These included six United States Senators: The following were Populist members of the U.S. House of Representatives: This article is about the 19th century political party. "Populism and Socialism, with Special Reference to the Election of 1892,". He ran for President two times on third party tickets in the late 19th century. With his short stature and comically folksy sayings, Perot charmed Americans who saw him as an anti-politician. Tennessee's Populist Party was demoralized by a diminishing membership, and puzzled and split by the dilemma of whether to fight the state-level enemy (the Democrats) or the national foe (the Republicans and Wall Street). If the civil rights agendathe most contentious issue of the electionwas debated in the House, the Dixiecrats would have a chance at winning, they thought. And lets not forget, hes also facing some pretty substantial legal issues. The ticket won 5 states; its best showing was Nevada where it received 66.8% of the vote. In the latter regions, the Populists received the support of union officials like Knights of Labor leader Terrence Powderly and railroad organizer Eugene V. Debs, as well as author Edward Bellamy's Nationalist Clubs. Weaver setting his sights on adding new Green MLAs to the B.C. He served with distinction in the Civil War (186165), enlisting as a private in the Union army and rising through the ranks until he was mustered out with the rank of brevet brigadier general. (Buchanan had often been accused of antisemitism and was a little too closely connected to white supremacist activists for the broader electorate. Weaver crossed the country in a national speaking tour in hopes of winning the support of farmers, but the partys inclusion of Black farmers blocked any chance of success in the South, which went for the Democrat Grover Cleveland, who ultimately beat Benjamin Harrison to win the presidency. [82] Populist activists retired from politics, joined a major party, or followed Debs into the Socialist Party. After the war he antagonized Iowa Republican leaders by his reformist temperament, his Methodist-inspired Prohibitionism, criticism of the railroads, and advocacy of easy money. Born in Ohio, he moved to Iowa as a boy when his family claimed a homestead on the frontier. Articles from Britannica Encyclopedias for elementary and high school students. Like other third-party candidates, Nader believed that Republicans and Democrats would not listen without a challenge. In 1892 the Populist presidential candidate, James B. Weaver, polled 22 electoral votes and more than one million popular votes. After what he and many Democrats saw as a catastrophic Grover Cleveland term that yielded mass deflation in agricultural strongholds, the Democratic convention to nominate a candidate for the 1896 election became a stage to debate and solidify the partys position on the money question. James B. Weaver helped found the People's Party in 1891, a group commonly known as the "Populists." Weaver was a politician and a large part of the Greenback movement. His almost singularly white rural appeal rendered him unable to win any electoral voteheavy Northeast states. Although the Populist surge carried five states and more than 8 percent of the total vote, Cleveland won with 46 percent of the popular vote to Harrison's 43 percent. The agrarians created the People's or Populist Party, drafted a platform, and nominated James B. Weaver for president and James G. Field for vice president. [35], The Populists appealed most strongly to voters in the South, the Great Plains, and the Rocky Mountains. Bush and Bill Clinton on the nostalgic idea of bringing back the imagined Norman Rockwellesque simpler times, appealing to a good number of conservative voters who appreciated his hard line on immigration and drugs. [52] Meanwhile, leading Democrats increasingly distanced themselves from Cleveland's gold standard policies in the aftermath of their performance in the 1894 elections. Its goals were to enhance efficiency, reduce waste, and enlarge the opportunities for upward social mobility. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. They demanded an increase in the circulating currency (to be achieved by the unlimited coinage of silver), a graduated income tax, government ownership of the railroads, a tariff for revenue only, the direct election of U.S. senators, and other measures designed to strengthen political democracy and give farmers economic parity with business and industry. Whig is a short form of the word . Many white Democrats, even some who viewed themselves as moderate or liberal on race issues, were entranced by Wallaces outspokenness and law and order platform. After La Follette supported Woodrow Wilsons 1912 campaign, thereby inciting a feud with fellow progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt, his political allegiances shifted: He was uninvolved with creating Roosevelts aforementioned Progressive Party. Former Populists became inactive or joined other parties. [7], Angered by these developments, some farmers and other groups began calling for the government to permanently adopt fiat currency. He was the first third-party candidate since the Civil War to win electoral votes,[44] while Field was first Southern candidate to win electoral votes since the 1872 election. Skirmisher: The Life, Times, and Political Career of James B. Weaver Paperback - November 1, 2015 by Robert B. Mitchell (Author) 7 ratings See all formats and editions The interests of rural and urban labor are the same; their enemies are identical. Gene Clanton, "Populism, Progressivism, and Equality: The Kansas Paradigm", For a summary or how historians approach the topic see Worth Robert Miller, "A Centennial Historiography of American Populism.". Both opposed corruption and trusts. [28], The February 1892 Farmer's Alliance convention was attended by supporters of Edward Bellamy and Henry George,[29] as