The First Party System was the first political party system in the Confederate States. It featured two parties, the Southern Party and the Confederate Party, battling for national dominance.
Pre-Formation[]
The Confederacy was originally free of formal political parties or factions. There were loose alignments of pro-administration and anti-administration politicians. The pro-administration group supported the policies of Jefferson Davis and his immediate successors, all of whom he endorsed and supported. The informal leader of the anti-administration group was Alexander H. Stephens, who believed that Davis was centralizing too much power in the federal government. However, these factions did not align on all issues or typically vote as unified groups. Everyone at that time wished to avoid the bitter political factionalism of the United States- it was a time of unity, despite the infighting under the surface.
Jefferson Davis
In order to prevent the formation of formal parties, Davis and his allies devised a strategy of supporting for the presidency well-liked national military heroes such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and James Longstreet. It was thought that these candidates would attract little notable opposition in presidential elections, thus keeping the country united. This was true for the election of Lee, but by 1873 the growing split had become strong enough that Stephens ran a campaign against Jackson.
Critics of Davis and his allies asserted that the real reason for their strategy was not to maintain nonpartisanship, but instead to strengthen their unchallenged dominance over the policies of the federal government. By framing it as unpatriotic to vote against them or openly oppose their policies, they could silence dissent. Critics also maintained that the political machine growing around Davis constituted a political party in all but name.
Political tensions erupted after the Great Disgrace of 1876. Stephens and his anti-administration allies took advantage of public outrage against the government to justify the formation of the first major political party in the Confederacy, the Southern Independence Party.
The Age of Party Politics[]
Almost everyone in the Confederacy claimed they were disappointed over the formation of political parties, but this did not prevent the now simply named Southern Party from quickly rising to prominence. They lambasted the policies of Davis and his successors and criticized him for muzzling dissent all along the way. The Southern Party was able to use its political organization to secure majorities in Congress. Many of the politicians already serving in the body switched to the party of their own accord, while others defeated non-aligned incumbents.
Alexander H. Stephens
Davis's faction stubbornly refused to give in to the new political reality and did not form a formal political party in response. In 1879, Longstreet was nominated as another nonpartisan military hero, but he narrowly lost to the Southern Party candidate Stephens. It became untenable to continue holding out against the tide, and in 1880 the Confederate Party was formed to formally organize Davis's faction against the Southern Party. Some members of the faction still refused to join any political party. Davis himself joined in 1884.
G.T. Beauregard
The first presidential election contested by both parties fully organized against each other was 1885. The Panic of 1883, combined with the chaos in the Southern Party following the defection of their president G.T. Beauregard led to the Confederate Party gaining control of the presidency for the first time. This largely meant a return to the policies of Davis.
There was briefly an influential third party in the late 1880's, the Reform Party led by Beauregard. This party was more openly friendly to industrialization, business, and urbanization than the two mainstream parties. As such, it attracted significant support in cities, which was also where the Confederate Party found much of its support. This led to a merger between the Reform and Confederate Parties in 1890. The Confederate Party adopted Beauregard's cause of extending the vote to all free citizens and also became more outwardly supportive of industry and business interests.
Sectional conflict ramped up in the 1880's, with some whispering that the country was heading on the path to another north vs. south civil war. The solid, prosperous governance of President Garland united more of the populous around Confederate Party rule. Several incidents, including the Levitz Affair, Potts Conspiracy, and the New Orleans Crisis strengthened national support of slavery and united the country against the United States. The Confederate Party maintained its dominance through most of the 1890's until the economy collapsed and the country began to go through significant societal upheaval. The Southern Party regained the presidency and the rise of the People's Agrarian Party kicked off the Second Party System.
Ideology[]
The main difference between the Southern and Confederate parties was their conflicting visions of the country. The Southern Party hearkened back to the days of the Old South, the idyllic times of the first half of the 19th Century. They supported a strongly decentralized Confederacy where each state was granted a considerable degree of independence and sovereignty. The Confederate Party, on the other hand, promoted Confederate nationalism. They attempted to form a national Confederate identity shared between all states and a federal government that had enough strength to lead the country to prosperity. In essence, the Southern Party wished to move backwards while the Confederate Party wished to move forwards to a new and modern version of the South.
