The Progressive Era

How could America experience a great leap into statism after 1900, a leap that went virtually unchallenged? What happened to the long-standing American tradition of individual liberty and laissez-faire? How could it so meekly roll over and play dead after having been dominant, or at least vibrant, during the last half of the 19th century, and for over half a century before that? To answer this question, we must explore what the “new political historians,” in the past decade, have been analyzing as the sudden end of the “third party system” in the United States in the year 1896.1 It was that sudden collapse that spelled the doom of laissez-faire in American party politics and paved the way for the unchallenged statism of the Progressive Period and, indeed, for the remainder of the 20th century.

1. The Third Party System

For the last decade or so, political historians have been analyzing not merely individual elections, but the way in which the political parties and their constituencies have interrelated, persisted, and then changed over time. They have identified a series of “party systems,” of such structural political relationships, in American history. The first was between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans, a conflict which began in the 1790s and continued approximately until the War of 1812. After that, America had a single party, which continued until the late 1820s, when the Democratic Party was developed to challenge the existing party, and this precipitated the formation of the Whig Party in opposition. The Democrats vs. the Whigs, lasting from the 1820s until the 1850s, constituted the second American party system. The formation of the Republican Party in the 1850s over the slavery question and the disappearance of the Whigs precipitated the third party system.

The most important point to note is that all three party systems in the 19th century differed radically from the American party system today. Political scientists, journalists, and the Establishment generally laud the current two party system as gloriously non-ideological — as providing very little choice between fuzzy programs which overlap almost completely — so that the only choice in this bipartisan haze of issues is between the personalities of the candidates rather than the programs of the parties. Political parties, and more particularly party programs and platforms, mean very little these days in the actual conduct of government, particularly in the dominant executive branch, whether on the federal, state, or local level. Deprived of meaningful choice, the public manifests increasing apathy, voter participation rates steadily drop, and more and more people call themselves “independent” rather than identify with any particular party.

It was not always thus. In the 19th century, during all three party systems, the parties were fiercely ideological. Their constituencies were partisan, and voter participation rates in elections were very high. Platforms meant something and were battled over. So firmly drawn were the lines that it was rare for a Republican to vote Democrat or vice versa; disenchantment in one’s party was rather reflected in a failure to vote. The drive of each party, therefore, was not to capture the floating independent voter by moving toward the middle, but, on the contrary, to whip up the enthusiasm of its own militant supporters, and thereby to “bring out the new vote.”

Throughout the 19th century — with the single and grave exception of slavery — the Democratic Party (and before it, the Democratic-Republicans) was the libertarian, laissez-faire party — the “party of personal liberty,” of free trade, of hard money, the separation of the economy, religion, and virtually everything else from the State; the opponent of Big Government, high taxes, public works (“internal improvements”), judicial oligarchy, or federal power, the champion of the free press, unrestricted immigration, state and individual rights. The Federalists, on the other hand, and after them the Whigs and then the Republicans, were the party of statism: of Big Government, public works, a large public debt, government subsidies to industry, protective tariffs, opposition to aliens and immigrants, and of cheap money and government control of banking (through a central bank, or later, through the quasi-centralized national banking system). The Whigs, in particular, strove to use the State to compel personal morality: through a drive for Prohibition, Sunday blue laws, or a desire to outlaw the Masons as a secret society. The Republicans, who were essentially the Whigs with the admixture of anti-slavery Democrats, became known quite aptly as “the party of great moral ideas.” After the Civil War, when slavery was no longer a blot on America, the Democrats could be a far less sullied champion of personal liberty, while the Republican drive for “moral ideas” became more susceptible to libertarian irony, being fully coercive and now in no sense liberating.2

The first party system began in the 1790s when the Democratic-Republican Party was launched in order to combat the Federalist program of economic statism: high tariffs, public works, centralized government, public debt, government control of banking and cheap money, and of repressive federal tyranny against Democratic critics in the press. The Democratic-Republicans also strove to end the ultimate control of the government by a judicial oligarchy and to end militarism by abolishing the navy and standing army. After winning with Thomas Jefferson’s assumption to the presidency in 1800 and partially achieving their platform, the Democratic-Republicans faltered and then themselves began to go down the road to federalism by driving toward war with their ancient foe, Great Britain. The pro-British Federalists were effectively destroyed for opposing the War of 1812, but their program was put into effect by their foes in the course of launching and fighting a (necessarily statist) war: high protective tariffs, federal domestic excise taxation, a central bank, inflationary bank credit expansion, public debt, public works, and, to boot, a one party system by the end of the war.

