all 'pillars' to establish their own parties - but it might just come up as an ATL solution to relieve social and racial tensions post-Civil War. (The age-old "let's just all stick to our own"-approach.)

Furthermore, a single POD - increased social and racial tension, compared to OTL, in the postbellum period - can justify both the stronger position of the Marching Clubs and increased support for pillarisation (which would serve to keep the Marching Clubs going later on, even after tensions die down).
It's hardly implausible, at least in part. After all, into the 1890s, you had African-American militias in the South, though increasingly marginalized because white Southern militias (parallel to the official militias) tended to violently clash with them. And in many cases, where the official police began and the party machines ended was wafer-thin - remember, we are talking about a country that largely elected the heads of the police force.

What might kill this, though, is civil service reform - once that comes in, it becomes increasingly difficult for local governments (often dominated by one or another party) to appoint supporters to the police force, even if there are ways around it (which happened in Chicago until the 1980s). Basically you need to find some way to marginalize the goo-goos.
 
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