The Southern Party tried to maintain the character of the Old South
Issues[]
Slavery[]
Both parties supported the institution of slavery. The Southern Party was generally more rabid and enthusiastic in its support. They pushed aggressively for the expansion of slavery to every corner of the Confederacy, including the western territories. The Confederate Party accepted slavery as a staple of the south but did not consider its preservation to be absolutely vital for the future of the country. They supported the right of individuals and states to emancipate their slaves and regulate slavery as they wished.
Generally, if you were a radical supporter of slavery, you would find yourself in the Southern Party. If you were more open to abolition, you would be in the Confederate Party. However, the Confederate Party also had its fair share of very committed supporters of slavery such as President John Tyler Morgan.
Industrialization[]
The Southern Party was rabidly against industrialization, or at least any government support of industrialization. They launched angry populist attacks against urbanites and industrialists who they claimed were trying to corrupt the Confederate way of life.
The Confederate Party was not extremely pro-industrialization, but they recognized its usefulness and tried not to unnecessarily ward off new investment. They became more supportive of industrialization after their merger with the Reform Party.
Agrarianism[]
The Southern Party was strongly rooted in agrarianism. They believed that the national character of the Confederacy was irreversibly linked to its agrarianism. As such, they wished to limit the growth of cities and the growth of their influence on government. They considered cities to foster political corruption and favoring of the wealthy elites over rural populations.
The Confederate Party also appealed to that same source of national pride, but in practice they worked towards a more balanced Confederacy where agrarian and urban interests were equally represented in government. They believed that urban economic investment was vital for the growth of a strong country that could hold its own on the world stage. Without the growth of a strong Confederate industry and urban base, the Confederate Party believed that the country would always be economically beholden to the North.
States' Rights[]
The Southern Party strongly supported states' rights and supported state "nationalism" over Confederate nationalism. They viewed the Confederacy as more of a free association of several sovereign states, as they believed the United States should have been.
The Confederate Party believed in a stronger federal government and a strong national identity over many separate state identities. They attempted to strike a balance between this aim and the preservation of states' rights which they believed they had fought the Union to secure. They wanted a strong and decisive federal government that did not override the states in areas where they had vested interests.
On the matter of slavery, the support of states' rights was essentially reversed. The Southern Party believed in securing the preservation of slavery across the entire Confederacy, even at the risk of overriding states' rights. The Confederate Party supported the Garland Doctrine, which asserted that just as it was every individual's and every state's right to practice slavery, it was also their right to not practice slavery if they so desired.
Voting Franchise[]
The Southern Party, as a representative of the poor common people, advocated for expansion of the voting franchise on a state-by-state basis to every White citizen. Nationally, however, they opposed any sort of voting rights law or constitutional amendment on the grounds that the individual states should have the right to define their own citizenship and voting practices. The Confederate Party supported national voting reform after its merger with the Reform Party, helping to ratify the First Amendment to the Confederate Constitution, which expanded the vote to all free citizens nationwide.
Financial and Monetary Policy[]
The Southern Party supported populist policies popular with poorer farmers- this included the inflation of the national money supply with silver and greyback federal notes. The Confederate Party supported a more stable financial system rooted in silver and gold, with an emphasis towards gold.
Confederate Greyback
The Southern Party was strongly against any form of national bank, hearkening back to the ideas of Jackson. The Confederate Party recognized the potential usefulness of national financial regulation. Some members of the party supported the establishment of a national bank and some didn't.
Tariffs[]
The Southern Party supported very low, almost nonexistent tariffs. The Confederate Party supported comparatively higher tariffs that would be used to fund the federal government, but their proposals were still much lower than the tariffs typical of the United States.
