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This chapter moves from the mass public to the halls of Congress. Paralleling the previous chapter, it describes the ideological evolution and continuing diversity of Southern senators and representatives, focusing again on their positions on economic issues. Using an item response theory (IRT) model similar to that used to estimate mass conservatism, this chapter shows that between the 1930s and 1940s Southern members of Congress (MCs), like the Southern white public, turned sharply but incompletely against New Deal liberalism. By the mid-1940s, Southern Democrats in Congress had come to occupy a pivotal position on economic issues midway between non-Southern Democrats and Republicans, giving them outsized influence over national policymaking in the wake of the New Deal. The chapter illustrates these developments with three of the four policy areas which Chapter 3 examines at the mass level. Moreover, taking proper account of the ideological diversity of Southern MCs requires treating them as a collection of individuals, not a reified bloc. This chapter therefore analyzes Southern Democrats (along with other MCs) as individuals with possibly distinct preferences.

The South's response to the growth of an antislavery movement in the North proved disastrous to Southern white people. James Polk — the most powerful Southern politician in the late 1840s — imposed his will upon Mexicans and upon the Whig Party, but he failed to develop alternatives to the self-destructive tendencies of Southern Democrats. Instead of acknowledging that most Northern antislavery leaders respected the constitutional right of each Southern state to reach its own decisions about the future of slavery, Polk smeared every such leader with the “abolitionist” label. Instead of resolutely opposing Southern disunionism, he declared that disunionism was the natural response to the growth of an antislavery movement. The ultimate triumph of a secessionist policy arguably owed much to the suicidal policies pursued by influential Southern Democrats like James Polk.

This chapter considers the role of intra-party factions in the American Congress. Factions are integral players in Congress that shape members’ preferences, develop policy agendas, and push those agendas on Capitol Hill. In pursuing their objectives, factions will often strive to redistribute power in Congress—sometimes going even so far as to change congressional rules to enhance their position. Factions are thus key actors in the creation and destruction of congressional “regimes”—the various structures and practices by which power is concentrated or dispersed in both chambers. The analysis of factions and their strategies takes us beyond the debate about whether parties matter. What happens within the parties at important moments can be as consequential as what the parties themselves do. The activity of factions has profound implications not only for the larger parties in which they reside, but also for the way Congress functions as a whole.

Polk's purpose in securing the speedy annexation of Texas had been to expand plantation slavery into that vast domain. But this was not his aim in provoking war with Mexico; instead, Polk's principal purpose was continentalist — to expand the American empire — an aim he shared with many Northerners. Nevertheless, the Mexican War was as dangerous to the American Union as if slavery expansion had been the president's purpose. This was because Polk believed that the federal government must recognize Southern rights to extend slavery at least south of the Missouri Compromise line, even if it should prove impracticable to establish slavery very vigorously anywhere in the arid Southwest. Polk felt slavery could not be secure in the Southern states unless the right to take slaves into some of those territories were to receive federal recognition.

The self-destruction of the slave system from 1860 to 1865 cannot be attributed primarily to an eccentric group of South Carolina extremists. The real responsibility for secession was widespread throughout the Deep South and the middle South, and it fell most heavily on Democratic Party leaders such as James Polk and his successors. Their ideology — an expanded version of states' rights, plus unconstrained economic individualism — meshed perfectly with the short-term interests of slavemasters and would-be slavemasters. But Polk and his Southern Democratic colleagues (aided by many of their Northern Democratic allies) did nothing at all to open the eyes of the electorate to the long-term interests of Southern whites. Secession was on the cards from the moment Polk launched his war against Mexico in May 1846. The language of key addresses by President Polk suggested that, when the crunch finally came, nearly the whole Southern Democratic Party would follow South Carolina into secession.

For generations many assumed that Democratic hegemony in the South would last forever. Civil rights and the national Democratic Party’s move to the left reconfigured partisan competition in the South. By the 1970s, the South became a crucial battleground in the election of the president and Republican gains in the region started to trickle down to statewide elections and eventually to local offices. The realignment of the southern electorate looked complete by the 2000s with near GOP control of the region, but recent elections have shown some swing back to the Democrats in several Growth States.

The Purchase was different from the rest of the state for several reasons. Geography, early settlement patterns, trade ties, proslavery Democratic politics, and evangelical Christian religion contributed to Purchase secessionism. But the most crucial factor was the growth of an economy rooted in slavery. Statewide, slavery declined after 1830. In 1860, proslavery southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge carried the Purchase, while conservative Constitutional Unionist John Bell carried Kentucky. In early 1861, the Kentucky legislature spurned secession. While some vestiges of Unionism remained in the Purchase, most citizens considered Abraham Lincoln's election grounds for secession.

This chapter focuses on Roger B. Taney and how he hoped that the U.S. Supreme Court could play a configurative role in the Civil War. Providence had preserved him for this moment, he thought. With the departure of the Southern Democrats from Congress, only the courts stood in the path of fanatical Republicanism, which controlled the executive and legislative branches. The question was, how could a judge make anything happen? Original jurisdiction in habeas corpus cases for federal prisoners gave Taney his chance, and he seized it eagerly in May 1861. His opinion in this early case, however, called Ex parte Merryman, did not rally Democrats to frustrate the salvation of the nation or to mount a crusade for endangered civil liberties, or even to organize for the next elections. The opportunity of original jurisdiction now perhaps squandered, he had to wait.