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Part
II: "Fighting It Straight"
.
1890-1892: Two Elections, Opposition and
the “People’s Party”
The 1889 St. Louis Convention, the first true national
convention held by the Farmers Alliance,
can be viewed as a microcosm of the movement. It broadcast
the ambition of revolutionary ideas and galvanized
a multi-million member movement of agrarian producers,
from Colorado and the Dakotas to Florida and Virginia.
In the wake of the convention, even the most grand
of reform concepts seemed possible – this in
an era of unremitting monopoly, when even the most
basic political / economic reforms seemed a remote
interest. And yet beneath the triumphant resolve a
crack had developed. Inside of a decade it would sever
the movement into factions and drain off its power
to check the system that had spawned the revolt. Though
the Nat’l Farmers Alliance had been
officially recognized, it did so without the united
inclusion of the Northern Alliance. From
Ohio to Iowa, many Northern representatives had proven
leery of the radical schemes brought to the St. Louis
podiums by their Southern compatriots. The convention
showcased the optimistic potential of this mass movement
and the widening fissures that would bring its demise
. . . Yet in 1890 there was more than enough cooperative
resolve in the air to mask the nature of these differences;
and under its banners the Populist cause
marched onto the national scene.
>>>
Despite future rifts, the fact that the Populist movement
built up such contradictory alliances at all points
towards its achievements. Perhaps the most remarkable
was that veterans of the Civil War – recent
mortal enemies in a time of continued sectional division
– stood side-by-side (albeit with differences),
as an army of hard-pressed agrarian voters. This alone
gives credence to the desperate claims that the Alliancemen
/ Populists made, that they were willing
to look past deep ideological differences to train
their ire on the perceived enemies in Washington D.C.,
and on Wall Street. Another contradictory trait of
the Populist era is made more glaring when
set aside modern-era perceptions; for it was one of
those rare moments when the radical ends of the right-to-left
spectrum came together. That such radical economic
schemes – which Gilded Age industrialists /
bankers / politicians had labeled socialist
– could find such fervent support among the
naturally conservative, proudly provincial attitudes
of rural 19th century America is a scenario that would
be hard to imagine today in the one-time Alliance
hotbeds of Kansas, Texas, Georgia and North Carolina.
But such is the cyclic nature of American ideological
thought. Patterns and conditions emerge and disappear
only to reemerge. And though history rarely repeats
verbatim, present traits often mimic the past . .
. There has been a number of recent references to
Populism in books, newspapers and news magazines.
Without crossing into editorial commentary, some of
this is due to the reemergence of traits modern observers
say we have seen before: accusations of corporate
influence over political legislatures, federal subsidy
of large agricultural interests to the detriment of
small farmers, “crony-ism,” price-fixing,
overproduction and under-consumption, charges of “monopoly”
and speculative malfeasance, etc. One specific ideological
oddity of late that deserves a second glance is: conservative
Libertarians’ disgust with “government
treading on civil liberties,” aligning in near
perfect union with the equally radical far-left Green
Party on the issue. Any serious pollster would
view a conservative suburban district that’s
likely to lean Libertarian as the last place
the Green Party could count on for electoral
support; yet these same communities are likely to
be rife with demands for government forces to “stay
out of its personal business.” In kind, Libertarians
would find support difficult to drum up in “green”
urban-centric districts of smart-growth advocates;
yet these same pre-suburb communities are often quick
to condemn government officials that “legislate
morality.” They are essentially the same demand.
Yet they bound into the national discourse from opposite
ends of the spectrum. It’s striking in its similarity:
that the Populist leaders’ call for
radical left-leaning reform was so broadly embraced
by an agricultural community that one has to gauge
was naturally cautious and conservative – if
by no other measurement than the remote character
of their lives, this being an era before mass communication
. . . Conditions that result in such odd alliances
only quantify a vested modern-day interest in the
“Populist Moment.” In it lay
definitions of our modern-era sociopolitical / economic
realities, or least enough mimicry to be relevant.
A small farmer’s life in 1890 was a remote solitary
venture. Local lodges, chartered for social or political
purposes, were often the only form of camaraderie
that existed in such removed regions as: the Black
Belt of Georgia and Alabama, the Mississippi Delta
or Texas plains. So, it’s little surprise that
the Alliance spread so rapidly. Many historians
make the case that the groundwork for a mass movement
– regional / local organization and participation
– was already in place across the South, and
the agrarian North / West, in the form of this extensive
network of lodges. And the fact that they had been
geared by 1890 to function as a local outlet for airing
economic grievances goes to suggest that the movement
– despite conclusions to the contrary –
was driven in part by capitalist / democratic inspirations:
in that their platform rose from the demands of the
market-consumer and producing class. That such widespread
inspiration was then so effectively channeled by its
leaders again points to the Populists,’
or more appropriately the Alliance’s
achievements – however unrealistic its demands
were then labeled by the ruling parties.
One
of the chief reasons that mass organization was so
efficient, was the verve of the “reform press.”
Charles Macune calibrated the National Reform
Press Association as a way to unite the thousands
of Alliance publications in a single purpose.
