The Democratic Party dies after the ACW

Let's say the Copperheads are more active in 1863-1864 as it looks somewhat worse than OTL. However, the CSA makes some big mistakes Aug 1864 and the whole war reverses. The Republicans win even bigger than OTL. Lincoln AND Johnson are shot in TTL and reconstruction is harsher. The Democrats get decimated in the elections and there is no Democratic Party worth speaking of when reconstruction finally ends. What party do you think will take the Democrats place? What policies are they likely to have? Assume that do to them their having no connection to the ACW they want to be competitive both in the north and the south.
 
I tend to think any party that replaces the Democrats in this period would basically be democrats with a different label. They'll probably use a lot of the same infrastructure because they'd likely have similar interests as long as the Republicans remain as they were.

What are their big issues here? Republican alliance with big business (farmer v. business) and free silver?
 

Dorozhand

Banned
I could see a Populist Party analogue replacing the Democrats. The Republicans represent the northern cities and industrial interests, so the *Populists would come up representing the small-town agricultural interests. The Populists might be a bit weaker at this than the OTL Dems, but they might still win Congress sometimes and might even get the White House on occasion. With this weaker Republican opposition you might get a better showing with the Socialists, who might come up strong once in a while.
 
I tend to think any party that replaces the Democrats in this period would basically be democrats with a different label. They'll probably use a lot of the same infrastructure because they'd likely have similar interests as long as the Republicans remain as they were.

What are their big issues here? Republican alliance with big business (farmer v. business) and free silver?

I think with less ties to the South there may be some significant changes. I think you might have a stronger populist movement. Maybe the Populists become the second party?

Here are my planks for the second party

1) Strongly regulated railroads
2) A cap on interest rates
3) More land sold by the Federal government to farmers
4) Lower tariffs on industrial goods and higher ones on farm goods
5) Income taxes

Anything else?
 
It's much easier to have the Democrats die with a POD before the Civil War than after it. Your proposed POD doesn't really work because OTL the "Copperhead" association strengthened the Democrats' core coalition, between immigrants and Southerners.
 
There are still going to be a lot of racist white Southerners in the aftermath of the Civil War. You will still probably have some sort of "Redeemer" movement; no Andrew Johnson may yield a stronger Reconstruction, but the underlying motives are there and the North will eventually get tired of enforcing equal suffrage. So eventually the Redeemers will win and implement something akin to Jim Crow, locking up the South.

That yields a good number of states and congressional seats that are going to be up for grabs if the Democrats are gone, and will likely be hostile to Republicans for decades, as OTL. The Solid South is just too obvious a powerbase for some rising party not to sell out to it at some point.

You might have a period of multiple parties competing to be the 2nd party (just like the various third parties in the 1850s) but it will eventually solidify into something that looks much like the OTL Democrats, in the same way that the early Republicans looked a lot like the anti-slavery wing of the Whigs.
 
At that time the Democratic party was the more conservative, smaller government, states rights party. So when the Gilded age turns the GOP pro busines and conservative what does the south do? Seems a little early for the South to jump on the GOP band wagon like they started to do in the 1960's over race reasons. Yet I can't see to many southerns becoming liberals. So is it like the 1920's two conservative parties?
 
It's much easier to have the Democrats die with a POD before the Civil War than after it. Your proposed POD doesn't really work because OTL the "Copperhead" association strengthened the Democrats' core coalition, between immigrants and Southerners.


The Copperhead movement might have strengthened it in the short run but weakened it up North in the long run. In this one even more so as they look like traitors (even War Democrats are having a hard time dodging this taint.). The South is under harsher Reconstruction and for a longer time. By the time Reconstruction is over the Democratic Party is dead. Between the end of the old Democratic party's demise and the end of Reconstruction a new one arises.
 
There are still going to be a lot of racist white Southerners in the aftermath of the Civil War. You will still probably have some sort of "Redeemer" movement; no Andrew Johnson may yield a stronger Reconstruction, but the underlying motives are there and the North will eventually get tired of enforcing equal suffrage. So eventually the Redeemers will win and implement something akin to Jim Crow, locking up the South.

That yields a good number of states and congressional seats that are going to be up for grabs if the Democrats are gone, and will likely be hostile to Republicans for decades, as OTL. The Solid South is just too obvious a powerbase for some rising party not to sell out to it at some point.

You might have a period of multiple parties competing to be the 2nd party (just like the various third parties in the 1850s) but it will eventually solidify into something that looks much like the OTL Democrats, in the same way that the early Republicans looked a lot like the anti-slavery wing of the Whigs.

My platform does appeal to Southerners and Westerners. Its rural angle tilts to the South and West. Also it is likely to be more racist than the Republican Party because of it. It isn't like this platform calls for equal rights for Blacks. I DO think that if the Democrats die there would be some changes between the Democratic one of OTL and the one of TTL.
 
The Copperhead movement might have strengthened it in the short run but weakened it up North in the long run. In this one even more so as they look like traitors (even War Democrats are having a hard time dodging this taint.). The South is under harsher Reconstruction and for a longer time. By the time Reconstruction is over the Democratic Party is dead. Between the end of the old Democratic party's demise and the end of Reconstruction a new one arises.

