they had viable Whig parties but the Jeffersonian Democrats were utterly dominant.
Read the Confederate constitution some time. They gave the president a line item veto, forbade riders on bills to prevent pork barrel spending, required a balanced budget, required the central bureaucrats to answer to individual state legislatures, built in more explicit and stronger protections of the rights of states, required a supermajority to pass tax increases, etc etc. It would be an absolute dream constitution for Libertarians and Conservatives today in all those respects.
What this points to is how consistent Southerners have been in their political philosophy for over 200 years. If you read some of the letters people wrote back then or some of the newspaper editorials, you’ll be amazed how the views on many of these issues have not changed.
The Democrats today are the exact opposite on practically every single issue.
The Whigs did have majorities at certain points in FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, TN & VA, so the Jeffersonians/Jacksonians weren’t without a challenge. John C. Calhoun passed on leading SC Nullifiers into the Whigs (although his fellow Senator William C. Preston did) and returned to the Dem fold.
Of course, there wasn’t a gargantuan gulf ideologically between the two groups as we have today between the present parties. The Dems had their anti-slave factions and the Whigs had their pro-slave “Cotton” faction.
But in those days, the folks that could vote all had proverbial skin in the game and making a mistake could cost them everything. Except to the truly radical, it was unimaginable for them to saddle the nation with such debt and spending, even in the case of emergencies.
However, in the post-Civil War period, you did start to have leftist economics rearing their ugly head under the so-called populist movement, the free-Silverites and the like, and they did include Southerners. Many Southern Democrats were behind the push for bigger government, especially in toppling the Conservative Bourbons (the fiscally responsible Dems). All 4 of the post-Civil War Dem Southern Presidents (Wilson (I count him as Southern despite being elected out of NJ), LBJ, Carter, Clinton) have all been left-wingers.