The Third Party System was a period in the history of political parties in the United States from the 1850s until the 1890s, which featured profound developments in issues of American nationalism, modernization, and race. This period was marked by the American Civil War (1861–1865), the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of slavery in the United States, followed by the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age.
It was dominated by the new Republican Party, which claimed success in saving the Union, abolishing slavery and enfranchising the freedmen, while adopting many Whig-style modernization programs such as national banks, railroads, high tariffs, homesteads, social spending (such as on greater Civil War veteran pension funding), and aid to land grant colleges. While most elections from 1876 through 1892 were extremely close, the opposition Democrats won only the 1884 and 1892 presidential elections (the Democrats also won the popular vote in the 1876 and 1888 presidential elections, but lost the electoral college vote). From 1875 to 1895 the party usually controlled the United States House of Representatives and controlled the United States Senate from 1879 to 1881 and 1893 to 1895. Indeed, scholarly work and electoral evidence emphasizes that after the 1876 election the Southern United States' former slave centers, which before the emancipation of Republican-voting African Americans were electorally dominated by wealthy slave owners who made up the southern base of the Whigs, Know Nothings and Constitutional Unionists, began realigning into the Democratic Party due to the end of the now unpopular Reconstruction efforts.James E. Campbell, "Party Systems and Realignments in the United States, 1868–2004", Social Science History, Fall 2006, vol. 30, issue 3, pp. 359–386 This new electoral base for the Democrats would finish realigning around 1904.
The other realignments that ushered in this party system were the realignment of the Free Soil movement into the Republican Party in 1856, which allowed the party to dominate the North, and the realignment of the more northern portion of Whigs, Know Nothings and Constitutional Unionists along the coastal Midatlantic into the Democratic Party after 1864. These realignments allowed the GOP to become the majority party, but with rather weak electoral support in Congress and the electoral college, for the next 36 years, especially after the mid-1870s. The Republican Party would heavily strengthen its electoral power due to an additional Republican realignment in the 1896 election.
The northern and western states were largely Republican, except for the closely balanced New York, Indiana, New Jersey, and Connecticut. After 1876, as a result of the end of Reconstruction, the Democratic Party took control of the "Solid South".Foner (1988)
Voter behavior As with the preceding Second Party System era, the Third was characterized by intense voter interest, routinely high voter turnout, unflinching party loyalty, dependence on nominating conventions, hierarchical party organizations, and the systematic use of government jobs as patronage for party workers, known as the spoils system. Cities of 50,000 or more developed ward and citywide "bosses" who could depend on the votes of clients, especially recent immigrants. Newspapers continued to be the primary communication system, with the great majority closely linked to one party or the other.Kleppner (1979) gives detailed reports on voter behavior in every region.
Broad coalitions from each party Both parties consisted of broad-based voting coalitions. Throughout the North, businessmen, shop owners, skilled craftsmen, clerks and professionals favored the Republicans, as did more modern, commercially oriented farmers. In the South, the Republicans won strong support from the freedmen (newly enfranchised African Americans), but the party was usually controlled by local whites ("scalawags") and opportunistic Yankees ("carpetbaggers"). The race issue pulled the great majority of white southerners into the Democratic Party as Redeemers.
The Democratic Party was dominated by conservative, pro-business Bourbon Democrats, who usually controlled the national convention from 1868 until their great defeat by William Jennings Bryan in 1896. The Democratic coalition was composed of traditional Democrats in the North (many of them former Copperheads). They were joined by the Redeemers in the South and by Catholic immigrants, especially Irish-Americans and German-Americans. In addition, the party attracted unskilled laborers and hard-scrabble old-stock farmers in remote areas of New England and along the Ohio River valley.Kleppner (1979); Jensen (1971)
Religion: pietistic Republicans versus liturgical Democrats
Religious lines were sharply drawn.John W. Compton, "Where Do Policy Demanders Come From? Protestants and Party Formation in the Antebellum Period." Political Science Quarterly (2026): online Kleppner (1979) Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans and other pietists in the North were tightly linked to the Republicans. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians, and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism and prohibition. While both parties cut across economic class structures, the Democrats were supported more heavily by the lower economic tiers.Richard Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896 (1971) online
Cultural issues, especially prohibition and public-funding for Catholic schools (as well as non-English schools of both Protestant and Catholic denominations) in parity with what were at the time Protestant-based, English-language public schools, became important because of the sharp religious divisions in the electorate. In the North, about 50% of the voters were pietistic Protestants who believed the government should be used to reduce social sins, such as drinking. Liturgical churches constituted over a quarter of the vote and wanted the government to stay out of personal morality issues. Prohibition debates and referendums heated politics in most states over a period of decades, and national prohibition was finally passed in 1918 (repealed in 1932), serving as a major issue between the largely wet Democrats and the largely dry Republicans – although there was a pro-Prohibition faction within the Democratic Party and an anti-Prohibition faction within the Republican Party.