This was a time when most anyone with a strong opinion,
enough ready energy and the money to purchase a printing
press could publish a newspaper; and publish they
did. The Populist press provides for interesting
reading, splitting its columns and editorials between
an eloquent redress of grievances – alongside
proactive solutions – and the calculated exaggerations
typical of rank partisanship. Regardless, with editorial
control in the hands of so many self-styled publishers
it was a thorough exercise in free speech –
one that was wisely shaped into an editorial juggernaut
under the umbrella of NRPA standards . . . The state
of the reform press in 1890 is accurately compared
to the current state of online publishing via websites
and blogs, in that editorial commentary resides within
the jurisdiction of those with the time, energy and
small amount of money required to maintain an internet
uplink. Alongside radio’s early days, these
stand as vigorous examples of the democratizing effect
of a free press, the vital “cacophony of democracy”
– a phrase of commentator Bill Moyers . . .
Getting people involved was at the core of the NRPA’s
efforts. Yet, of equal importance was indoctrinating
the masses. It is clear that the inspiration for many
editors was propaganda over education (the same argument
can be attached to the Alliance’s lecturing
system, which operated with increased vigor during
the early 1890s). Whether the aim was “political
democracy” (Lawrence Goodwyn’s claim),
or manipulation of conservative provincials (the less
forgiving position of many noted historians, such
as Age of Reform author Richard Hofstadter),
the final interpretation – then as now –
is likely to be tempered by individual ideological
belief . . . That said, the reform press of the early
1890s was a force to be reckoned with. As was typical
of the day, newspapers were often ideological “organs.”
Many of the Alliance leaders were also full-time
editors. L. L. Polk published The Progressive
Farmer, Charles Macune: The National Economist,
the Texas Alliance: The Southern Mercury.
And in their pages they went to war.
The feeling of a mass movement groping through the
darkness that would come to typify the Populists
by the mid 1890s, was absent as the 1890 elections
grew near. As was true of the reform press, the reform
movement was then a force to be reckoned with . .
. Since the end of Reconstruction, the South had become
a land of one-party rule. As discussed in Part I,
it was anathema to talk ill of the party of the “solid
South.” It was then a natural step, and Macune’s
hope, that the Southern Alliance would work
to mold the Democratic Party into an engine
of agrarian reform – instead of going the more
radical route of a mass defection to a third-party,
as was then occurring in Kansas. Yet disillusion ran
rampant through the Gilded Age South. And it seems
it was pronounced in the next-generation agrarians:
the sons and daughters of southern Civil War veterans,
whose allegiance to the Democratic Party
was more traditional than active. The fiery young
Georgian, Tom Watson, seemed to epitomize a new overtly
critical stance – one that not only questioned
the validity of the Democrats’ rule,
but entertained the notion of “bolting”
to a third-party if need be. Too young to have served
in the war and brought up in the desperate rural conditions
that had prevailed since, Watson’s background
was typical of the small farmer just then reaching
middle-age (with little to show for many hard years
of farming). It is not difficult to understand why
so many held the Democrats in contempt. Many
rural individuals like Watson were beginning to ask:
what had the Democratic Party done for me?
why do they deserve my unwavering support? As populated
as the ranks of the Southern Alliance were
with older farmers – almost all of its leaders
were war veterans and most were openly skeptical of
a third-party – the younger agrarians and their
more youthful energy must be considered a Populist
fuel. This might even help to explain why the “takeover”
of the political machinery of the South proceeded
with largely unrealistic, even naïve expectations.
>>>
In The Promise of the New South, Ed Ayers
provides a summation of the 1890 elections: “It
seemed that the order (the Southern Alliance)
had taken control of the Democratic party
with a bloodless coup. For those who cared to look,
though, the signs of trouble were not hard to find.”
From Texas to Virginia, the Southern Alliance
had sought out candidates sympathetic to their demands.
Those that bent-an-ear were lent ardent support in
the form of Alliancemen votes. And when those
votes were tallied, they’d won sweeping victories.
Alliance-backed governors won in Georgia,
Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas. Alliance-backed
legislators gained a majority in every state of the
Old Confederacy east of the Mississippi, except Virginia.
It seemed this new order had won convincingly. Yet
it was largely a strategic ruse. Democratic Party
leaders and its faithful candidates sensed the electoral
power of the Alliance maturing into a serious
political enemy. To counteract this they simply co-opted
the agrarians’ platform, won their seats and
then proceeded to turn a blind eye to reform. There
was a bloc of “St. Louis platform” candidates
who won – such as Tom Watson and Georgia governor-elect
William Northen – but they were viewed as outsiders.
A majority of the Democrats planned “business
as usual” once they reached their respective
legislatures. Goodwyn writes: “The party machinery
remained in the hands of the old-line regulars, and
almost everywhere the controlling mechanisms of the
parliamentary process.” Goodwyn continues, pointing
out a most important result: “the leverage available
through corporate lobbying influences were retained.”
In Origins, Woodward describes: “Alliance-Democrats
were all dissatisfied as railroads were left
untouched, reforms squashed and Redemption politics
worked to marginalize the growing movement.”
Ayers provides a final succinct summarization: “
. . . they were ineffectual despite their large numbers;
they revealed the limits of state-level reform.”
The deception was obvious and made quickly apparent.
The more radical call for a third-party solution –
then being acted on in the West – became louder
across the increasingly prostrate agrarian South.
