There was no term fiscal conservatism at the time, but in the context of modern American politics, Bourbon Democrats is called "fiscal conservatives" in that it was in the opposite position to "
progressives" or "
radical liberals".[1]
After 1904, the Bourbons faded away. Southerner
Woodrow Wilson made a deal in 1912 with the leading opponent of the Bourbons,
William Jennings Bryan: Bryan endorsed Wilson for the Democratic nomination and Wilson named Bryan Secretary of State. Bourbon Democrats were promoters of a form of laissez-fairecapitalism which included opposition to the high-tariff
protectionism that the
Republicans were then advocating as well as fiscal discipline.[2][3] They represented business interests, generally supporting the goals of banking and railroads, but opposed to subsidies for them and were unwilling to protect them from competition. They opposed
American imperialism and overseas expansion, fought for the
gold standard against
bimetallism, and promoted what they called "hard" and "sound" money. Strong supporters of
states' rights[2] and reform movements such as the
Civil Service Reform and opponents of the corrupt
city bosses, Bourbons led the fight against the
Tweed Ring. The anti-corruption theme earned the votes of many Republican
Mugwumps in 1884.[4]
The term "Bourbon Democrats" was never used by the Bourbon Democrats themselves. It was not the name of any specific or formal group and no one running for office ever ran on a Bourbon Democrat ticket. The term "
Bourbon" – Bourbon whisky is a Southern drink – was mostly used disparagingly by critics complaining of viewpoints they saw as old-fashioned.[5] A number of splinter Democratic parties, such as the
Straight-Out Democratic Party (1872) and the
National Democratic Party (1896), that actually ran candidates, fall under the more general label of Bourbon Democrats.
Factional history
Origins of the term
The nickname "Bourbon Democrat" was first used as a pun, referring to
bourbon whiskey from
Kentucky and even more to the
Bourbon Dynasty of
France, which was overthrown in the
French Revolution, but returned to power in 1815 to rule in a reactionary fashion until its overthrow in the
July Revolution of 1830.[5] A cadet Bourbon branch, the
House of Orléans, then ruled France for 18 years (1830–1848), until it too was overthrown in the
February Revolution. Other branches of the House of Bourbon ruled Spain from 1700 and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and Sicily) from 1759. The latter was overthrown in 1861 when Italian troops under the command of Giuseppe Garibaldi overthrew Francis II, a major advance for the
Italian Risorgimento. Spain's Queen Isabella II was overthrown in 1868 when liberal democrats seized power in the
Glorious Revolution. Isabella's son returned to take the throne as King Alfonso XII six years later. A widely quoted aphorism at the time had it that the Bourbons "have learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing." During Reconstruction, the term "Bourbon" would have had the connotation of a retrogressive, reactionary dynasty out of step with the modern world.
The term was occasionally used in the 1860s and 1870s to refer to conservative Democrats (both North and South) who still held the ideas of
Thomas Jefferson and
Andrew Jackson and in the 1870s to refer to the regimes set up in the South by
Redeemers as a conservative reaction against
Reconstruction.[5]
Gold Democrats and William Jennings Bryan
The electoral system elevated Bourbon Democrat leader
Grover Cleveland to the office of President both in
1884 and in
1892, but the support for the movement declined considerably in the wake of the
Panic of 1893. President Cleveland, a staunch believer in the
gold standard, refused to inflate the money supply with silver, thus alienating the agrarian populist wing of the Democratic Party.[6]
The delegates at the
1896 Democratic National Convention quickly turned against the policies of Cleveland and those advocated by the Bourbon Democrats, favoring
bimetallism as a way out of the depression. Nebraska Congressman
William Jennings Bryan now took the stage as the great opponent of the Bourbon Democrats. Harnessing the energy of an agrarian insurgency with his famous
Cross of Gold speech, Congressman Bryan soon became the Democratic nominee for president in the
1896 election.[6]
Some of the Bourbons sat out the 1896 election or tacitly supported
William McKinley, the
Republican nominee, whereas others set up the
third-party ticket of the
National Democratic Party led by
John M. Palmer, a former Governor of Illinois. These bolters, called "Gold Democrats", mostly returned to the Democratic Party by 1900 or by 1904 at the latest. Bryan demonstrated his hold on the party by winning the 1900 and 1908 Democratic nominations as well. In 1904, a Bourbon,
Alton B. Parker, won the nomination and lost in the presidential race as did Bryan every time.[6]
Decline
The nomination of Alton Parker in 1904 gave a victory of sorts to pro-
gold Democrats, but it was a fleeting one. The old
classical liberal ideals had lost their distinctiveness and appeal. By World War I, the key elder statesman in the movement
John M. Palmer – as well as
Simon Bolivar Buckner,
William F. Vilas and
Edward Atkinson – had died. During the 20th century, classical liberal ideas never influenced a major political party as much as they influenced the Democrats in the early 1890s.[7][page needed]
State histories
West Virginia
West Virginia was formed in 1863 after Unionists from northwestern Virginia establish the
Restored Government of Virginia.[9] It remained in Republican control until the passing of the
Flick Amendment in 1871 returned states rights to West Virginians who had supported the defunct Confederacy.[10] A Democratic push led to a reformatting of the
West Virginia State Constitution that resulted in more power to the Democratic Party. In 1877,
Henry M. Mathews, as a Bourbon, was elected governor of the state and the Bourbons held onto power in the state until the 1893 election of Republican
George W. Atkinson.