Voting behavior by religion, northern USA late 19th century Religion % Dem % Rep Immigrants Irish Catholics 80 20 All Catholics 70 30 Confessional German Lutherans 65 35 German Reformed 60 40 French Canadian Catholics 50 50 Less Confessional German Lutherans 45 55 English Canadians 40 60 British Stock 35 65 German Sectarians 30 70 Norwegian Lutherans 20 80 Swedish Lutherans 15 85 Haugean Norwegians 5 95 Natives Northern Stock Quakers 5 95 Free Will Baptists 20 80 Congregational 25 75 Methodists 25 75 Regular Baptists 35 65 Blacks 40 60 Presbyterians 40 60 Episcopalians 45 55 Southern Stock Disciples 50 50 Presbyterians 70 30 Baptists 75 25 Methodists 90 10 Source: Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System 1853–1892 (1979) p. 182
Realignment in the 1850s The Republican Party emerged from the great political realignment of the mid-1850s. William Gienapp argues that the great realignment of the 1850s began before the Whig party demise, and was caused not by politicians but by voters at the local level. The central forces were ethno-cultural, involving tensions between pietistic Protestants versus liturgical Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians regarding Catholicism, prohibition, and nativism. Various prohibitionist and nativist movements emerged, especially the American Party, based originally on the secret Know Nothing lodges. It was a moralistic party that appealed to the middle-class fear of corruption—identifying that danger with Catholics, especially the recent Irish immigrants who seemed to bring crime, corruption, poverty and bossism as soon as they arrived. Anti-slavery did play a role but it was less important at first.
The Know Nothing party embodied the social forces at work, but its weak leadership was unable to solidify its organization, and the Republicans picked it apart. Nativism was so powerful that the Republicans could not avoid it, but they did minimize it and turn voter wrath against the threat that slave owners would buy up the good farm lands wherever slavery was allowed. The realignment was so powerful because it forced voters to switch parties, as typified by the rise and fall of the Know Nothings, the rise of the Republican Party, and the splits in the Democratic Party during the transitional period of 1854–1858. The Republican Party was more driven, in terms of ideology and talent; it surpassed the hapless American Party in 1856. By 1858 the Republicans controlled majorities in every Northern state, and hence controlled the electoral votes for president in 1860.Holt (1978)William Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (Oxford UP, 1987)William Gienapp, "Nativism and the Creation of a Republican Majority in the North before the Civil War". Journal of American History 72.3 (1985): 529-559 online
Ideology The ideological force driving the new party was modernization, and opposition to slavery, that anti-modern threat. By 1856 the Republicans were crusading for "Free Soil, Free Labor, Frémont and Victory." The main argument was that a 'Slave Power' had seized control of the federal government and would try to make slavery legal in the territories, and perhaps even in the northern states. That would give rich slave owners the chance to go anywhere and buy up the best land, thus undercutting the wages of free labor and destroying the foundations of civil society. The Democratic response was to countercrusade in 1856, warning that the election of Republican candidate John C. Frémont would produce civil war.
The outstanding leader of the Democrats was Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas; he believed that the democratic process in each state or territory should settle the slavery question. When President James Buchanan tried to rig politics in Kansas Territory to approve slavery, Douglas broke with him, presaging the split that ruined the party in 1860. That year, northern Democrats nominated Douglas as the candidate of democracy, while the southern wing put up John Breckinridge as the upholder of the rights of property and of states' rights, which in this context meant slavery. In the South, ex-Whigs organized an ad hoc "Constitutional Union" Party, pledging to keep the nation united on the basis of the Constitution, regardless of democracy, states' rights, property or liberty.
The Republicans played it safe in 1860, passing over better-known radicals in favor of a moderate border-state politician known to be an articulate advocate of liberty. Abraham Lincoln made no speeches, letting the party apparatus march the armies to the polls. Even if all three of Lincoln's opponents had formed a common ticket–quite impossible in view of their ideological differences–his 40 percent of the vote was enough to carry the North and thus win the electoral college.Foner (1995); Silbey (1991)
Civil War