This anger was put to immediate use.
In
December 1890, the Southern Alliance held
a convention in Ocala, Florida. In the spirit of the
Texas Allliance’s 1886 convention at
Cleburne, this convention served up the “Ocala
Demands.” Building on the popularity of the
Nat’l Alliance’s St. Louis platform,
the throngs at Ocala voted to hold up what had become
the definitively Southern “subtreasury”
plan as a required position for its future candidates.
This would be the “Alliance yardstick.”
From then on the Southerners would measure the faithfulness
of potential candidates by a “yay” or
“nay” on Federal economic reform . . .
In the midst of deliberations at Ocala, the defiant
Texan William Lamb began to rattle the chains for
a third-party. Goodwyn summed up his fellow Texans’
feelings, referencing a state Alliance proclamation:
“If the party (Southern Democratic)
was not willing to try and cope with the furnishing
merchant and crop lien, it did not care about the
people.” They were fed up with small steps towards
improving rural conditions. Many were now calling
for more drastic action. The aftermath of the 1890
elections defined the Democrats’ attempts
to short circuit agrarian revolt, chiefly the call
for radical economic reform. And though the “yardstick”
echoed long and far as the most substantial of the
“Ocala Demands,” a direct vote on a third-party
was put off until 1892. It was already a contentious
issue within the Southern Alliance, setting
up an internal conflict between the radical William
Lamb and the more moderate – on the third-party
issue – Macune. But the strong showing of independent
Populist candidates out West was telling.
In Kansas they had all but taken over, Jay Burrows
of the Kansas Alliance having proclaimed:
“we sent the plutocrats a grim warning . . .
the twin of this oppression is rebellion . . .”
Confidence was spreading. A new party seemed only
a matter of time. And though Ocala was purposefully
indecisive on the issue, developments over the next
two years would prove decisive.
Any movement seems to spin off its opportunists. The
Populist movement had plenty. But the most influential
and in the end damaging was South Carolina’s
Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman. Much attention
is rightly focused on Tillman. Yet in the end he and
his supporters’ contributions to the Populist
movement were nil. Tillman was typical of the
Alliance-backed candidates that ran for governor
in 1890. From the “rural hills” of north
/ west South Carolina, Tillman’s acceptance
of the Alliance platform was useful only
in how it helped him defeat the aristocratic Charlestonians.
Tillman was an intimidating figure and induced violent
support from a rural constituency that marched in
lockstep with him through the primary, and onto the
governorship in Columbia (it should be noted that
with one party ruling much of the South the primaries
in national elections served as the election, the
actual election little more than a formality –
North Carolina’s active Republican Party
made that state an exception). But once Tillman arrived
in the South Carolina capitol it became obvious that
the Alliance cause was secondary to his “personal
program.” Ben Tillman would soon enough go on
to adopt a more lucrative political opportunity: “race-baiting”
– embedding himself into the ranks of dangerous
men that would collectively define Southern politics
at the turn-of-the 20th century via their violent
installation of unquestioned white dominion under
one-party rule.
Such was the nature of many of the Alliance-backed
Democrats that subsequently turned their backs
on the Alliancemen / Populists’
call for reform. And though this spread much additional
disillusionment amongst the Populists, it
provided an equal amount of impetus. The symbolic
defeat of 1890 served to “gut check” the
resolve of everyone involved. If they were onboard,
it was to be a thick fight. Many were still game.
The deliberate cunning of the Democrats faithful
to the established order of this new “industrialized”
South, only went to show that the agrarians would
not be broken so easily. The defiance that thundered
out from Ocala only reinforced this fact. In the end,
the elections of 1890 simply proved that both sides
were serious.
>>>
If 1890 had provided the Populist movement
a dose of hard reality, 1891 brought it in torrents.
As the decade proceeded the rural economic situation
grew more grim. On top of the institutional conditions
of rising interest rates, mortgages / liens and pricing
collusion that had spawned this concerted economic
and increasingly political uprising, the state of
the nation’s economic health had begun to deteriorate.
In Promise, Ayers writes: “. . . the
depression that was to eventually wreck the entire
country (“officially” beginning in 1893)
had already begun in the South.” Prices were
bottoming out. Again the charge of overproduction
was levied by New South leaders. But on small farms
churning out large yields, penury income could not
be reconciled. How was it that such fantastic crops
returned a deepening debt, worse than the previous
year? All of this has everything to do with the remorseless
systematic peculiarities of saturated marketplaces.
With a surplus the advantage is to the consumer; and
as was the case with the agrarians, systematically
against the glut of individual producers. Common sense
on a layman’s level would see large yields as
a good thing; but then so followed the complexities
of this profit / lending / banking structure that
the average farmer simply could not comprehend. Ayers
quotes an anti-Populist Mississippi editorial:
“Not one of them were ever inside a bank, and
know as little as to how they are managed as a hog
does about the holy writ of God.” Inequity was
everywhere obvious; yet many farmers chose not to
understand the system from within – a daunting
enough task for those educated in economics –
relying instead on half-formed general attacks. In
Populist Heritage, Woodward wrote: “Baffled
by the complexities of monetary and banking problems,
Populist ideologues simplified them into
a rural melodrama with Jewish international bankers
as the principal villains.” There is plenty
of evidence in the Gilded Age to non-ethical commercial
practices, particularly with regard to producing class
agrarians (Tom Watson having proclaimed: “.
