Bullwhackers (Brothers No More)

The Bullwhackers were a faction of the Democratic Party that existed in the 1870's and 1880's. Led by George H. Pendleton, they favored closer collaboration with the Confederacy, extreme states' rights, economic populism, agrarianism, and a small federal government. They opposed nationwide abolition and civil rights laws.

President George H. Pendleton, leader of the faction

Name

Bullwhacker was a term for drivers of oxen-led carts in the early settlement of the American west. It came to be associated with the political faction when opponents made the claim that they were pulling or driving the wagon of the Confederacy. While it tended to be their opponents who used the term, some members of the faction adopted it for themselves. They claimed that it showed their connection to the hard work of the noble American settler. They also claimed it showed they were stronger than bulls.

Another term that opponents used for this faction was Dixie's Court. Neutral parties sometimes referred to them as Pendletonians.

History

The faction had its earliest roots in the Copperheads and peace Democrats of the Civil War. These Democrats were against fighting a war against the Confederacy and called for immediate peace. They believed that the Southern states were within their rights to secede if they wished. When the war ended in a loss, they claimed that their viewpoint had been validated. If the Union had simply let the Southern states secede peacefully, they would have reached the same result without any of the extensive bloodshed and destruction.

Emboldened, peace Democrats completely took over the party establishment and took control of Congress in the landslide Democratic victory of 1866. They nominated one of their own, George H. Pendleton, for president in 1868. Pendleton won the election and became president.

The later Bullwhacker faction truly began to take shape around Pendleton's supporters during his administration. Pendleton was entirely opposed to the Republican vision of the country. He and his party portrayed the Republicans as corrupt northeastern elites who had plunged the country into war because they couldn't allow the common man to determine their own destiny. Instead, Pendleton had a deeply Jacksonian view of how politics should work- strong states' rights with a democratic system that was responsive to the wishes of the common people. Under his system, the federal government would be small and only manage issues that could not be handled on a state-by-state basis.

One-dollar greenback

The first manifestation of Pendleton's economic populism as president was his decision to repay federal war bonds in greenback paper currency rather than gold. This solution had been favored by poor Midwesterners who believed it would put more money into circulation and help their financial circumstances. Pendleton's management of the economy did result in some postwar bounce back, but it has been argued that this was little more than a mirage powered by inflation, with no real underlying growth.

Pendleton tried to pivot the country away from the industrialist, urban-oriented policies of the Republicans and back towards an agricultural focus. He promoted further settlement of the West (with slavery now legal in the territories). He was opposed to any kind of national abolition of slavery, believing that the institution should be abolished by the states themselves, if it ever were to be abolished.

Most notably, Pendleton favored warmer relations with the Confederacy. He thought that there was no point continuing hostility after the war and that it would be in the best interests of both nations to strive for cultural and economic closeness. This stance found most of its support among Democrats in the border states, but was widely unpopular everywhere else.

In his first term, Pendleton officially opened diplomatic relations with the Confederacy, an action that the Lincoln administration had stubbornly refused to carry out. After the collapse of the Republican Party and his landslide reelection in 1872, Pendleton considered his ideas to be well supported by the public. For his second term, he decided to focus on outwardly closer ties to the Confederate States.

Confederate President Stonewall Jackson

He set up a deal with Confederate President Stonewall Jackson where Pendleton would ensure the passage of a new fugitive slave law while Jackson would visit the United States capital to celebrate the nation's centennial. To Pendleton, the fugitive slave act was a victory even outside the context of the deal, as it would prevent freed slaves from pouring into the United States and causing what he viewed as societal upheaval. Now US citizens had a legal obligation to return escaped Confederate slaves to the South. Most Northerners, of course, were outraged. The centennial meeting between Pendleton and Jackson was received extremely poorly, coming to be known as the Great Disgrace.

The outrage stemming from this incident reawakened general hostility to the Confederacy, emboldened the American and National parties, and swung control of the Democratic Party away from the Bullwhackers. Hoping to distance themselves from the controversy, the Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden for president in 1876, signaling a pivot away from the policies of Pendleton. Tilden avoided the issue of the Confederacy and made indirect, shielded promises that he would not try to cozy up to them as Pendleton had. Tilden began his presidency wishing to address corruption and reform the spoils system, knowing that party unity would be important in this task.

Pendleton stubbornly stuck to his ideals and his belief that reconciliation with the Confederacy was desireable for the nation. He supported Tilden on most matters, but a solid break between the two men came in 1882 when Tilden signed the Abolition Act into law, ending the practice of slavery across the whole nation. Pendleton believed this to be an overreach of executive authority and was disappointed to see slavery outlawed. This was when the existence of the Bullwhackers as a unified, independent faction solidified and entered the public view.

President Samuel J. Tilden

Bullwhackers became open in their opposition to Tilden and his supporters, who came to be known simply as Tildenites. The two factions battled bitterly for control over the party and especially for control of who the party would nominate in the 1884 presidential election.

As the National American Party came to prominence and returned the country to outward resistance against the Confederacy, the Bullwhackers slowly lost popularity and prominence. The vast majority of the US population was now firmly opposed to any cooperation with the Confederacy. Seeing the change in attitude even among agrarian Democrat populations in the country, Pendleton softened his stance and began to aim for reconciliation with the rest of the party. His death in 1889 more or less dissolved the Bullwhackers as an organized faction, with most Democrats now focused on passing comprehensive civil service reform.

Most former Bullwhackers would go on to support the emerging progressive movement, open to silver money just as they had been open to the proposals of poor farmers decades before.

Ideology

Bullwhackers were pro-slavery, pro-states' rights, and favored warmer relations with the Confederacy. They believed that the country should retain its agrarian character over the industrial cities of the east. To this end, they supported populist economic proposals such as converting federal war bonds to greenbacks. At the same time, they supported a small federal government that would leave most matters of governance to the states.

Bullwhackers were known for their support of warm relations with the Confederacy

The faction was generally favorable to civil service reform, though this was strongly dependent on the popular attitude at the time. Pendleton was against corruption and wished to keep the government accountable to the people, but he believed that almost all corruption at the federal level was due to the governance of Republicans. While he himself kept his administration clean, the near one party rule of the Democrats during the 1870's meant that corruption became widespread within the party. Numerous Democratic members of Congress fell to scandal. Tilden was elected largely off his promise to root out corruption within his own party and the federal government as a whole, and this is where the two factions differed on the matter. Pendleton did not believe that his administration had been corrupt or that the Democratic Party was the main culprit behind the corrupt spoils system. The Bullwhackers thus favored more moderate civil service reform compared to the Tildenites, who wished for a full reorganization.

Besides their agrarian populism and flexibility when it came to the monetary system, Bullwhackers did not dramatically differ from the economic policy of the Tildenites or the Democratic Party as a whole. The main issues that divided the two factions were slavery and the Confederacy. The Bullwhackers advocated for close relations to the Confederacy and the protection of slavery, or at least the abolition of slavery at the state level rather than by the federal government. The Tildenites, on the other hand, advocated for national abolition and some civil rights protections while opposing a particularly close relationship with the Confederacy. The Bullwhackers have been characterized by historians as a white supremacist movement.