NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOUTH
Charles P. Roland, General Editor
The Life & Death of the
SOLID SOUTH
A POLITICAL HISTORY
DEWEY W. GRANTHAM
Copyright 1988 by The University Press of Kentucky
Paperback edition 1992
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grantham, Dewey W.
The life and death of the Solid South : a political history / Dewey W. Grantham
p. cm. (New perspectives on the South)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8131-0308-8; 0-8131-0813-6
1. Southern StatesPolitics and government18651950. 2. Southern StatesPolitics and government1951 I. Title. II. Series.
F215.G737 1988
320.975dc1988-50
ISBN 978-0-8131-0813-1
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
| Member of the Association of
American University Presses |
Contents
Editors Preface
Southern politics in the twentieth century, as during the entire course of southern history, was both national and regional in its purposes and means. But so visible were its regional manifestations during the first half of the century, so thoroughly were they stamped upon its national political presence, that V.O. Key in 1949 would accuse the South of employing the Democratic party as an instrument for the conduct of [its] foreign relations with the rest of the nation. One might also have said that the South used the United States Congress, in large part, as an assembly for accomplishing its regional diplomatic goals. Southern politics operated to preserve traditional southern prejudices and interests; its fundamental party characteristics were Democratic solidarity and white exclusivity.
During the past three decades, immense changes have occurred in southern party politics, including the disappearance of Democratic solidarity and white exclusivity. The excellent study offered here by Dewey W. Grantham, the preeminent historian of recent southern politics, tells why and how these changes came about. The books title comprises its theme: the life and death of the Solid South. Yet the author concludes that many of the Solid Souths essential elements and much of the political culture in which it flourished are still significant determinants of southern politics; that, ironically, these very elements and this very culture played an important role in the death as well as the life of the Solid South.
This book is indispensable for inclusion in New Perspectives on the South, a series designed to give a fresh and comprehensive view of the regions history. Each volume is expected to be a discrete essay representing both a synthesis of the best scholarship on its subject and an interpretive analysis drawn from the authors own research and reflections. Eight volumes are now in print; an additional twelve or more are anticipated to complete the set.
Charles P. Roland
To: Charles F. Delzell
J. Leiper Freeman
V. Jacque Voegeli
Preface
Southern politics, like racial segregation and one-crop agriculture, was one of those peculiar institutions that differentiated the South from other American regions. This southern systemlong referred to as the Solid Southembodied a distinctive regional culture and was perpetuated through an undemocratic distribution of power and a structure based on disfranchisement, malapportioned legislatures, and one-party politics. It was the mechanism that determined who would govern in the states and localities, and it was the means through which the Souths politicians defended their regions special interests and political autonomy in national politics. This was the Democratic South. In its broad outlines, the history of this remarkable institution can be traced in the gradual rise, long persistence, and ultimate decline of Democratic dominance in the land below the Potomac and the Ohio.
Interpreters have sometimes exaggerated the monolithic character of southern politics and its divergence from political currents in other parts of the country. But the Souths political sectionalism was exceptional. There is nothing else quite comparable in the nations political history. The strength and durability of the Solid South resulted in good part from three circumstances: the Souths poverty, its depressed economy, and the influence of its plantation-oriented elites; the federal system and the changing shape of national politics; and the potency of the regions political culture. The one-party system had, in V.O. Keys words, an odd dual personality. In state politics the Democratic party was no party at all but a multiplicity of factions struggling for office. In national politics, on the other hand, the party was the Solid South, the instrument for the conduct of the foreign relations of the South with the rest of the nation.
Three fairly distinct periods mark the evolution of the Solid South. The first, lasting roughly from Reconstruction to the turn of the nineteenth century, represented the formative stage in the development of a one-party system in the southern states. The second, comprising the first half of the twentieth century, witnessed the operation of the system in the full panoply of its dominance. This was the classic era of the Solid South, which is defined in this study to include the eleven ex-Confederate states plus Kentucky and Oklahoma. The third period, beginning with the Dixiecrat revolt of 1948, brought the disruption of the Solid South, the gradual decline of the one-party system, and the transformation of southern politics. It is now possible to speak with some confidence of the two-party South.
Southern Democrats succeeded for almost three-quarters of a century after Reconstruction in defending their peculiar sectional interests in national politics. The federal nature of political parties in the United States facilitated this endeavor, and the skillful use of congressional power provided a means of warding off threats from the outside while simultaneously enlarging financial assistance from Washington. According to one political scientist, the South influenced American politics in ways not dissimilar to the influence of Quebec in Canada or of Ireland in the United Kingdom in the years from 1870 to 1922. The massive influence of that deviant subculture upon national party politics and policy outputs has scarcely run its course a century after Appomattox.