. . when I am addressing people who bend over the
cotton rows to pick out six cent cotton which costs
them eight cents, there is no need to dwell on the
topic”). But the spirit of reform founded in
educational and legislative cures that had molded
the movement into a force to be reckoned with, was
running headlong into the abject desperation that
this slow steady economic decline was then introducing.
Reform spirit was giving way to reactionary politics;
and this was met head-on by reactionary forces looking
to safeguard the status quo. It was the introduction
of a new more dangerous phase and the self-destructive
loss of focus that would eventually do in the Populist
“revolt.”
Women
maintained a highly visible role throughout the life
of the movement, especially out West. As mentioned,
Kansan Mary E. Lease was a firebrand – equal
to her male counterparts William Lamb, James “Cyclone”
Davis, Tom Watson, fellow Kansan Jerry “Sockless”
Simpson or then emerging Populist star: Minnesota’s
Ignatius Donnelly. Her oratory rolled out riotous
thundering indictments: “Our laws are the output
of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty
in rags.” Along with Kansans Annie Diggs, Sarah
Emery, and Texan Bettie Gay, Lease and many other
women held respected leadership roles – as well
as filling out local suballiance membership rolls
by the thousands. Their position was generally accepted
. . . Yet by 1891 it was coming clear that the Colored
Farmers Alliance was fast losing support among
whites. That year African-American farmers staged
a strike in east Texas and Arkansas on behalf of higher
cotton prices. They were met not with negotiators,
but with violent white reprisal. Increasingly blacks
were becoming disillusioned with a movement then drifting
towards a more reactionary, and soon enough, desperate
stance. The early 1890s would bear out this sinking
hope, Ayers stating that in the end black farmers
“did not think they could count on white fairness
. . .” In Populist Heritage, Woodward
observes a great deal of the movement’s white
farmers as being “heir to all the superstition,
folklore and prejudice that is the heritage of the
ill-informed.” During the late 19th and early
20th centuries the need to dismantle such attempts
at black liberty in the South were taken to with rabid
force. The misguided expediency of cultural survival
drove white politicians / businessmen / farmers /
residents to violently intimidate black farmers into
submission; and set against the institutional trait
of white-on-black prejudice inherent in the South’s
rural regions at the time, this fear eventually manifested
itself amongst many white Populists as a
distrust of their “colored brethren.”
Despite the admirable attempts of many Populist
leaders to discredit such a retrograde reverse,
before the turn of the century the situation would
become much worse. The increasingly manic exhortations
of certain leaders turned raging demagogues –
such as Tom Watson – led the way towards a violent
backlash from white New South Democrats and
Southern Populists alike. By the 1896 election
– the last real stand of Populism on
a national scale – the Colored Alliance
as an organization of strength had ceased to exist.
1891 also introduced a trait that would ripple through
every subsequent election in which the Populists
would poll competitive numbers: rigged / “hijacked”
elections, in which ballot boxes from tight-race districts
were stolen or “stuffed” with the votes
of county residents who had been long dead. Intimidation
was used to keep voters away, while bribes and liquor
were liberally employed – often resulting in
the dark comedy of cattle-like lines of drunken men
being led to the polls, under armed guard, to vote
én masse for a particular candidate. This would
become an epidemic problem. The charge of Democrats
using poor illiterate blacks in such a way would
eventually be held up as case-in-point for virulent
white Populists to turn on the “separate
yet equal” Colored Alliance. But in
the early 1890s, it was still the ruling Democrats
that induced such widespread intimidation –
violent threats aimed at white and black Populists
alike . . . An example of the depths to which Southern
Democrats were willing to go occurred in Mississippi
that year. The New South merchants and their politicians
in “town and city” had been cast as enemies
of the rural agrarians since day one of the movement.
With a U.S. Senate seat up for grabs, the fight for
control of the Magnolia State became a bitter contest.
With national Populist leaders – such
as Polk – descending on the state to fan flames,
the established powers soon took matters into their
own hands. They charged the Populists with
desecrating the sacred trust of white supremacy and
soiling the sacrifice of their Confederate
forbears, playing on all the easy stereotypes that
“town and city” could make against the
rural revolt (“hayseeds, rednecks and yaller-heels!”).
The “subtreasury” was especially shouted
down, Alliance lecturers made out to be traitors.
In the end, voter registration rolls were stolen from
county courthouses, polling stations were locked down
by well-placed Democratic election managers
and Populist press outlets were raided. Most
notable of the latter was Frank Burkitt’s newspaper.
The most visible Allianceman / Populist
in Mississippi, his press was destroyed, his offices
burned to the ground. Election results served up predictable
victory for the ruling Democrats, despite
loud outcries of foul play – some of which were
even acknowledged by old-line regulars, given the
visible depths to which the elections had been hijacked.
Nonetheless, the broken Populists would never
again poll a serious challenge in the state, leaving
the rural majority of its residents – even more
so broken by decades of the crop lien – to fall
back into the ironclad Democratic fold.