well as current and former members of the Greenback Party, Prohibition Party, Anti-Monopoly Party, Labor Reform Party, Union Labor Party, United Labor Party, Workingmen Party, and dozens of other minor parties. The late 1960s marked an era of deindustrialization, divestment, and white flight from urban centers, resulting in a series of racialized riots. [20] Though a full merger was not achieved, the Farmer's Alliance and the Knights of Labor jointly endorsed the St. Louis Platform, which included many of the long-standing demands of the Farmer's Alliance. He became involved in the anti-slavery movement after reading Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Corrections? Their nominee was Iowan James Weaver, who had previously run under the Greenback Party. In 1900, many Populist voters supported Bryan again (though Marion Butler's home county of Sampson swung heavily to Republican McKinley in a backlash against the state Democratic party), but the weakened party nominated a separate ticket of Wharton Barker and Ignatius L. Donnelly, and disbanded afterward. The Populist merger with the Democrats spelled the effective dissolution of the Populist Party and the waning of Weavers political career. He won only 39, from four states in the Deep South, and just 2.4 percent of the popular vote. The People's Party Publishing Company, [1892]. In order to fund that war, the U.S. government had left the gold standard by issuing fiat paper currency known as Greenbacks. Despite a telegram from Bryan indicating that he would not accept the Populist nomination if the party did not also nominate Sewall, the convention chose Tom Watson as the party's vice presidential nominee. These measures were collectively designed to curb the influence of monopolistic corporate and financial interests and empower small businesses, farmers and laborers. Historians see the Populists as a reaction to the power of corporate interests in the Gilded Age, but they debate the degree to which the Populists were anti-modern and nativist. The ticket's best result was Texas, where it received 5.0% of the vote. Unlike the election four year prior, Harrison did not run a . Despite the support of labor organizers like Eugene V. Debs and Terence V. Powderly, the party largely failed to win the vote of urban laborers in the Midwest and the Northeast. 2. But this rise was accompanied by Southern Democrats attacks on the Populists. Roger Stone floated the idea of the Reform Party as Buchanans next political home, and Buchanan jumped at the idea. Donald Trump is faring better among his partys voters, but not too significantly. Candidates and issues Benjamin Harrison Whitelaw Reid [53], The Populists became increasingly polarized between moderate "fusionists" like Taubeneck and radical "mid-roaders" (named for their desire to take a middle road between Democrats and Republicans) like Tom Watson. Walter Lippmann, A Preface to Politics, New York and London: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913, p. 275. It was elitist, and emphasized education and expertise. A rump faction of the party continued to operate into the first decade of the 20th century, but never matched the popularity of the party in the early 1890s. It emerged after the 1890s from the urban business and professional communities. The Populist Party effectively split after Bryans 1896 loss into a socialist faction under Eugene V. Debs and a Democratic coalition, but its ethos and rhetoric had a long influence on presidential politics. He ran for president with the Populist party in 1892. What Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is Trying to Tell Us With Those Beefy, Pulsating, Big-Man Muscles. The Great Commoner, as he was known, was a man of many words: He earned his populist reputation as a renowned orator who relied on charm and delivery that often swayed voters more than his actual policies did. [67] Defying those hopes, Taubeneck arranged for the 1896 Populist National Convention to take place one week after the 1896 Democratic National Convention. [31] Journalists covering the fledgling party began referring to it as the "Populist Party," and that term quickly became widely popular. There were posters, political cartoons, speeches, rallies, parades, brass bands, and torchlight demonstrations. These Silverites, who formed groups like the Silver Party and the Silver Republican Party, became particularly strong in Western mining states like Nevada and Colorado. "Political Fusion in Iowa: The Election of James B. Weaver to Congress in 1878." . In the short run, though, Buchanans campaign was most influential in its simple presence on the ballot. McKinleys backing by Northeast elites, wealthy farmers, and skilled workers is credited with winning him the election. [2], The initial front-runner for the Populist Party's presidential nomination was Leonidas Polk, who had served as the chairman of the convention in St. Louis, but he died of an illness weeks before the Populist convention. Bryan ran for president in two subsequent elections as the Democratic Partys nominee, losing each time, and eventually served two years as Woodrow Wilsons secretary of state. [17] In 1887, the Farmer's Alliance merged with the Louisiana Farmers Union and expanded into the South and the Great Plains. [61] After 1886, black farmers started organizing local agricultural groups along the lines the Farmer's Alliance advocated, and in 1888 the national Colored Alliance was established. His supporters saw him as honest and principled, his detractors as pompous and out of touch. You might think, facing the exhausting prospect of a rehashed election, Americans would embrace an upstart challenger. [36] In the Rocky Mountains, Populist voters were motivated by support for free silver (bimetallism), opposition to the power of railroads, and clashes with large landowners over water rights. With then-Gov. Winning Texas with 15 was his crowning achievement; in comparison, McKinley won New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinoisall with between 24 and 36 allocated votes. They attacked and overcame the Fusionists; mobs roamed the black neighborhoods, shooting, killing, burning buildings, and making a special target of the black newspaper. Thus, in 1892 their leaders organized the Populist, or Peoples, Party, and the Farmers Alliances melted away. Corrections? These parties were not directly related to the Populist Party. Millions fell into unemployment and poverty, and groups like Coxey's Army organized protest marches in Washington, D.C.