WU POLITICAL REVIEW | VIOLENCE
DID THE CONFEDERACY EVER END? Luke Voyles | Photo courtesy of Flickr
O
n July 30, 2017, April Reign posted a message onto Twitter that would reverberate throughout the night. She created
a hashtag called #NoConfederate in response to HBO’s Game of Thrones creators plans to create a show called Confederate where the Confederacy triumphed in the American Civil
War. Overnight, the hashtag became the second most popular on Twitter and forced a defense by HBO of the show. When I heard the news about the protest, I pondered to myself a singular question. Wouldn’t it be more interesting
Wouldn’t it be more interesting to see if and how the Confederacy survived in spite of the Union’s victory?
Though the New York Democrat Grover Cleveland
change in fortune after Grant’s retirement.
1892 and would win the electoral college in 1884
Confederate influence on American politics contin-
spite of the Union’s victory? Admittedly, there is
ued throughout the entirety of Reconstruction. In
no government that rules over a country called
the 1876 election, Rutherford Hayes (Republican)
the Confederate States of America and there has
defeated Samuel Tilden (Democrat) in the elec-
not been such a nation since 1865. However, its
toral vote while losing the popular vote while an
influence on American politics and on American
Electoral Commission (with an eight Republican-
culture continue through various facets even now.
appointed majority out of fifteen) voted based
ernments ruled in the former Confederate states. Even when the federal government allowed the states of the South to participate in Congress, they remained under observation and Virginia, Texas, and Mississippi did not participate in the 1868 presidential election. African-Americans could vote under the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and 1868 and the Force Bills of 1870 and 1871. Law professor and historian Bruce Ackerman pointed out that were African-Americans not allowed to vote in 1868, Horatio Seymour (Democrat) would have carried the popular vote despite the pro-civil rights Ulysses Grant (Republican) burying him in the electoral college. This happened despite Seymour’s vice presidential candidate Francis Blair of Missouri denouncing civil rights for African-Americans and urging full acceptance of the South without any more repercussions. In 1872, the Democrats could not find a candidate to unseat the popular Grant. Therefore, they endorsed the Liberal Republican ticket of Horace Greeley for president and Benjamin Gratz Brown for vice president that arose when Greeley criticized the numerous scandals surrounding Grant’s cabinet. Greeley lost and the Democrats of both the North and the South could only hope for a
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swept the former Confederate states in the closest popular vote margin among the two major candidates in American history. A major reason that Hancock (a Union general) was able to win the South was that white Southerners tended to vote solely Democratic after Hayes compromised with the South to end military Reconstruction.
would win the popular vote in 1884, 1888, and
to explore how the Confederacy has survived in
In 1865, Reconstruction began and military gov-
poll. Both candidates won 19 states and Hancock
on their parties 8-7 to end the election in favor of Hayes when the voting results in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida was too close to call. In 1880, James Garfield (Republican) defeated Winfield Hancock (Democrat) in the electoral college by a vote of 214 for Garfield to 155 for Hancock. However, he won the popular vote in all polls though by wildly different amounts. He won by less than 10,000 votes according to one
and 1892, increasing Republican support in new states in the northern and western United State and the Panic of 1893 during Grover Cleveland’s second term rendered the Fourth Party System from 1897 to 1933 virtually dominated by the Republican Party with the exception of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. Nevertheless, the former Confederate states consolidated their control over both white and especially African-Americans by refusing the right of most African-Americans to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment. There was also a decided split between the South and the Deep South. The Deep South is an admittedly vague term that usually connotes states such as Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. The other states would usually vote for Democrats over the next 80