On the contrary, it hurt the Democrats in the short term and helped them (or at least, as I said, strengthened the core coalition) in the long term, since the party positions during the war firmly and permanently established the GOP as being anti-immigrant and anti-Southern, the former of which at least was not necessarily a fait accompli (the latter might have been possible to overcome with a better-managed Reconstruction).
 
On the contrary, it hurt the Democrats in the short term and helped them (or at least, as I said, strengthened the core coalition) in the long term, since the party positions during the war firmly and permanently established the GOP as being anti-immigrant and anti-Southern, the former of which at least was not necessarily a fait accompli (the latter might have been possible to overcome with a better-managed Reconstruction).

Anti-Southern yes, anti-immigrant no. The Republican Party didn't pass a whole host of anti-immigrant legislation during the war. The big factory owners wanted more immigrants to keep wages down. The military wanted immigrant recruits. In TTL the Copperhead taint of treason is stronger than in OTL. I think it is not ASB that it could kill it dead before Reconstruction ends, particularly since Reconstruction lasts longer.
 
Anti-Southern yes, anti-immigrant no. The Republican Party didn't pass a whole host of anti-immigrant legislation during the war. The big factory owners wanted more immigrants to keep wages down. In TTL the Copperhead taint of treason is stronger than in OTL. I think it is not ASB that it could kill it dead before Reconstruction ends, particularly since Reconstruction lasts longer.

The draft was extremely anti-immigrant in practice, the GOP essentially used it as a tool to literally kill off the opposition. The supposedly "random" draft was enforced at four times the rate in heavily-immigrant, Catholic, and Democratic New York City as it was in heavily-WASP and Republican Massachusetts. There were cases where as soon as a boat from Ireland docked in New York harbor all of the men were taken at gunpoint and drafted into the army. What's more, immigrants were almost entirely assigned to the front lines and other positions with near-100% casualty rates. And, of course, there was the fact that wealthier draftees (generally WASP Republican-voters) could avoid being drafted first by paying a fee that very few recent immigrants could afford, and later by hiring a replacement to fight for them (usually a poor immigrant). In so doing, the GOP entirely delegitimized themselves, if the Know-Nothing connection wasn't enough, with immigrants for two generations, and this is also why nearly all "Copperheads" north of the Mason-Dixon line and southern Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana were immigrants or from heavily-immigrant areas.
 
Anti-Southern yes, anti-immigrant no. The Republican Party didn't pass a whole host of anti-immigrant legislation during the war. The big factory owners wanted more immigrants to keep wages down. The military wanted immigrant recruits. In TTL the Copperhead taint of treason is stronger than in OTL. I think it is not ASB that it could kill it dead before Reconstruction ends, particularly since Reconstruction lasts longer.
There was definitely more than a whiff of anti-immigrant (or at least anti-Catholic) rhetoric among the early Republicans; several had Know-Nothing pedigrees. Admittedly, others (such as Lincoln and Seward) didn't, but it laid the basis for distrust among many of the immigrant populations. And the Democrats had been the party of Catholic immigrants since before the Civil War. There's a reason the Irish made up a large segment of the Draft Rioters, and later part of the basis for urban machine politics.

But regardless, as soon as Reconstruction ends (and it will end someday), the Solid South is going to come into being, and will likely become in many ways the tail that wags the dog for whichever anti-Republican party it happens to side with. If nothing else, they will come to dominate the Congressional wing of the party, as Southern Senators and Representatives in safe seats serve for decades, accumulating seniority much as OTL.

Remember that a second party doesn't have to be particularly successful on the presidential level; exactly 2 Democrats won the presidency between Buchanan and FDR, but they still remained a powerful force on the Congressional and local government levels.
 
There was definitely more than a whiff of anti-immigrant (or at least anti-Catholic) rhetoric among the early Republicans; several had Know-Nothing pedigrees. Admittedly, others (such as Lincoln and Seward) didn't, but it laid the basis for distrust among many of the immigrant populations. And the Democrats had been the party of Catholic immigrants since before the Civil War. There's a reason the Irish made up a large segment of the Draft Rioters, and later part of the basis for urban machine politics.

But regardless, as soon as Reconstruction ends (and it will end someday), the Solid South is going to come into being, and will likely become in many ways the tail that wags the dog for whichever anti-Republican party it happens to side with. If nothing else, they will come to dominate the Congressional wing of the party, as Southern Senators and Representatives in safe seats serve for decades, accumulating seniority much as OTL.

Remember that a second party doesn't have to be particularly successful on the presidential level; exactly 2 Democrats won the presidency between Buchanan and FDR, but they still remained a powerful force on the Congressional and local government levels.

Oh, there probably will be a Solid South. That isn't what I was looking for. I just think the new party would be different in some ways than OTL Democratic Party. I think it would be more Populist and might be similar to what the Democratic Party would be like if William Jennings Bryant would have won the presidency once.
 
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