[47] Party membership grew in several states; historian Lawrence Goodwyn estimates that in the mid-1890s the party had "a following of anywhere from 25 to 45 percent of the electorate in twenty-odd states. Most of its activists had opposed populism. Wallaces 10 million votes came from voters on both sides; they were significant, and almost substantial enough to achieve his goal of sending the election to the House of Representatives. Voters across the spectrum admired his fixation on fiscal responsibility and commonsense aphorisms. Populism emerged earlier and came out of the farm community. [13] In the hopes of cementing an alliance with labor groups, the Farmer's Alliance supported the Knights of Labor in the Great Southwest railroad strike of 1886. 4. james weaver Retweeted. [64] Members of the anti-Catholic American Protective Association were influential in California's Populist Party organization, and some Populists embraced the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the Rothschild family sought to control the United States. In the next election, Republicans nominated a conservative candidate favored by the banks, doubling down on the opposition. Colbert, Thomas Burnell. The Dixiecrats wanted to earn 127 electoral votes, making it impossible for either of the major parties to win the election, in which case the decision would belong to the House of Representatives. He directed most of his attacks on his Republican rival, causing some strategists to blame him for Bushs loss. After the war, the Eastern financial establishment strongly favored a return to the gold standard for both ideological reasons (they believed that money must be backed by gold which, they argued, had intrinsic value) and economic gain (a return to the gold standard would make their government bonds more valuable). Nader rejected these overtures in 1972 and 1980, stood in as a write-in candidate in 1992, and represented various state Green parties in 1996. The subsequent defeat of Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan signalled the collapse of one of the most challenging protest movements in the United States since abolitionism. But in addition to that mainstay nomination, Bryan was also ticketed with a different vice presidential candidate for the Populist Party, which had formulated from a coalition of agitated farmers as a reaction to the rapid industrialization, mechanization, and financialization of the Gilded Age. [34] The platform also called for a graduated income tax, direct election of Senators, a shorter workweek, restrictions on immigration to the United States, and public ownership of railroads and communication lines. Miller, Worth Robert. Nixon narrowly won the popular vote, but he overwhelmingly won the Electoral College with 301 votes; Humphrey netted 191. After he lost six primaries, he withdrew to run instead as an independent. And although the Populists knew they were a long shot to win the race, they had reason to believe that a radical shake-up was possible: Weavers generation had seen the death of one major party (the Whigs) and the birth of another (the Republicans). Hofstadter noted that leading progressives like Theodore Roosevelt, Robert La Follette Sr., George Norris and Woodrow Wilson were vehement enemies of Populism, though Bryan cooperated with them and accepted the Populist nomination in 1896. Michael Kazin's The Populist Persuasion (1995) argues that Populism reflected a rhetorical style that manifested itself in spokesmen like Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s and Governor George Wallace in the 1960s. Crown, who also turned 70 on Sunday . [69], The 1896 Republican National Convention nominated William McKinley, a long-time Republican leader who was best known for leading the passage of 1890 McKinley Tariff. Democratic incumbent Harry Truman (who had assumed the presidency after FDRs death) won with 303 electoral votes and a plurality of the popular vote (49.1 percent). White Populists embraced social-Darwinist notions of racial improvement, Chinese exclusion and separate-but-equal. "[57] In an attempt to get the party to repudiate the Omaha Platform in favor of free silver, Taubeneck called a party convention in December 1894. Buchanan faced a momentary threat from Trump, who called off his campaign before it launched, citing the Reform Partys extremism. In a case study of California Populists, historian Michael Magliari found that Populist voters influenced reform movements in California's Democratic Party and Socialist Party, but had a smaller impact on California's Republican Party. In North Carolina, the state Democratic Party orchestrated a propaganda campaign in newspapers across the state, and created a brutal and violent white supremacy election campaign to defeat the North Carolina Populists and GOP, the Fusionist revolt in North Carolina collapsed in 1898, and white Democrats returned to power. North Carolina's 7th congressional district, North Carolina's 1st congressional district, North Carolina's 4th congressional district, North Carolina's 6th congressional district, North Carolina's 3rd congressional district, North Carolina's 5th congressional district, South Dakota's 1st congressional district, South Dakota's 2nd congressional district, List of political parties in the United States, "How Can Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders Both Be 'Populist'? He was surprisingly popular among newspaper columnists, liberal Hollywood stars, and college students, mainly because he came off as more of a principled scholar than a polished politician, citing statistics and stubbornly sticking to his unpopular stances as he demanded that his party act more charitably and honorably. "A Centennial Historiography of American Populism. Born in 1855 in Terre Haute, Indiana, Debs dropped out of school at 14 and worked as a locomotive paint scraper, a fireman, an activist, and a labor organizer before entering politics. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver reads from hate-filled emails he has posted on a wall in his Victoria lab. Rather, they argue, the Populists aggressively sought self-consciously progressive goals. McKinley initially sought to downplay the gold standard in favor of campaigning on higher tariff rates, but he agreed to fully endorse the gold standard at the insistence of Republican donors and party leaders. He died shortly after the conflict, in 1919. [76] Watson, ostensibly Bryan's running mate, campaigned on a platform of "Straight Populism" and frequently attacked Sewall as an agent for "the banks and railroads." [71], When the Populist convention met, fusionists proposed that the Populists nominate the Democratic ticket, while mid-roaders organized to defeat fusionist efforts. In 1895 the legislature rewarded its black allies with patronage, naming 300 black magistrates in eastern districts, as well as deputy sheriffs and city policemen. Goodwyn determines that the farmers' cooperatives gave rise to a Populist culture, and their efforts to free farmers from lien merchants revealed to them the political structure of the economy, which propelled them into politics. The Populists sought federal regulations of those railroads, as well as an expansion of the currency, a graduated income tax, and collective bargainingall in an effort to harness the frustrations of the working class when the conservative wings controlled both major parties platforms. For the party in Utah, see, Between presidential elections, 18931895, Populist-Republican fusion in North Carolina, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from, The income tax provision was struck down by the Supreme Court in the 1895 case of, Andrea Meryl Kirshenbaum, "'The Vampire That Hovers Over North Carolina': Gender, White Supremacy, and the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898,". While in jail, it is said, Debs underwent his evolution from industrial cooperationist to revolutionary socialist and began formulating a new Social Democratic Party. Progress, however, was also menacing and inhumane, Postel notes. For vice president, the party nominated conservative shipping magnate Arthur Sewall. In the South, however, most farmers refused to endanger white supremacy by voting against the Democratic Party. He served as a small-town Iowa mayor and local historian in his later years. "Farmers and Third-Party Politics in Late Nineteenth Century America," in, Peterson, James. Buchanan would renege on his promise to stay in the Reform Party shortly after the election, returning to the GOP in 2004. Debs ran his final presidential campaign from prison, and won nearly 1 million votes once more. In 62, he ran for governor for the first time and won his first of four nonconsecutive terms. [10] Greenback nominee James B. Weaver won over three percent of the vote in the 1880 presidential election, but the Greenback Party was unable to build a durable base of support, and it collapsed in the 1880s. Scholars also continue to debate the magnitude of influence the Populists exerted on later organizations and movements, such as the progressives of the early 20th century. His extremism translated to some surprise success in New Hampshire, rattling the party. After the war, he failed to win public office and joined the nascent Greenback Party, which demanded a greater money supply, expanded business regulations, and espoused more progressive labor policies. Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The Democrats, however, acceded to their left flanks demands, putting forward the free-silver candidate William Jennings Bryan. [2] The original generic definition of the term, which has held consistently since the emergence of its post-Populist Party genericness, describes a populist as "a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people. James Baird Weaver, the son of a farmer, was born in Dayton, Ohio, on 12th June, 1833. He delivered several speeches in Texas and the Midwest before returning to his home in Georgia for the remainder of the election. In the United States, the term "populist" originally referred to the Populist Party and related left-wing movements of the late 19th century that wanted to curtail the power of the corporate and financial establishment. 2023 On Election Day, Weaver won twenty-two electoral votes and 8.. [26], In December 1890, a Farmer's Alliance convention re-stated the organization's platform with the Ocala Demands; Farmer's Alliance leaders also agreed to hold another convention in early 1892 to discuss the possibility of establishing a third party if Democrats failed to adopt their policy goals. Despite running several times before, Debs brought a unique and calculated working-class appeal to a field of reformists. The United States was deeply polarized by the sectional politics of the post-Civil War era; most Northerners remained firmly attached to the Republican Party, while most Southerners identified with the Democratic Party. The former assistant Navy secretary abhorred Wilsons decision to remain neutral for some time. In 1904, the party was reorganized, and Watson was its nominee for president in 1904 and 1908, after which the party disbanded again.