Military[]
The Southern Party believed that the Confederacy should be pacifist by nature. In their view, the South had been exploited and then attacked by the North, and in its independence it should be a peaceful nation focused on the welfare of its people, not an oppressor of other peoples. In addition, they believed that a large standing military could foster tyranny, especially with the succession of generals that became president (or almost did) in the years following the war. They did not want the Confederacy to become a bloated military state. Instead, they wished for military power to remain with the states in the form of state militias which could be called up in the case of foreign invasion. They strongly opposed any kind of conscription or draft and attempted to drastically reduce the size of the standing military when they were in power.
Confederate victory at Gettysburg
The Confederate Party, with roots in the military successes of the Southern War of Independence, supported a strong, professional military that could be used to defend the country in times of need. Their version of Confederate nationalism centered much of the nation's pride around its strong armed forces and military culture which had helped it defeat a numerically superior opponent in their war of independence.
Imperialism[]
The Southern Party was mostly against imperialism. Some strong supporters of slavery in the party held onto their dream of a vast slaveholding empire across the Americas. However, most in the party were happy to have won their independence and considered the acquisition of more lands and more diverse peoples to be damaging to the cultural integrity of the Confederacy. To them, the Confederacy and the South were one in the same- it did not make sense to hold vast stretches of lands that were not traditionally part of the American South.
The Confederate Party had no strong single stance on imperialism. Some supported a strong military for defense purposes only, such as President Garland, who expanded the navy for the purpose of defending the maritime integrity of the Confederate States. Others, such as President Morgan, were strongly imperialistic and believed the Confederacy should be a world power that controlled vast stretches of colonial land. All supported a strong military, but they differed over how the country should use it.
The Golden Circle, a proposed slaveholding empire spanning the Americas
Most supporters of slave-related expansionism had migrated to the Confederate Party by the 1890's.
Foreign Relations[]
The Southern Party supported peaceful relations with all nations. They were isolationist and did not believe the Confederacy had a role in geopolitics outside of its immediate concerns.
The Confederate Party believed that the Confederacy should have a powerful and influential role on the world stage, particularly in the Americas. They were not afraid to strongly assert the Confederacy's independence when need be, such as in the case of the New Orleans Crisis.
Relations with the United States[]
After the Great Disgrace in 1876, both parties refrained from trying to achieve warm relations with the United States. They had slightly different approaches to trying to assure the nation's independence from the North. The Southern Party was committed to forging an independent path for the Confederacy and treated the United States as any other nation. They demanded there be no special relationship or rivalry between the two countries. While they made frequent use of anti-Northern rhetoric, they had little specific plan for asserting the Confederacy's independence.
The Confederate Party, on the other hand, tried to maintain independence from the North by maintaining a strong military and building up a stronger industrial economy to reduce reliance on Northern goods. When the North implemented policies hostile to the Confederacy, Confederate Party leaders typically responded with direct provocations in kind, attempting to throw around any kind of diplomatic weight the country had to force the Union to loosen up. They did not generally desire war with the North over such incidents, although they came close in 1892, recognizing that such a conflict would be incredibly bloody and destructive for little potential gain.
Support Bases[]
The Confederate Party has been called a spiritual successor to the Whig Party in the South, while the Southern Party was a successor to the Democrats. However, these links were weak and the two parties did not perfectly fit into the molds of their supposed predecessors.
The Southern Party found support in the rural, traditional South
The Southern Party found very strong support among farmers and poor whites in rural areas. Their voters were traditionalists, hardcore supporters of slavery who wished to fight off most forms of modernization. They were suspicious of the cities and industrialists who were considered to have corrupted the North. Geographically, their voters were most strongly concentrated in the Deep South.
The Confederate Party found much of its support in the industrializing urban South
The Confederate Party found its strongest support in more urban and industrial areas. Rural voters in more settled and prosperous areas were more likely to support them. They also had support from some old guard plantation owners who wished to avoid letting the poor masses take control of the country. Geographically, they found their strongest support in the states closer to the border- Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Important swing states between the two parties were Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Texas was particularly important as the largest and most populated state in the Confederacy. Winning Texas in a presidential election usually ensured overall victory in the electoral college.
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