The Agrarian Revolt was a period of American political history which occurred from 1886 to 1896, when common farmers in the American West, Midwest, and South mobilized as a political force, known as the "Populist" movement, and seized control of the Democratic Party from the conservative Bourbon Democrats. The revolt began with the rise of the Farmers' Alliance in Texas in 1875, and Alliance-backed Democrats won several elections in the South in 1890. The Populist movement was met with backlash both from Southern Democrats (who opposed the movement's threat to their one-party rule) and northern Republicans, who championed industrial interests against the agrarians. The Populist Party, originally a diverse coalition which included both white and African-American farmers, socialists, and women, became more reactionary after scapegoating the Black community for the fradulent re-election of Democratic "Redeemer" governments in the South, and the movement also blamed the Panic of 1893 on Jewish bankers and Eastern business interests. The Populist Party declined as the Southern Democrats and the Kansas Republican Party rigged elections against them, and the Populists' decision to fuse with the Democratic Party during the 1896 presidential election, along with the fusion ticket's defeat by the conservative Republican William McKinley that same year, led to the demise of the Populist movement. The Agrarian Revolt helped shift the national Democratic Party's economic policies to the left due to the movement's influence on the 1896, 1900, and 1908 Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan, but it also resulted in the mass disenfranchisement of African-Americans, whom the Populists believed had been contributing their votes to the corrupt, conservative "Redeemer" regimes in the South in exchange for bribes, and led to the sidelining of the rural vote as industrial centers and big cities became more influential in the outcome of elections.
History[]
Populists versus Redeemers[]
Following the American Civil War, the American South's plantation economy was destroyed, and the "landed" plantations of the antebellum "Cotton kingdom" era were parceled off to small farmers as the Southern merchant class, involved in industries such as railroads, became the new elite of the South. Several small farmers were forced to work as sharecroppers, giving portions of their crop harvests to the merchants in exchange for tenancy. With the end of Reconstruction in 1877, Southern Democratic "Redeemers" established conservative regimes in the ex-Confederate states and became notorious for their corruption, underfunding public programs which benefited the poor and African-Americans and engaging in embezzlement and misappropriations. Discontented farmers in the South rebelled against the conservative regimes by voting for independents or the Greenback Party during the 1870s, and an organized agrarian economic movement, the Farmers' Alliance, was founded in Texas in 1875. By 1886, the movement was sweeping across Texas, where hordes of dispossessed farmers had moved following the Civil War, and populist leaders S.O. Daws and William R. Lamb called for governmental regulation of railroads, fair credit standards self-sustaining methods of crop diversification, equitable currency distribution, and commercial cooperation amongst the agrarian poor. The Farmers' Alliance became enemies of the Democratic regimes of the "New South" and industry-backed Republicans in the West. The African-American community, which had been abandoned by the national GOP during the 1880s, looked to the Farmers' Alliance as a movement which could deliver true reform, although most common white farmers in the South resented the African-American community because of the Redeemer governments' practices of buying Black votes to maintain their grip on power and disenfrnachise populist farmers.
The Alliancemen[]
In 1889, the Farmers' Alliance held its first national convention in St. Louis, Missouri, and it built up contradictory alliances such as Civil War veterans from both the Union and Confederate sides, radicals labelled by the Gilded Age industrial, banking, and political elite as "socialists", African-Americans, and conservative white farmers. The Populist movement called for radical left-leaning reforms, and Populist leaders such as Tom Watson in Georgia questioned the Democratic Party's contributions to the lives of common farmers. In 1890, Alliance-backed governors won in Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Texas and Alliance-backed legislators gained a majority in every state of the Confederacy east of the Mississippi apart from Virginia, forcing the Democratic Party to co-opt the Alliancemen's views in order to win elections, only to abandon reform once in office. The old-guard Democrats retained control of the party machinery and corporate lobbying influences, while Alliance-backed Democrats such as Benjamin Tillman ultimately turned their backs on the populist calls for reform, leading to many in the populist movement calling for the creation of a populist third party.
A rural economic depression began in 1891, two years before the Panic of 1893 struck the rest of the United States. The economic crisis led to the emergence of prominent populist leaders such as Mary E. Lease, Annie Diggs, Sarah Emery, Bettie Gay, William R. Lamb, James "Cyclone" Davis, Tom Watson, Jerry "Sockless" Simpson, and Ignatius Donnelly, but, at the same time, Black support for the Alliance dropped. When African-American farmers striked in east Texas and Arkansas in 1891 on behalf of higher cotton prices, they were met with violent wihte reprisals, and they realized that the Populist movement was drifting towards a reactionary stance. The Populists accused the Democrats of forcing or bribing poor illiterate blacks and drunken whites to vote en masse for Redeemer candidates, and the Democrats engaged in widespread voter repression, even burning down Populist offices. Many Southern Alliancemen lost heart and refused to rejoin the Democrats, while many Union Army veterans in the West returned to the Republican Party, which "waved the bloody shirt" to stir up American patriotism and pro-Republican sentiment. By 1891, the Farmers' Alliances in Iowa and Nebraska were in decline. In May 1891, the populists insisted on going ahead with the first national convention of their own party, the Populist Party, which fully endorsed the Alliance platform.
