![]() Today, a small but influential cadre of Republican elected officials, strategists and policy experts faces a similar choice. Placing the sanctity of the nation above the narrow bonds of party, these Democrats joined in common cause with former Whig antagonists in the epic struggle to save the United States from its own darker instincts. It had fallen so deeply in the thrall of the Slave Power that it posed an existential threat to American democracy. Yet they came over the course of a decade to believe that the Jacksonian Democratic Party had degenerated into something thoroughly autocratic and corrupt. So it was hard-and bitterly so-for hundreds of thousands of Northern Democrats to abandon the political organization that had long formed the backbone of their civic identity. And when I did, at last, feel compelled to separate from my old Democratic friends, it was like tearing myself away from old home associations.”Īs often seems the case today, American politics in the 1850s were nearly all-consuming and stubbornly tribal. Many things did I condemn ere I left that party, for my love of party was strong. “Faithfully, I did adhere to that party until I could no longer act with it. Follow him was educated a Democrat from my boyhood,” a Republican delegate confided to his colleagues at Iowa’s constitutional convention in 1857. Joshua Zeitz, a Politico Magazine contributing editor, is the author of Building the Great Society: Inside Lyndon Johnson's White House.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |