How do Confederate political parties (realistically) develop post-Davis?

Something I've pondered about for a while: how does politics in the South change after survival of the Civil War? As I see it, most politicians at the time were essentially independents under a Democratic label, overall falling into the loose categorization of "Pro-Davis/Anti-Davis". It's likely to say that after the Civil War and the presidential election of 1867 approaches, a more definitive line between partisan opponents would force some type of political organization to take place.

'Course, it's not simple to see what the outcome is of such system. Do we see a two party system, or a majoritarian party dominate? Are the parties set by class, ideology, support of Davis, or a mixture of everything? What are the issues that set both parties apart? Who is likely to be prominent post-Civil War in these parties?
 

TFSmith121

Banned
As always, how do the rebels "win"?

Something I've pondered about for a while: how does politics in the South change after survival of the Civil War? As I see it, most politicians at the time were essentially independents under a Democratic label, overall falling into the loose categorization of "Pro-Davis/Anti-Davis". It's likely to say that after the Civil War and the presidential election of 1867 approaches, a more definitive line between partisan opponents would force some type of political organization to take place.

'Course, it's not simple to see what the outcome is of such system. Do we see a two party system, or a majoritarian party dominate? Are the parties set by class, ideology, support of Davis, or a mixture of everything? What are the issues that set both parties apart? Who is likely to be prominent post-Civil War in these parties?


As always, given all else as historical up to Davis' election as president of the CSA in February, 1861, how do the rebels manage a "win"?

Without explaining that, and the geographic area held by the rebels, trying to consider how a party system might evolve is, literally, throwing darts in the dark.

Best,
 
As always, given all else as historical up to Davis' election as president of the CSA in February, 1861, how do the rebels manage a "win"?

Without explaining that, and the geographic area held by the rebels, trying to consider how a party system might evolve is, literally, throwing darts in the dark.

Best,

Let's assume they have all of their claimed territory save Kentucky and West Virginia (and other such territories). Let's also assume they could have won the American Civil War.

If so, I think at first the Democrats would have a virtual monopoly over Confederate politics (Confederate Democratic Party?) and then as the economy falls into disarray and they are militarily defeated by the United States in a number of wars, ex-Southern Whigs will begin to emerge as a political body. Ultimately, a Democratic-Whig system will emerge.
 
Probably a pro states rights, agrarian based party, latter day Jeffersonians of sorts
and a more nationalist (more, but by all means still strongly in favour of states rights), pro modernisaiton, pro industrialisation party. Both would be fundamentally conservative
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Hoping for a response from the OP, actually...

Let's assume they have all of their claimed territory save Kentucky and West Virginia (and other such territories). Let's also assume they could have won the American Civil War.

If so, I think at first the Democrats would have a virtual monopoly over Confederate politics (Confederate Democratic Party?) and then as the economy falls into disarray and they are militarily defeated by the United States in a number of wars, ex-Southern Whigs will begin to emerge as a political body. Ultimately, a Democratic-Whig system will emerge.

Hoping for a response from the OP, actually.

Party politics reflect economic issues, generally; the obvious divides on economic lines in the antebellum south were export-focused cash crop planters who required slave-based plantation agriculture to gain and maintain wealth vis a vis small farmers and the nascent manufacturers and townsmen, along with the obvious divide between those were were free and enslaved laborers.

One of the many problems with the rebels' war effort is it truly was a rich man's war but a poor man's fight, and those poor men fighting such tend to a) vote with their feet and desert, or b) if their side "wins," they tend to demand commensurate political power, which is why those want to posit a "winning" rebellion (because of the cool uniforms, apparently) but ignore the demographic, economic, geographic, political, diplomatic, and military realities that doomed the rebellion tend to handwave past all that...;)

So there's not a lot of stability, even within the "white" male voting population, given the realities. About the only political party that could arise outside of the planter aristocracy would be one centered on veterans, which leads pretty quickly to a coup and military rule, with - ironically - some southron version of Cromwell.

Firing squads all around.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch, but the obvious inference in any polity where power grows from the barrel of a gun, is how could the rebels beat the undeniable power differential that (historically) was made evident in the course of the war - in the first place?

Best,
 
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