Despite the continued rise of electoral strength across
the region, Mississippi foretold a probable future
for Southern Populists. The Democrats
controlled everything, including heart and minds.
Though tempting given their despair, many Southern
Alliance members just could not muster the conviction
necessary to break from the ruling Democratic
Party. In the end, this fear would win out amongst
a majority. . . Out west a number of states had polled
solidly Republican since the return of “Grand
Old Army” veterans had infused those regions
with nationalistic loyalty to the Party of Lincoln.
In those states, a similar power struggle was being
played out – with similar results. The northern
Republican majorities – who were no
less in the pockets of Wall Street in the view of
Nat’l Alliance leaders – were
beginning to feel the Populist pressure.
The example of the third-party takeover in Kansas
was enough for Republicans all up and down
the Plains to assert their dominance over this upstart
agrarian party. The emotional tactic of stoking lingering
sectional loyalty had been used to great effect in
Mississippi. It was put to use in the North, as well.
Referred to as “waving the bloody shirt,”
Republican legislators invoked the sacrifice
of their Northern Union veterans, damning
those who would go against the G.A.R.’s own
party. Though drowning real issues in emotional backlash
was not a tactic new to politics in the 1890s, it
was used without compromise and with great effect
against the agrarian revolt on the Plains –
as well as down South. By 1891, many influential state
Alliances – such as in Iowa and more
notably Nebraska – were being plowed under.
Still, the Populists pressed on towards a
third-party, fueled by a muddy mixture of vigor and
anxiety. By the spring of 1891 many felt that continuing
to work through the existing machinery – South
and North – was going to get the movement nowhere.
A national convention was called and held at Cincinnati
in May, 1891. Its entire purpose was to decide the
amorphous third-party question. Though this was a
national convention, it was attended by few Southerners.
Despite the obvious “blind eyes” of Alliance-backed
Democrats, many regional leaders in the South
were still lukewarm toward the idea of a complete
split. Yet for those on the fence, the convention
at Cincinnati served up that which they needed to
hear. This new party fully endorsed the Alliance
platform. It measured up to the “yardstick”
. . . That summer the Southern Alliance met
in the northern city of Indianapolis, perhaps as a
show of sectional agrarian unity. There, L. L. Polk
was re-elected its president. His favorable endorsement
of the Cincinnati resolutions set up the coming split,
despite many claims that Polk himself was still lukewarm
to a third-party. Yet as the days crept closer to
the local / state / presidential elections of 1892,
it became obvious that a large number of Southern
Allianceman would be supporting, campaigning
for and voting the various People’s Party
tickets . . . Polk’s summation to the energized
throngs at Indianapolis well described the history
and future of the movement at that critical point:
“. . . Southern in origin, national in purpose,
radical in ideology.”
>>>
Goodwyn quotes a Kansas Republican who had
marveled during the 1890 election campaigns that:
“the air is full of lightning.” The quote
shows a piece of fear alongside the need for political
self-preservation in the opponents of “Populism-rising”
in the West. Yet it is significant for its contrast
when placed alongside the Southern front of Populism;
for there was no such trepidation throughout the states
of the Old Confederacy, Woodward stating in Origins:
“It would have been difficult to find a climate
more hostile to the cultivation of radical movements
than the South in the 1890s” . . . 1892 was
a presidential election year. And in the South two
things were obvious: this election was to be a watershed,
and a war. Populism was now more than just
loud powerless “belly-aching” for economic
/ governmental reform. It had grown into a political
entity with cross-cultural ties to Union veterans,
agrarians of the North / West, women, and the most
radical: colored farmers. 1890 had shown how committed
Southern Democrats were to preserving their
electoral power. 1892 would show that they were equally
committed to preserving the culture of “white
supremacy” built to support it. Woodward aptly
portrays both sides of this complex fight in his 1930s
treatise on Tom Watson, stating first that
the tactic of uniting black / white farmers under
Populism arose out of the agrarian leaders’
perception that the system fostering race hatred was
the same one used to keep farmers in economic shackles.
It was a vicious cycle that would circumvent any attempt
at reform as long as it went unquestioned. And it
was this drive towards political if not racial equity
amongst the Populist ranks – however
unsuccessful it actually turned out to be –
that drove the ruling Democrats to view the
rift less in economic terms (as they had in 1890)
and more for its “drastic” cultural implications.
The Populists, as the Democrats viewed
it, were now shaking down the very foundations of
the “solid South.” The revolt itself had
proven the South to be anything but (use of the phrase
more a political strategy to maintain the status quo
– in its own right, a regional condition maintained
only through coercive rule). But so were the charges
levied; and Populist candidates, and the legions of
Alliance agrarians, were branded traitors
to their homeland, enemies of Dixie no less than Grant
or Sherman had been. In essence, the example set in
Mississippi had been exported across the entire South
. . . Though Northern Republicans from Illinois
to the Dakotas and down across the Plains to Colorado
would “wave the bloody shirt” and declare
their own war on the Alliance / Populists,
the unique and hostile unrest that came home to roost
in the South was as much a product of the “culture
war” as the political war. It would showcase
all the inherent turbulence and the dangerous finality
of desperate reactionary attitudes put to use for
political purposes.
In
early 1892, the Populists geared up for the
long year ahead by holding a national rally in St.
