[Sherman Logan]

Thanks for the interesting reply.

But, sorry, I don’t buy it. The Democratic Party in the prewar years was dominated by southern pols, not particularly surprising since the nation as a whole was so dominated. Just look at the statistics for presidents, supreme court justices, cabinet members and military officers.

But the DP was not Servant of the South or of Slavery. It was a loose alliance of a bunch of state parties.

Yes, the Democrats were not as group particularly hostile to slavery. Again, this is not surprising. For most of this period neither was the nation, even in most of the North.

In fact, there WAS no North vs. South split in a political sense until southerners overreached themselves in 1850. For the previous 50 years the regional split had been North(east) vs. South vs. West.

And the split was not entirely slave vs. free. MO, TN and KY were generally considered Western, not Southern states.

It wasn’t until the Compromise of 1850, the Dred Scott decision, the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas that the country split decisively on slave vs. free lines.

In fact, the decade of the 1850s were one of the most interesting and bizarre periods in American history, with several third-party groups popping up, some not at all oriented towards the slavery issue. The Know-Nothings, for instance, were big in parts of both North and South.

[BroJoeK]

Sherman Logan: "In fact, there WAS no North vs. South split in a political sense until southerners overreached themselves in 1850.
For the previous 50 years the regional split had been North(east) vs. South vs. West."

So, why am I hearing Ray Stephens verse 2 of "Everything is Beautiful" -- "There are none so blind as he who will not see..."? ;-)

You're looking right at just one archetypal election -- 1828 -- and telling me there is no north-south split?
I'm telling you: that's a north-south split, where non-New England Northerners -- Dough-Faces -- joined their Southern allies in electing Democrats, in this case, Andrew Jackson.

And in every presidential election where the choice is a Southern Democrat versus a Northern non-Democrat (Federalist / Whig / Republican) the results are the same, beginning in 1796 -- not 1852!

The only times the South ever split its votes came when the choice was not so clear-cut -- i.e., two Southerners, two Northerners or a Northern Democrat vs. Southern non-Democrat on the ballot.
Yes, then you did see a more-or-less random splitting of states for each candidate.

So, who were these Northern Democrat Dough-Faces?
Well, then as now, Northern Democrats were largely big-city and/or immigrants.
In places like New York City and Philadelphia their numbers dominated state politics, and through their alliance with the Southern Slave-Power, kept the Union united, and the slaveocracy dominant.

So, what happened in the 1850s was: suddenly, after all those years, such Northerners began to see slavery as not just some quaint Southern institution, but as a growing, expanding existential threat to them.
Suddenly, slavery was coming North and West to take away their jobs, and their future farmland, as settlers out west.
Now it was personal, and now they began to vote for the political party which promised to restrict slavery, and protect them -- the Republicans.

Presidential election of 1856.
Note New York, Ohio & some other Northern states switched from Democrat in 1852 to Republican in 1856.
By 1860, they will all vote Republican.