Brooding in retirement at Monticello, Jefferson lamented at what his Virginia successors to the presidency, James Madison and James Monroe, had wrought. They had ended by installing a one party Federalism without the Federalists. Being human, Jefferson was not as keenly alive to his own crucial role in launching the drive toward war and therefore toward the very Federalism that he so bitterly deplored. Inspired and converted by separate weekend pilgrimages to Monticello, two important young politicians: Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and especially Martin Van Buren of New York, determined to take up the mighty task of creating a new political party, a party designed to take back America from Federalism, and to restore the good old principles of ’76 (the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence) and of ’98 (of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions which called for a virtual revolution of states against the despotic national Alien and Sedition Laws). Basing themselves in New York, Missouri, and on the old Jeffersonians in Virginia, the new party sought a charismatic leader and found him in Andrew Jackson. The new Democratic Party was born, dedicated to personal liberty, minimal government, free trade, hard money, and the separation of government from banking. The opposition Whigs revived the nationalist-statist Federalist program, except that the Whigs were more interested in compulsory morality and restricting the flood of immigrants, and adopted demagogic democratic techniques and rhetoric in contrast to the frankly elitist and anti-universal suffrage and anti-democratic outlook of the Federalist Party.

It should be noted that in both of the first two party systems, the libertarian, laissez-faire party slowly but surely began to establish itself as the dominant majority party in America. The Federalists faded with the triumph of Jefferson, but Jeffersonian principles could not survive the drive that he himself had launched toward war. In the second party system, too, the Democrats began to establish themselves as the majority party, and it seemed once again as if America would move rapidly toward the libertarian, laissez-faire ideal. On the federal level, the quite feasible Jacksonian plan was to have eight years of Jackson, eight of Van Buren, and eight of Benton — 24 solid years in which to achieve their goals. Eight years of Jackson from 1828 to 1836 was indeed succeeded by four years of Van Buren. Then, the timetable was briefly interrupted by the victory of the first modern demagogic presidential campaign, replete with all the propaganda techniques we are now familiar with: slogans, parades, buttons, all engineered by the master Whig political technician, Thurlow Weed. But everyone knew that the Democrats, who could easily copy these techniques four years later, would win in 1844, and Van Buren prepared to resume the victorious timetable. But then, the great issue of the expansion of slavery came to split the Democratic Party — in the form of the admission of Texas to the Union as a slave state — and Jackson and Van Buren also split on the issue. While the Democrats remained Jacksonian in most matters, Jacksonianism was pushed to the background as the Democrats became a Southern-based pro-slave party. The Republican Party, including some Northern Democrats, was then founded in the 1850s to become the party opposed to slave expansion and, then, in the Civil War, to uphold the unitary power of the national Union as against the right of state secession. The third American party system had begun.

The Republican Party, which only got 40% of the popular vote in 1860, seized the opportunity presented by the South’s walkout and the resulting near one party Congress to ram through the old Whig economic program: inflationary paper money, central control over banking, high tariffs, massive government subsidies to railroads, high federal excise taxation over the “immoral” commodities liquor and cigarettes, plus such centralizing and statist measures as conscription and the income tax. It is no wonder that the Republicans should have been dominant during and immediately after the War in the Reconstruction period.3

Many historians are under the erroneous impression that the Republicans continued to be dominant until 1912, or even until 1932, with only two terms of Grover Cleveland’s presidency interrupting the smooth march of Republican victory. This impression, however, is mistaken. As the new political historians have reminded us, the Democratic Party captured the House of Representatives in 1874 — and followed by really gaining the presidency in 1876, only to see it purloined in Congress by the Republicans in a bargain that liquidated Reconstruction in the South. From 1874 until 1896, a space of 22 years, the two parties were nip-and- tuck in all races for the Congress and the presidency. From 1875 to 1895, the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives in only two out of the ten sessions, reaching the peak of their control in 1888 with 51.1% of the House membership. But, on the other hand, though the Democrats controlled the House in eight of the ten sessions, their peak membership was 71% in 1890, and only five times did they receive as much as 55.0% of the total vote. In the five presidential contests between 1876 and 1892, the Republicans captured only three races, and two of the victories (1876 and 1888) were achieved with fewer popular votes than the Democratic nominee. The Republican presidential nominee did not receive a majority of the popular vote in any election between 1876 and 1892, and had a plurality only in 1880, and then by only a couple thousand votes. On the other hand, the Democrats only controlled the Senate twice in the 20 year period in 1878–80 and 1892–94. Only once did the Republicans control the presidency and both houses of Congress at the same time, and only once did the Democrats accomplish the same feat.