Louis. In The Populist Revolt, Hicks records
a banner viewed hanging inside the convention hall;
it read: “We do not ask for sympathy or pity.
We ask for justice.” Goodwyn records the damning
preamble delivered by Minnesota’s Ignatius Donnelly,
who thundered: “The fruits of the toil of millions
are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes .
. . while their possessors despise the republic and
endanger liberty.” The stakes were as high as
they’d been in a generation. Not only were economic
conditions deteriorating throughout the rural interior
(alongside the existing state / local / national leadership
proving purposefully absent to address the farmers’
lobby), but with the failed experiment of “Alliance
Democrats” in the South – and Alliance-friendly
Republicans in the North – the reputation
of the Farmer’s Alliance as a force
for reform was now by default pinned to this nascent
political party operating outside an entrenched system
set on destroying it. The chance of gaining a landmark
electorate victory in the presidential race seemed
remote. But a solid electorate “showing”
across the board was crucial to the movement’s
long-term survival. Credible legislative progress
could only follow credibility at the polls. To those
involved, 1892 would prove the most important presidential
election – to that point – since the Civil
War.
Unity
would be required to combat the entrenched opposition.
At St. Louis the very thing that would surely disrupt
unity – sectionalism – reared up only
to be diplomatically calmed. Northern representatives
viewed government regulation of railroads as the foremost
plank (price-gouging along private rail lines being
the main source of penury amongst hard-pressed western
farmers, it was argued), while the Southerners still
held to the ardent belief that the “subtreasury
plan” (and its notion of increasing the circulation
of revenue) would assuage the farmers’ plight.
Both sides cared little for the others’ main
reform issue; yet both issues were endorsed and a
compromise reached, for the time being. The potential
for future sectional discord within the movement aside,
it became obvious – as campaigns gained stride
– that the greatest unifying asset Populism
had was the North Carolinian, L. L. Polk. A proven
Alliance leader and a Confederate veteran
(who held Unionist views) were undeniably
solid traits when placed alongside the man’s
willingness to smooth sectional differences in favor
of national agrarian unity. A Southerner at the head
of the national ticket would go far in the difficult
task of winning over the South; and as summer, and
the nominating convention – to be held at Omaha,
Nebraska – neared, the ticket of Polk as president
and Iowan James Weaver (a Union veteran)
as vice president emerged as the likely, and strongest
choice.
Utilizing fate to define coincidental historical occurrences
is often inadequate in lieu of more factual / circumstantial
explanations. Yet it’s hard not to see the hard
reality of fate at work on June 11, 1892, when arguably
the most complete leader the Alliance / Populist
movement had ever put forth in Leonidas Lafayette
Polk – clear choice as the emerging party’s
presidential nominee – suddenly died. He was
only 55 years old. The news careened through the movement
like a shockwave; but the impact was most devastating
to Southern Populists, Goodwyn writing: “[Polk’s]
loss altered the thrust of Populism –
how much will never be known – but enough .
. . to camouflage . . . the movement’s strength
across the South.” On June 12th, Populists
from the cotton belt to the wheat belt to the
western mines woke up asking themselves, “now
what?”
The answer was to go right on fighting: “fight
it straight,” as Texas Populists would soon
refer to it. The opposition was saturating party organs
with partisan editorial. Populist opponents
leveled blistering, humiliating, often silly attacks.
Ed Ayers documents one such opposition account of
a Populist candidate in Texas: “His
mouth stuck out like one of those spoonbill fish until
he had a political spasm and he fizzled . . .”
In the wake of Polk’s death Democrats
across the South went to work. They claimed that they
were the true friends of Southern yeomen, while well-placed
election managers worked to make sure the polls brought
victory when all was said and done. Even with charges
of election fraud during the 2000 presidential election
a recent memory, it is nearly impossible to imagine
an election like the one held in 1892. The degree
to which election fraud and strong-arm tactics had
on the outcomes that year is debatable; what is not,
is that both were transparent and widespread. With
election machinery in the hands of the ruling Democrats
the South became a front line of controversy,
the regional prejudice and motivation behind it well
summarized by Francis Simkins: “the Democrats
in the South made it clear – through fraud,
economic ostracism and murder – that white unity
would not be threatened.” Under this canopy,
the Southern Populists were forced to operate
. . . Though stung by the sudden loss of Polk, the
political movement as a whole still had legs. And
the determined ranks poured into Omaha on July 4,
1892, to announce to anyone listening that they still
had plenty of fight left.
Unofficial, but known since the 1891 Nat’l convention
in Cincinnati, the “People’s Party”
was officially recognized as the political arm of
the Alliance-inspired agrarian movement at
the 1892 nominating convention in Omaha. Hicks records
a vivid description comparing the revolutionary mood
in the convention hall to “the enthusiastic
Bastille demonstration in France,” going further
to write: “there was something at the back of
all this turmoil more than the failure of crops or
the scarcity of ready cash.” And it was true.
Revolution was in the air. But a reshaping of the
federal government and the institutional reform required
to effect lofty cooperative / monetary balance, required
more than fervor. Chants and podium theatrics were
well and good to harden the resolve of conventioneers;
but it was in the planks of the party’s platform
where success or failure would reside . . . The Confederate
/ Union veteran ticket of Polk-Weaver was
replicated in reverse, with James Weaver as president
and Virginia’s James Fields, as vice-president.