Louisiana
In the spring of 1896, mayor
John Fitzpatrick of
New Orleans, leader of the city's Bourbon Democratic organization, left office after a scandal-ridden administration, his chosen successor badly defeated by reform candidate
Walter C. Flower. However, Fitzpatrick and his associates quickly regrouped, organizing themselves on December 29 into the Choctaw Club, which soon received considerable patronage from Louisiana governor and Fitzpatrick ally Murphy Foster. Fitzpatrick, a power at the 1898 Louisiana Constitutional Convention, was instrumental in exempting immigrants from the new educational and property requirements designed to disenfranchise blacks. In 1899, he managed the successful mayoral campaign of Bourbon candidate
Paul Capdevielle.[11]
Mississippi
Mississippi in 1877–1902 was politically controlled by the conservative whites, called "Bourbons" by their critics. The Bourbons represented the planters, landowners and merchants and used coercion and cash to control enough black votes to control the Democratic Party conventions and thus state government.[12] Elected to the House of Representatives in 1885 and serving until 1901, Mississippi Democrat
Thomas C. Catchings participated in the politics of both presidential terms of Grover Cleveland, particularly the free silver controversy and the agrarian discontent that culminated in populism. As a "gold bug" supporter of sound money, he found himself defending Cleveland from attacks of silverite Mississippians over the 1893 repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act and other of Cleveland's actions unpopular in the South. Caught in the middle between his loyalty to Cleveland and the Southern Democrat silverites, Catchings continued as a sound money legislative leader for the minority in Congress while hoping that Mississippi Democrats would return to the conservative philosophical doctrines of the original Bourbon Democrats in the South.[13]
^
abAlexandra Kindell; Elizabeth S. Demers Ph.D., eds. (2014). Encyclopedia of Populism in America: A Historical Encyclopedia [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. p. 86. Bourbon Democrats were a combination of several constituencies including southerners, political and fiscal conservatives, and classical liberals.
^
abThomas E. Vass (2006). Reclaiming The American Democratic Impulse. GABBY Press.
^Morton Keller (2007). Americas Three Regimes: A New Political History.
Oxford University Press.
^Horace Samuel Merrill, Bourbon Leader: Grover Cleveland and the Democratic Party. Boston: Little, Brown, 1957, pp. 18, 45, 83, 92, 151, 202.
^
abcHans Sperber and Travis Trittschuh. American Political Terms: An Historical Dictionary. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962.
^
abcH. Wayne Morgan, From Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics, 1877–1896, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University, 1969; pp. 449–459.
^Horace Samuel Merrill, Bourbon Democracy of the Middle West, 1865–1896, Baton Rouge LA: Louisiana State University, 1953; p. –.
^"Henry Mason Mathews". Addkison-Simmons, D. (2010). e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Retrieved December 11, 2012.
^Edward F. Haas, "John Fitzpatrick and Political Continuity in New Orleans, 1896–1899", Louisiana History, vol. 22, no. 1 (1981), pp. 7–29.
^Willie D. Halsell, "The Bourbon Period in Mississippi Politics, 1875–1890", Journal of Southern History, vol. 11, no. 4 (November 1945), pp. 519–537.
^Leonard Schlup, "Bourbon Democrat: Thomas C. Catchings and the Repudiation of Silver Monometallism", Journal of Mississippi History, vol. 57, no. 3 (1995) pp. 207–223.