Solid South
The Solid South was the electoral voting bloc for the Democratic Party in the Southern United States between the end of the Reconstruction era in 1877 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the aftermath of the Compromise of 1877 and the failure of the Lodge Bill of 1890, Southern Democrats disenfranchised nearly all blacks in all the former states of the Confederate States of America during the late 19th century and the early 20th century.
During this period, the Democratic Party controlled southern state legislatures and most local, state and federal officeholders in the South were Democrats. This resulted in a one-party system, in which a candidate's victory in Democratic primary elections was tantamount to election to the office itself. White primaries were another means that the Democrats used to consolidate their political power, excluding blacks from voting.
The "Solid South" included all 11 former Confederate states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. It also included to a lesser extent Kentucky and Oklahoma, which remained electorally competitive during the Jim Crow era. The Border states of Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia were rarely identified with the Solid South after the 1896 United States presidential election, while Missouri became a bellwether state after the 1904 United States presidential election. The Solid South only began to fall after World War II, and ended in the 1960s as a result of the Civil rights movement.
The Solid South can also refer to the result of the "Southern strategy" employed by the Republican Party since the 1960s to increase their power in the South. Republicans have been the dominant party in most political offices within the South since 2010. The main exception to this trend has been the state of Virginia.
Background
At the start of the American Civil War, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states. Slavery was also legal in the District of Columbia until 1862. Eleven of these slave states seceded from the United States to form the Confederacy: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina.The southern slave states that stayed in the Union were Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky, and they were referred to as border states. Kentucky and Missouri both had dual competing Confederate governments, the Confederate government of Kentucky and the Confederate government of Missouri. The Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky and the southern portion of Missouri early in the war but largely lost control in both states after 1862. West Virginia, created in 1863 from Unionist and Confederate counties of Virginia, was represented in both Union and Confederate legislatures, and was the only border state to have civilian voting in the 1863 Confederate States House of Representatives elections.
By the time the Emancipation Proclamation was made in 1863, Tennessee was already under Union control. Accordingly, the Proclamation applied only to the 10 remaining Confederate states. Some of the border states abolished slavery before the end of the Civil War—Maryland in 1864, Missouri in 1865, one of the Confederate states, Tennessee in 1865, West Virginia in 1865, and the District of Columbia in 1862. However, slavery persisted in Delaware, Kentucky, and 10 of the 11 former Confederate states, until the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery throughout the United States on December 18, 1865.
Democratic dominance of the South originated in the struggle of white Southerners during and after Reconstruction to reestablish white supremacy and disenfranchise black people. The federal government of the United States under the Republican Party had defeated the Confederacy, abolished slavery, and enfranchised black people. In several states, Black voters were a majority or close to it. Republicans supported by black people controlled state governments in these states. Thus the Democratic Party became the vehicle for the white supremacist Redeemers. The Ku Klux Klan, as well as other insurgent paramilitary groups such as the White League and Red Shirts from 1874, acted as "the military arm of the Democratic party" to disrupt Republican organizing, and to engage in voter intimidation and voter suppresion of black voters.
Redemption
The end of Reconstruction and the creation of the Solid South was caused by the Southern Democratic Redeemers, and enabled by some Republicans. Joseph P. Bradley was a Supreme Court associate justice from 1870 to 1892, and was a Republican appointed by Republican president Ulysses S. Grant. Bradley was a key enabler of the creation of the Solid South, both as a judge and in his tie-breaking role in the 15-member Electoral Commission that decided the disputed 1876 presidential election.The 1872 Louisiana gubernatorial election was won by Republican William Pitt Kellogg. The Colfax massacre occurred on April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana. An estimated 62–153 Black men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three White men also died during the confrontation. In 1874, the Battle of Liberty Place occurred in which the White League attempted to overthrow Kellogg's Republican government in New Orleans, Louisiana, which was suppressed by federal troops sent by Republican president Ulysses S. Grant.
It was due to Bradley's intervention that prisoners charged in the Colfax Massacre of 1873 were freed, after he happened to attend their trial and ruled that the federal law they were charged under was unconstitutional. This resulted in the federal government's bringing the case on appeal to the Supreme Court as United States v. Cruikshank. The court's ruling was that because the massacre was not a state action, the federal government would not intervene on paramilitary and group attacks on individuals. It essentially opened the door to heightened paramilitary activity in the South that forced Republicans from office, suppressed black voting, and opened the way for white Democratic takeover of state legislatures.