But the ticket lacked the fiery presence of Polk;
and the platform message that followed the People’s
Party candidates onto the campaign trail that
summer / fall lacked similarly. In hindsight Omaha
seems a turning point, as all the movement’s
success slowly began to give way before its failures.
The long-held hope of Alliance leaders to
unite urban workers with rural agrarians – six
years having passed since their bold support of the
Knights of Labor against the industrialist
Jay Gould – had never materialized, failing
in all attempts to cultivate the organizational /
ideological common ground required to bind the two
(in fairness, the labor movement that would help define
the progressive themes of the early 20th century had
not matured in step with the agrarian movement, largely
due to the unmitigated power of industrialist leaders
during the late 19th century). This unrealized goal
worked to temper what could very well have been an
overwhelming electorate bloc (again, it’s interesting
to speculate on the radically different legislative
outcomes that would have been implemented: would the
New Deal, for instance, have just been “more
of the same?” would the Great Depression have
even occurred?). Goodwyn provides an apt summary of
the failed rural / urban “producing class”
union: “Alliance organizers looked
at urban workers and simply did not know what to say.”
In his work: The Populist Response to Industrial
America, Norman Pollack points directly to the
ineptitude of movement leadership when it was most
critical, documenting Henry Demarest Lloyd –
himself a Northern Populist leader –
who proclaimed: “Once again in history the people
are ripening faster than their leaders” . .
. Equal in importance to the distance between the
urban / rural working class, was this growing sectional
gap within Populism itself. Since the earliest
days of the Farmer’s Alliance, representatives
from the North and South had advanced different agendas
revolving around the specific requirements of getting
their sections’ respective crops to market.
But it was now becoming clear that sectional discourse
over how to solve the “money question”
was opening a chasm inside the movement. One of the
keystones of this political foray: the Greenbacker-inspired
foundation of reforming monetary circulation to ease
penury in the farmers’ fields, was being poorly
dealt with by leaders lacking the skill-set for serious
compromise; and as the 1890s advanced, this sectional
disagreement would slowly shear the movement along
this point, factional dissent rising up to obscure
unity. Such unrealized goals seem to reside just beneath
the surface of the “Omaha platform,” showcasing
to historians (from the 1930s on) the weaknesses prefacing
the vacillations / frustrations that would undermine
the movement’s meteoric rise . . . And in 1892,
the fervent, organized and relentless resistance of
the entrenched political parties didn’t help
the fledgling People’s Party in its
attempts to mete out lasting administrative / ideological
solutions.
Hicks reiterates the motivation of “white supremacy”
that drove the bitter partisanship flaring up across
the South: “They [Populists] became
in the eyes of their Democratic neighbors
not merely political apostates but traitors to civilization
itself . . .” People’s Party
candidates from the North fanned out across the South,
drawing a focused ire. At a campaign stop in Georgia,
presidential nominee Weaver was pelted with eggs by
an opposition horde. Hicks records Mary Lease (who
was traveling with him), as noting: “[General
Weaver] was made a regular walking omelet by the Southern
chivalry of Georgia.” In a few states the Democrats
used the specter of the Republican Party
– which had little strength across the South
(but for North Carolina), yet still embodied the despised
freed black / Union-installed legislatures
of Reconstruction – sweeping in and returning
to power as a result of the Populists splitting
the white vote in the South. Such manic doomsday scenarios
were leveled against the new party’s “transgressions”
in successful attempts to taint the Populist notions
of “socialistic cooperatives” and “equality
for blacks.” Ben Tillman again used his considerable
cunning to co-opt the Alliance platform,
gain re-election as a Democrat, turn on and
then crush the disorganized remnants of Populism
in South Carolina. A similar strategy was pursued
by Democrats in Florida and James Hogg, Democratic
nominee for governor of Texas. Accounts of violence,
or violence narrowly averted on the campaign trail
were widespread. In Tom Watson, Woodward
relates an incident during Watson and Democratic
opponent Major James Black’s contest for the
Tenth District seat in east Georgia. Though Watson
challenged Black to public debates, they more often
occurred via proxy. At one such “meeting”
Georgia Alliance leader, C. H. Ellington,
jumped up from his seat and interrupted Black, who
was in the midst of a verbal attack at the podium:
“The next moment pistols and knives were drawn
and the adherents of the two parties stood before
one another at bay . . .” The next day Ellington
and a local Democrat fought with fists in
the streets of Watson’s hometown of Thomson.
This was the standard not the exception, with aggressive
tactics most often perpetrated by Democrat-backed
mobs. The 1892 election became, in reality, a localized
/ personalized civil war. Any means would be utilized
to force victory, as the actual election would reveal.