Furthermore, the Democrats were slowly gaining the ascendancy, so that, as happened at the end of the two previous party systems, the Democratic Party was slowly but inexorably moving toward long run dominance. This development was embodied in the Democratic landslide to capture the House in 1890 and in Cleveland’s easy return to a second term in the presidency in 1892, which carried the Democrats to control both houses of Congress for the first clean sweep since the Civil War.4 And then something happened to clobber the Democratic Party in 1896, and to reduce it to a rather pathetic minority party at least until 1912 (and more accurately until 1928 since Woodrow Wilson’s election in 1912 was only made possible by a grave split within Republican ranks). What cataclysmic event occurred in 1896 — so much so as to usher in a new, fourth party system for the next 32 years — will be the subject of the next few chapters.

2. Pietists vs. Liturgicals: The Political Party Constituencies

In 1970, in a brilliant and seminal work titled The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics: 1850–1900, Professor Paul Kleppner provided a cogent and illuminating explanation for the constituencies of the third party systems. It is a thesis since amply confirmed by other historians.5 The thesis explains not only which groups tended to support which parties, but also the specific process by which that support was generated and strengthened.

Briefly, the Kleppner thesis holds that “Pietist” religious groups tended (a) to favor statism, both in the personal and the economic spheres, and (b) therefore consistently supported the Republicans as the statist party, while the Liturgicals, consisting largely of Catholics and conservative Lutherans (a) favored liberty, both in the personal and economic spheres, and (b) therefore supported the Democrats as the Libertarian party. Kleppner, indeed, in examining detailed voting and religious records for the Midwestern states, breaks down Lutherans and other Protestant groups into varying degrees of Pietism and Liturgicalism and is able to show a one-to-one correlation between the degree of commitment to the liturgical outlook and the degree of voting support to the Democratic Party. The great exception to this correlation, of course, was the South, overwhelmingly pietist and yet which voted Democratic because of the special circumstances, memories, and consequences of the Civil War.

The genesis of these differing world outlooks Kleppner analyzes as beginning with basic theology. The pietists were those who held that each individual, rather than the church or the clergy, was responsible for his own salvation. Salvation was a matter, not of following prescribed ritual or even of cleaving to a certain fixed creed, but rather of an intense emotional commitment or conversion experience by the individual, even to the extent of believing himself “born again” in a special “baptism of grace.” Moreover, the outward sign — the evidence to the rest of society for the genuineness and the permanence of a given individual’s conversion —was his continuing purity of behavior. And since each individual was responsible for his own salvation, the pietists concluded that society was duty-bound to aid each man in pursuing his salvation, in promoting his good behavior, and in seeing as best it could that he does not fall prey to temptation. The emphasis of the pietists was on converting the maximum number of persons, and in helping them to become and to remain sound.

Society, therefore, in the institution of the State, was to take it upon itself to aid the weaker brethren by various crusading actions of compulsory morality, and thus to purge the world of sin. The secular and the religious were to be conjoined. In the second half of the 19th century, the pietists concentrated on agitating for three such compulsory measures on the state and local level, to save liturgical “sinners” despite themselves: Prohibition, to eradicate the sin of alcohol; Sunday blue laws, to prevent people from violating the Sabbath; and, increasingly toward the end of the century, compulsory public schooling to “Americanize” the immigrants and “Christianize the Catholics,” and to use the schools to transform Catholics and immigrants (often one and the same) into pietistic Protestant and nativist molds.

