Conserving a Democracy for White Men

Challenges traditional narratives that portray Civil War politics primarily through partisan divisions.

Through examining Indiana politics before, during, and after the Civil War, this book brings recent scholarship on northern conservatives and the Midwest together to explain the behavior of a critical set of voters. Beginning in the 1850s and continuing to the 1880s, a group of voters emerged in Indiana, and by extension the Midwest, that wanted to defend the economic and political systems their ancestors had established. These legal, ideological, and political systems helped maintain a rough material equality between white men in Indiana through banning slavery, enfranchising most white men, and targeted government intervention in the economy. They likewise revered the Union. As racial and economic turmoil engulfed the nation beginning in the 1850s, Indiana conservatives reacted. They balanced their devotion to their political and economic systems with their devotion to the Union. Politicians appealed to these voters by advocating conservatism, or an approach to politics, with a constellation of policies meant to defend these long established economic and political systems while keeping the Union together. Conservatives held the balance of power in the state and throughout the region, drawing politicians toward them. Though most found a home in the Democratic Party, enough supported Abraham Lincoln in 1860, helping to deliver him the presidency. After the war began, Republicans began taking more radical measures to preserve the Union, threatening the Midwest’s political and economic systems. Conservative Republicans began leaving the party, handing Democrats wins in 1862. Though Republicans won back enough in 1864 to give Lincoln another term, their postwar efforts to reconstruct the South alienated conservatives. More of the crucial voters began leaving the party, eventually forcing Republicans to abandon Reconstruction by the mid-1870s.