In Origins, Woodward describes the 1892 election
season as a “brutal replay” of Reconstruction,
in which the tactics of “boycott, social ostracism,
foreclosure of mortgages, discharge from jobs, withholding
of credit and supplies” were utilized to “calibrate”
the vote of Southern farmers. He goes on to include
transparent violence as a “tactic” used
to effect by Democrat-backed thugs. Frank
Burkitt was knocked unconscious from a podium while
speaking in Mississippi. Rueben Kolb (Populist-backed
nominee for governor of Alabama) and others were literally
run out of towns by such mobs while campaigning in
the “Heart of Dixie.” Woodward records
the Virginia Sun, which documented the smoking
turmoil of the election and its aftermath as a “bacchanalia
of corruption and terrorism,” Woodward reiterating
the opinion of 1930s Populist historian,
Alex Arnett, who went so far as to call the election
in Georgia: “a solemn farce.” In every
source one can dig up – putting the rampant
accounts of violent threats / attacks aside for a
moment – ballot fraud was prevalent to a ridiculous,
appalling degree. Hicks writes on the Southern
Democrats’ use of rigged elections, with
apparent sarcasm: “. . . all these means had
been employed in time past to save society from the
rule of the ignorant and the vicious; the same high
end would have to justify the same low means once
again.” Reuben Kolb had guided the third-party
split with Alabama’s traditional Democrats.
Most accounts claim, based on the make-up of the electorate,
that Kolb’s “Jeffersonian Democrats”
(aligned with the People’s Party) would
have carried the state with ease. Yet they were victims
of widespread electoral theft. Kolb immediately contested
the election and claimed the governor’s chair.
A bitter partisan war ensued, including stand-offs
between armed supporters. Both sides claimed victory,
but the traditional conservatives held the state’s
election machinery and its courts. A Populist
memoir written some years later by Joseph Manning,
paraphrased the Alabama Democrats having
put it to Kolb and his Jeffersonians in so
many words: “Yes, we counted you out. What are
you going to do about it?” The same was true
across the South, Ayers recording an Arkansas newspaper
that published this: “. . . the Arkansas Bourbons
(a derisive label dropping reference to the pre-revolution
monarchy of France, that was fixed to the South’s
ruling conservatives), like the Alabama Bourbons,
enjoy the rare distinction of being able to carry
elections without votes.” Ayers also aptly illustrates
what was becoming a major point of contention; and
would lead to the infamy of Jim Crow and disenfranchisement
of Southern blacks, referencing a congressional investigator
who claimed: “Negroes who had been dead for
years . . . showed up in Democratic tallies.”
White Populists across the South, from its
leaders on down, would not forget this – and
would begin the long downward slide away from a tolerant
movement designed to address agrarian indignities,
no matter the farmer’s ethnicity, to one reliant
on an easier scapegoat for their failures than the
untouchable, entrenched political / economic powers.
The movement that once offered so much promise to
black farmers, once politicized, began to fall on
the darkness of prejudicial hate.
In all, the Weaver-Fields ticket won the electoral
votes of only four states – all on the western
Plains; even then, the support shown hinted an ulterior
motive that would soon become clear. People’s
Party candidates won control of the state senate
in Minnesota and claimed a narrow congressional majority
in Kansas (Kansas Republicans contesting
the election and scotching the strength of the new
majority in a “legislative war”). But
this was all Populist candidates would achieve
on their own. Valid or not, Republicans in
the North and Democrats in the South swept
up; and in the Old Confederacy, where Alliancemen
/ Populists had arguably invested the most
(and subsequently had the most to lose), this election
posed an uncomfortable question: could the movement
survive without simply co-opting similar tactics?
Popular appeal was still strong, and Alliance
rolls did not show any mass exodus of members. But
it was clear, the future would be do-or-die for the
nascent third-party. Sectional opposition had been
thrown at the People’s Party from the
outside. Sectional disagreement was now rattling chains
within. All this squared up to a movement –
once intently focused and proactive in its reform
ideals – drifting on currents not of its own
choosing. Ed Ayers illustrates one of the most crucial
of the movement’s failures as the inability
to progress beyond its initial demands: lien / mortgage
reform, currency equity, railroad and banking regulation.
At Cleburne in 1886, St. Louis in 1889 and Ocala in
1890 – during the co-op’s short life in
Dallas and the breaking of the “jute-bag”
trust – this “uprising” had shown
will, progressive creativity, determination and a
conviction to see the thing through. But in the wake
of the disastrous elections of 1892, that momentum
seemed lacking . . . Like they had at Ocala two years
before, the Nat'l Alliance held a post-election
convention in Memphis. And yet the only thing of real
significance to come out of the convention was the
eruption of a verbal battle between Henry Loucks and
the Alliance’s one-time mastermind,
Charles Macune. Both sought control of the organization;
but in the end Macune – one of the Alliance’s
most creative functional minds – was voted out.
Though he continued to be a voice for reform well
into the 20th century, his tenure with the movement
he helped spawn was over. In retrospect this incident
seems to foreshadow a dissolving central leadership
and the sectional dissent that would rend the movement
from within. But at the time, many simply saw it as
their duty to plow ahead despite the red flags. Perhaps
“fighting it straight” was all they would
need to recapture the electricity that had poured
out of the convention halls of St. Louis and Ocala
. . . Perhaps the “Populist Moment”
could be saved yet.
End > Part II
The
Rise & Fall of Populism in the South:
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part
I: "Not a Revolt, A Revolution"
Part II: "Fighting
It Straight"
Part III: "Sold
Out"
Sources / Afterword
and Credits
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