DBWI: Conservative South, Progressive Northeast

Today the Deep South south of the 36-30 line is the second-most progressive region of the United States whereas the Northeast is one of the most conservative.

How could the reverse be true?

While folks usually look for commonalities in the region as a whole, I think it might actually be wiser to look at things state-by-state.

South Carolina's Red Shirt insurgency came quite close to succeeding and installing white-only government in South Carolina, but it ultimately was put down historically resulting in SC remaining the most racially progressive state in the country and Charleston becoming the cultural capital of Black America.

The shifting of the Mississippi River's mouth to the Atchafalaya basin resulted in the emergence of a massive new urban-sprawl from Lafayette to Baton Rouge and resulted in much immigration. The later construction of the

The emergence of Birmingham as America's steel capital and the associated industries that emerged in Mobile, Montgomery, and Chatanooga shifted the politics of Alabama and Tennessee progressive.

The fusion governments of North Carolina resulted in progressive governance and dominance in that state.


Meanwhile with the exception of Moderate Massachusetts, the northeast is the most politically conservative region of the United States. If steel were centered in Pittsburgh instead of Alabama I could perhaps see that state being more progressive. Maybe if the capital hadn't been relocated following the civil war the emerging political sprawl could have transformed Virginia and Maryland the way it did historically in the surrounding western states.

New Jersey, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire are just so very rural though. It's hard to see them becoming progressive without affecting that.
 
OOC: In the early twentieth century, there was a lot of progressivism in the South on non-racial issues, while the Northeast did tend to be conservative.

"'It was the prevailing Progressive theory,' recalled Bull Mooser Donald Richberg four decades later, 'that the Democratic Party could not be permanently progressive because of what we regarded as the ultra conservatism of the South.' This view of the Democrats' stronghold region as a reactionary weight on the party lasted far longer than did the Progressives. The reality was almost the exact opposite: because of its strong Populist legacy, extensive Bryanism, and limited corporate presence, the South provided not only votes but a persistent reform pressure for the national party. But, for the Progressive Era Democrats, the South was still a poisoned legacy. Its racism, recently hardened and embedded into law, scarred the entire party's credibility among many northern reformers, hampered efforts by northern Democrats to attract the emerging urban black vote, and provided a ready stick with which both regular and insurgent Republicans could beat their partisan opponents. Early on, observers noticed one particularly embarrassing aspect about southern Democratic reformism: 'It is a curious and regrettable thing,' noted the Democratic reform magazine The Public in 1907, 'that the politicians of the South who are progressive on economic issues are reactionary on the race question'...

"Even more than the Midwest, the South was a raw-materials exporter heavily dependent upon capital and corporations from outside. This situation made it not only the most strongly Populist region but also sent it ardently into battle behind Bryan in his crusades against the money power. Besides shaping the South's presidential choices, the region's Bryanism also produced senators and representatives who supported the party platform's call for business regulation and labor protection and backed Roosevelt's limited steps in those directions.

"It also produced, in the first decade of the twentieth century, a wave of economic reform legislation in southern state legislatures, and southern Democratic machines as well as insurgencies could claim progressive achievements. The American Federation of Labor, although able to claim only limited membership in most of the southern states, still carried influence in the region's legislatures and found considerable support for its positions among southern congressmen and senators in Washington.

"Southern legislatures played vital roles in ratifying the constitutional amendments providing for an income tax and direct election of senator. Eight of the first nine states to approve the income tax amendment were southern and border states, followed shortly by four more. Direct election of senators was accepted equally easily, since all southern states already had binding Senate primaries of their own in effect..."

David Sarasohn, The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era, pp. 17-18.
 
Last edited:

Thomas1195

Banned
OOC: In the early twentieth century, there was a lot of progressivism in the South on non-racial issues, while the Northeast did tend to be conservative.
OOC: kinda true regarding economic issues, many politicians of the South could be considered "Christian Democratic" minus the race issue.

We should notice that liberalism at that time was pro-business than anything else, and urbanized areas were kind of that back then, especially when socialism was weaker in the US.
 
Last edited:
Top