The pietists, then, typically concentrated on the purity and propriety of each individual’s behavior. They were not particularly interested in creed or formal theology, and since the emphasis was each individual’s direct confrontation with Christ, they were not particularly concerned with which specific church the person might join. The typical pietist, therefore, switched denominations with relative ease. The pietists, consequently, went heavily for numerous interdenominational societies for social reform; the prohibition drives being a good case in point.6

The liturgicals, on the other hand — largely Catholics and German Lutherans, and also Anglicans — had a very different theological and moral outlook. For the liturgical, the path toward salvation was in the hands of the Church and its priests, and what the individual needed to do was to believe in and practice the prescribed ritual. Given these intellectual rather than emotional beliefs and those rituals, the individual church member need not worry continually over his own salvation; and, as for the salvation of his fellow citizens, that could be accomplished, insofar as was possible, if they joined the Church. The Church rather than the State, then, was in charge of morality and salvation, and hence the State need and should have nothing to do with moral and theological matters. As Professor Jensen, whose studies of the Middle West have confirmed Kleppner’s findings, has put it: “[For the liturgical] the Church itself would attend to all matters of morality and salvation ... hence the State had no right to assert a role in delineating public morality.”7

The liturgical was also rather sensibly puzzled over the intense hostility of the pietists toward alcohol, especially when Jesus himself had drunk wine. “We do not believe in making sin what God made not sin,” was a typical liturgical response. To the liturgical, sin was not such “impure” behavior as drinking alcohol, but heresy and refusal to believe the theological creed of the Church or to obey its prescribed ritual. As Jensen summarized the difference: the Methodists expelled members for impure behavior; the liturgicals for heresy. It was quite clear, moreover, that such theological matters as heresy and liturgy could hardly be considered matters for State intervention and enforcement.

It should be noted that while liturgicals consisted mainly of such groups as Catholics and Lutherans, they also included some sects, such as orthodox Calvinists, who emphasized creed rather than ritual, and so could not in the strict sense be called “liturgical.” Their attitude toward the vital importance of the particular church and of correct belief was similar, however, and this set them apart from the pietistic Protestants. Such groups included “Old School” Presbyterians and a few groups of Baptists.

The liturgical correctly perceived the pietist as the persistent, hectoring busybody and aggressor: hell-bent to deprive him of his Sunday beer and his voluntarily supported parochial schools, so necessary to preserve and transmit his religion and his values. While the pietist was a pestiferous crusader, the liturgical wanted nothing so much as to be left alone. It is no wonder that the Republican Party, the party of the pietists, the party that catered to prohibitionists, blue-law agitators and compulsory public school advocates, was known throughout this period as “the party of great moral ideas.” While the Democrats, the party of the liturgicals, the party deeply opposed to compulsory morality, were known as the “party of personal liberty.”8 ,9

To a late 20th-century observer, one of the most puzzling things about 19th-century party politics is the enormous amount of interest and passion spent on economic issues. Professors who can scarcely interest their own students in economic matters must marvel at presidential campaigns at which such esoteric matters as protective tariffs, central banking, and gold and silver standards were intense objects of general public attention and partisan debate. How did the mass of the public get interested in such arcane matters?

The Kleppner analysis explains this enigma. The interest and passions of both party constituencies were first engaged on the religious-cultural, the gut local level. The constant prods were such issues as liquor, blue laws, and the public schools. Then, with partisan passions engaged on the local and religious level, the leaders and ideologists of both parties were able to widen the consciousness of their respective constituencies to brilliantly link up the local with the national, the personal with the economic. Thus, the Republican leaders would tell their pietist constituents “You believe in strong state and local governments to protect the morals of the public. In the same way, you should favor strong federal government to protect Americans from cheap foreign competition, to expand their purchasing-power through plentiful money and cheap credit (through greenbacks, government control of the banking system, or free silver), government subsidies to business and large-scale public works expenditures.”

At the same time, the Democratic leaders would tell their liturgical constituents, “You know that the pietists are determined to deprive you of your wholesome pleasures such as beer and Sunday sports in the name of their own peculiar version of morality. They are trying to take away your parochial schools. Now the same pietists, the same Republicans, who are nagging and oppressing you on the state level are also trying to interfere with your liberty and property on the federal level. They are trying to expand their local moral paternalism to national economic paternalism. They are trying to tax you to subsidize privileged interests, they are trying to keep you from consuming cheap foreign products, and they are trying to deprive you of the fruits of your thrift and savings through cheap money and inflation.”

In short, both parties were able to link up statism and Big Government in Washington and at home, to connect the economic and the personal. The Republicans, the party of statism, lined up squarely against the Democrats, the party of liberty.10 In those decades, there was continuing drift of both parties from the center, no deliberate fuzzing of the issues and of all differences. On the contrary, the differences were emphasized in order to appeal to the respective constituencies and to keep their interest fired up.