Rise and fall of the Populist Party[]
During the 1892 presidential election, the Populist Party formed a coalition of those aching for economic and governmental reform, Union veterans, Northern and Western agrarians, women, and African-American farmers. The Populist Party had to deal with sectional infighting, as its northern delegates fought for the regulation of railroads as their foremost plank, while the Southerners prioritized the increased circulation of revenue. The party ran a presidential ticket of the Northerner James B. Weaver and his Southern running mate Leonidas L. Polk, but Polk died during the campaign, and the party once again faced internal issues as it failed to unite its disparate coalition members or attract urban support. Southern Democrats warned of the return of Republican rule and Reconstruction if their vote was split with the Populists, and violence often broke out on the campaign trail. Weaver's ticket ultimately won only four Western Great Plains states; Populist candidates won the Minnesota State Senate and a narrow congressional majority in Kansas.
In 1893, America's credit bubble burst, leading to the Panic of 1893; the Populists blamed northeastern capitalists, Jewish bankers, Wall Street, and old-party politicians in Washington DC. The Populists proposed an expansion of federal currency to inflate the economy and solve the crisis, as well as promoting bimetallism in the form of "free silver". The "silver issue" began to overtake the Populists' old platform, but the Populists were unified in their disdain for Grover Cleveland, the leader of the fiscally conservative Bourbon Democrats, and President at the time of the panic. The Populist movement soon made enemies of both the Southern Democrats and Northern Republicans, and, while the Democrats engaged in terrorism against the Populists in the South, the Kansas Republican Party engaged in vote-tampering and refused to yield their seats to elected Populists. Benjamin Tillman threatened to stick the hated Cleveland with a "pitchfork", earning him his lasting nickname "Pitchfork Tillman", and the Southern Democrats once again decided to co-opt the Populist platform and promote silver in an act of aggression against the Northern Bourbons. Populists in the Plains States allied with the Democrats in Nebraska, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota, while North Carolina Populists allied with the Southern Republicans. While poor Black and white farmers allied to win in North Carolina, Populists would later scapegoat the Black vote whenever they lost elections to the Redeemers. The Populists suffered several defeats in 1894 despite winning almost half of the vote in most Southern states, but that year marked the "high-water mark of populism".
In the 1896 presidential election, the "prairie populist" Democrat William Jennings Bryan challenged the industrial Republican William McKinley, and the Populist Party was split over whether to fuse with the Democrats or remain separate. The Democratic Party itself was split between Northern and Western Democrats who sought to embrace "free silver" to defeat Populism and Southern Gold Democrats who represented industrial interests. Bryan came to be the candidate of the "anti-establishment" cause, championing an alliance of moderate and radical Populists and Democrats. Many Populists and later historians saw the "free silver" movement as a weak and derivative caricature of the populist movement, and middle-of-the-road Populists were forced to side with their moderate brethren and risk assimilation or defeat, or join the hated Democrats. Several Western Populists decided not to fuse with Bryan's Silver Democrats and instead ran their own national convention and candidates. Both the Democratic and Populist tickets were defeated by the Republican McKinley in 1896 in what some saw as a Democratic plot to set up Bryan as a decoy to destroy the Populist movement. The free coinage of silver, the Populist fusion with the Western Democrats the compromise of the Omaha platform, and the moderation of the Populist movement's radical stances watered down the agrarian crusade, and it abruptly ended with Bryan's defeat in November 1896.
Death of the Populist movement[]
After the 1896 election, the Southern Democrats took up the Southern Populists' demands of eliminating Black suffrage to end the practice of vote-buying and ballot-stuffing, and Tom Watson declared in November 1896, "Our party, as a party, does not exist anymore. Fusion has well nigh killed it." Watson's views experienced a rightward shift towards unapologetic bigotry, and the populist movement for grassroots democracy was soon warped into a morass of blame and virulent hatred. In the 1898 elections, North Carolina went solidly to the Democrats and Kansas to the Republicans, and the 1898 Populist National Convention in Cincinnati attracted few major movement leaders. The Spanish-American War and the accompanying tide of nationalism swamped what little discussion of reform still lingered in legislative halls, and, as Francis Simkins said, "The agrarian revolt in the South merely served as an awkward interlude in the forward march of business."
Impact on the major parties[]
McKinley won re-election against Bryan and his aging Democratic platform in 1900, riding on the successes of American imperialism in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, with big business and large urban centers coming to dominate the outcomes of elections; meanwhile, rural America lost its influence on national politics. As the Republican Party's platform became increasingly aligned with the interests of prosperous corporate-minded Americans, it began to lose the support of African-American and less-affluent Americans, who had once formed the core of the party, and they searched for a political organization which would represent their interests.
Since William Jennings Bryan's presidential candidacy in 1896, the Democratic Party generally positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues. During the Fourth Party System of 1896-1932, the Third Party System's issues of the American Civil War, Reconstruction, race, and monetary issues was superseded by the Progressive Era, World War I, Prohibition, and the Great Depression. The Republican Party briefly flirted with progressivism under President Theodore Roosevelt, but the conservative Republican William Howard Taft's presidential candidacy in 1912 led to the progressive wing of the Republican Party splitting and forming the Bull Moose Party. Most progressive voters backed the progressive Democrat Woodrow Wilson instead of Roosevelt, and the Democrats returned to the White House as an economically-progressive party; the last Democratic president, Cleveland, had been a pro-business conservative and an enemy of organized labor.