The Mississippi Plan of 1874–1875 was developed by white Southern Democrats to reverse Republican strength in Mississippi, particularly to remove Republican governor Adelbert Ames. White paramilitary organizations such as the Red Shirts arose to serve as "the military arm of the Democratic Party." The first step was to persuade scalawags to vote with the Democratic party, with outright attacks and political pressure convincing many scalawags to switch parties or flee the state. The second step of the Mississippi Plan was intimidation of African American voters, with the Red Shirts often using violence, including whippings and murders, and intimidation at the polls. The Red Shirts were joined in the violence by white paramilitary groups known as "rifle clubs," who frequently provoked riots at Republican rallies, shooting down dozens of blacks in the ensuing conflicts. Ultimately, Adelbert Ames was unable to organize a state militia and signed a peace treaty with Democratic leaders. In return for disarming the few militia units he had assembled, they promised to guarantee a full, free, fair election, a promise they did not keep.
In November 1875, Democrats terrorized a large part of the Republican vote into staying home, driving voters from the polls with shotguns and cannons, and gaining firm control of both houses of the Mississippi legislature. The state legislature, convening in 1876, drew up articles of impeachment against Ames. Rather than face an impeachment trial, Ames's lawyers made a deal: once the legislature had dropped all charges, he would resign his office, which occurred on March 29, 1876.
Compromise of 1877
Republican Daniel Henry Chamberlain was born in Massachusetts and had served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army with the 5th Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Cavalry, a regiment of Black troops. Chamberlain was elected Governor of South Carolina in 1874 and sought re-election in 1876. Both Republicans, Bradley and Chamberlain, played crucial roles on opposing sides of the creation of the Solid South. Bradley gave Republican Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency in the 1876 presidential election, which in turn caused Chamberlain to lose the South Carolina governorship as part of the Compromise of 1877.In the aftermath of the Panic of 1873, poor economic conditions caused voters to turn against the Republican Party. In the 1874 congressional elections, the Democratic Party assumed control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since the Civil War. Public opinion in the North began to steer away from Reconstruction. With the depression, ambitious railroad building programs crashed across the South, leaving most Southern states deep in debt and burdened with heavy taxes. Most Southern states fell to Democratic control in the South, as the Republican Party lost electoral power in the South.
Democrat Samuel J. Tilden was elected governor of New York in 1874, and had supported the Union during the American Civil War. Republican Rutherford B. Hayes had served in the Union army as an officer, served in Congress from 1865 to 1867, and served as governor of Ohio from 1868 to 1872 and 1876 to 1877 before his swearing-in as president. The 1876 presidential election was extremely controversial, as Hayes lost the popular vote to Tilden 47.9%–50.9%, but ultimately won the Electoral College 185-184. Hayes won three former Confederate states, all by extremely narrow margins: South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana. Yet all three states were concurrently won by Democratic gubernatorial nominees by narrow margins as well.
The concurrent 1876 South Carolina gubernatorial election in particular was extremely close, and rife with violence and likely electoral fraud. Chamberlain ran against Democrat Wade Hampton III, who was a Lieutenant General in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia during the Civil War, and a leader of the Redeemers. Hampton's campaign for governor was marked by extensive violence by the Red Shirts, who intimidated and suppressed Black voters in the state in the same way as the Mississippi Plan of 1874–1875. Immediately after the 1876 South Carolina gubernatorial results were announced, both the Republican and Democratic parties accused each other of fraud. Hampton received 92,261 votes to Chamberlain's 91,127, that is 50.3% to 49.7%. However, the State Board of Canvassers, which was composed of five Republicans, declared that the elections in Edgefield County and Laurens County were so tainted by fraud that their results would be excluded from the final tally. This changed the Republican tally from a 1,134-vote loss to a 3,145-vote victory.
To summarize, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was ultimately elected president by winning the Electoral College 185-184, despite losing the popular vote 47.9-50.9%. The tipping-point state was South Carolina, which Hayes had won 91,786 to 90,897, for South Carolina's 7 electoral votes. And Democrat Wade Hampton III was elected governor of South Carolina, on the same ballot, 92,261 to 91,127. This was in a state whose elections had been conducted in an atmosphere of widespread violence and fraud, and led to the disputed government of South Carolina of 1876–77. In 2001, Ronald F. King used modern statistical techniques on the election returns and concluded: "Application of social science methodology to the gubernatorial election of 1876 in South Carolina confirms charges of fraud raised by Republicans at the time of the election.... was the product of massive voter fraud and intimidation of black voters."
