RESPONSE TO REDEEMER RULE: HILL COUNTRY POLITICAL DISSENT IN THE POST-RECONSTRUCTION SOUTH.
Item
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Title
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RESPONSE TO REDEEMER RULE: HILL COUNTRY POLITICAL DISSENT IN THE POST-RECONSTRUCTION SOUTH.
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Identifier
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AAI8614682
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identifier
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8614682
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Creator
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HYMAN, MICHAEL RUSS.
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Contributor
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Eric Foner
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Date
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1986
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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History, United States
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines politics in the lower South in the era immediately following the end of Reconstruction, focusing on the political ideology and behavior of small white producers residing in hill country areas of the region. It contends that political discontent among white producers which arose in this era, including "Independentism," "Greenbackism," and dissident political activity within the Democratic party itself, can best be understood not simply as a reaction to the machine politics employed by political elites but as a response to broad political economic developments affecting the late nineteenth-century South. While concentrating on one major group of Southerners, special attention is paid to placing political controversies of the 1870s and early 1880s into a proper analytic context--recognizing that neither elites nor non-elites were monolithic groups and that the uneven pace of socio-economic developments of the period affected politics in different areas of the lower South in different ways.;After examining the political ideas small producers brought into the era, the bulk of this thesis explores the structure of the post-Reconstruction Southern political system and argues that political conflict at both the local and state levels stemmed from the efforts of elites to utilize governmental power to bolster and advance their own position in Southern society. Post-Reconstruction Democratic leaders, concerned primarily with conciliating the disparate elite interests within the party, became increasingly unresponsive to the needs and demands of the party's rank-and-file members, leading many small white producers to criticize the party and support dissident political office-seekers, who, when elected, did generally attempt to promote the interests of ordinary Southerners. The specific political grievances and demands of various social groups are described through an examination of debates concerning major public policy issues of the era, many of which revolved around questions concerning what role government should play in shaping the character of social and economic life in the late nineteenth-century South. This dissertation concludes by examining the impact of these debates on late nineteenth-century Southern politics, arguing that, in significant ways, they redefined the central political issues of the period.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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History