From December 1876 to April 1877, the Republican and Democratic parties in South Carolina each claimed to be the legitimate government, declaring that they controlled the governorship and state legislature. Each government debated and passed laws, raised militias, collected taxes, and conducted other business as if the other did not exist. And not only were the presidential and gubernatorial elections in South Carolina disputed, but they were also disputed in Louisiana and Florida, causing similar dual government disputes in those two states. In Louisiana, Democrat Francis T. Nicholls had defeated Stephen B. Packard 84,487 to 76,477 in the 1876 Louisiana gubernatorial election, yet Republican Rutherford B. Hayes had defeated Democrat Samuel J. Tilden in Louisiana 75,315 to 70,508 on the same ballot. And in Florida, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes had defeated Democrat Samuel J. Tilden 23,849 to 22,927, yet on the same ballot Democrat George F. Drew defeated Republican Marcellus L. Stearns 24,613 to 24,116 in the 1876 Florida gubernatorial election. Most importantly, the 1876 presidential election was also disputed with Tilden having 184 electoral votes, Hayes having 165 electoral votes, and the 20 disputed electoral votes all needing to go to Hayes to give him a majority of 185 out of 369 electoral votes.
To resolve the 1876 presidential election, an "Electoral Commission" was created, consisting of fifteen members: five representatives selected by the House, five senators selected by the Senate, four Supreme Court justices named in the law, and a fifth Supreme Court justice selected by the other four. Originally, it was planned that the commission would consist of seven Democrats and seven Republicans, with an independent as the fifteenth member of the commission. According to historian Roy Morris Jr., "no one, perhaps not even Davis himself, knew which presidential candidate he preferred." Just as the Electoral Commission Bill was passing Congress, Davis was elected to the Senate by Democrats in the Illinois legislature, who believed that they had purchased Davis' support for Tilden, but this was a miscalculation: Davis promptly excused himself from the commission and resigned as a Justice in order to take his Senate seat. Because of this, Davis was unable to assume the spot, always intended for him, as one of the Supreme Court's members of the Commission. His replacement on the Commission was Republican Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley, resulting in an 8–7 majority for Republicans, which in turn awarded Hayes the 20 disputed electoral votes on party-line votes, and thus Hayes had won the presidency by an electoral vote of 185–184 despite losing the popular vote 47.9% to 50.9%.
Hayes was peacefully sworn in as president privately on Saturday, March 3, 1877 and publicly on Monday March 5, 1877. On March 31, Hampton and Chamberlain met with President Hayes to discuss the situation in South Carolina. On April 3, Hayes ordered the withdrawal of federal troops from South Carolina, which they did on April 10. Chamberlain, realizing that he could not continue in his role without the support of federal troops, resigned on April 11, 1877. Embittered, Chamberlain blamed the President for having betrayed the mass of South Carolina's voters; the state's population was 58% African American. After conceding the governorship to Hampton, Chamberlain stated, "If a majority of people in a State are unable by physical force to maintain their rights, they must be left to political servitude." After Chamberlain's concession, Hampton was declared the sole governor of South Carolina. Chamberlain left the state and moved to New York City, and became a successful Wall Street attorney. South Carolina would not elect another Republican governor until 1974, 100 years after Chamberlain was elected in 1874. Hampton was later elected to the U.S. Senate by the South Carolina legislature for two terms, from 1879 to 1891.
This series of events is referred to as the Compromise of 1877, a corrupt bargain by which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president despite losing the popular vote while Southern Democrats were given state-level power in the former Confederate states despite having committed violence and electoral fraud against African Americans. The loser of the Compromise of 1877 were African Americans, as Republicans allowed Southern Democrats to create hegemony in the former Confederate states, depriving African Americans of the protection of federal troops and the ability to elect Republican candidates in statewide and congressional races. Republicans never won a single Deep South state again until they won Louisiana in 1956, and Republican Barry Goldwater won all the Deep South states in 1964. This was despite the fact that African Americans constituted a majority or near-majority of the populations of the Deep South states, at least until the Great Migration.