Many historians have concluded that, throughout most of the 19th century, there was an anti-immigrant animus by native-born Americans, and that the Democrats became the immigrant-based party while the Republicans attracted the nativists. But Kleppner shows that the basic division was not really between native-born and immigrants, or between English speaking and foreigners. Pietistic Scandinavian immigrants, for example, identified with native WASPs very quickly and readily voted Republican. The real division was Pietist vs. Liturgical, and it so happened that the bulk of immigrants were indeed liturgicals, so as to make these immigrants a made-to-order target for pietist bigotry. Restricting immigration would almost certainly hit far more severely at liturgicals, and hence benefit the Republican Party.

The emergence of different forms of the Christian religion as the key to political conflicts lends an ironic twist to American history. For twice in the history of America, Christianity had virtually died out. The first time was in the early decades of the 18th century, when Calvinism had given way to the new Enlightenment trends of liberalism and rationalism. But orthodox Christianity revived in the 1730s and 1740s with the Great Awakening — a new form of pietist Christianity which swept the colonies through the revivalist and evangelical methods of intensely emotional and frenzied conversions.11

But then, late in the 18th century, Christianity began to die once more — to be replaced by the rationalist deism of the Enlightenment. By the time the United States was founded, it was clear that Christianity was giving way across the board — among the upper classes and among the general public.

For the second time, however, Christianity made a remarkable comeback — and once again through a series of frenzied revivals that took place throughout the country in the 1820s and 1830s. These revivals, of course, were necessarily pietist, and pietism’s emotional and crusading tone and thrust began with this final upsurge of the early 19th century. Apart from a few Anglicans, there had been very few liturgicals in the America of the 1790s. Essentially, native WASPs were pietist; the ranks of the liturgicals were to be fed, during the 19th century, by Catholic and Lutheran immigrants from Europe.

From the beginning of the revival movement in the 1820s, the resurrected pietists began to form organizations to root out sin among their fellow men. Their two dominant concerns were the sins of slavery and of alcohol. At first, the idea was to ban the saloon, presumably the central iniquity in the dissemination of alcohol. By the late 1830s, the pietists had escalated their demands to include total abstinence and total prohibition, including wine and beer as well as hard liquor. In 1851, the pietists began to succeed, getting liquor totally banned in Maine. This step was followed by numerous other prohibition laws or constitutional amendments in 12 states during the early 1850s.

After 1855, however, the pietists temporarily abandoned the prohibitionist crusade to concentrate on slavery. After the Civil War, the pietists were able to devote all their energies to the evils of alcohol. In 1868, the pietistic prohibitionists founded a secret society, the Good Templars, which soon had 400,000 members. In Michigan, in the following year, the Templars helped form the Prohibitionist Party; the foundation of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union followed in 1874. By the 1880s, prohibition had become the leading political issue in the Middle West and in most of the rest of the country.12

3. Pietists vs. Liturgicals in the Midwest

The Pietist/Liturgical analysis has been worked out most fully for the vitally important Midwestern states, the area where Kleppner himself did his pioneering research, concentrating particularly on three critical states: Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin. In the Midwest, the Republicans began in the 1860s with a substantial lead, obtaining approximately 55% in the presidential elections, while the Democrats obtained about 44%. But then, after 1874, the Republicans could no longer obtain a clear majority. The Republican vote ranged from 49% to 52% from 1876 to 1888, and then fell to 47% in 1892. In Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, the Republicans fell below 50% of the vote by 1874, and never really gained a majority after that. The Democratic rise did not match the Republican decline, the Democratic vote in the Midwest ranging narrowly from 45% to 47% in the presidential contests from 1884 to 1892. It should not be thought that there was any significant shift of blocs of voters from Republican to Democratic; on the contrary, two forces were at work: a defection of Republican voters to third parties, especially the Prohibitionists, and a shift of the relative voting population, so that strong Republican areas became a smaller proportion, and strong Democratic areas a larger proportion, of the total vote.13

As Kleppner points out, the nip-and-tuck struggle in the Midwest was in no sense urban vs. rural, categories that historians tend to look for in explaining conflict. Elections were extremely close, for example, in all the urban areas of the region. In 1888, in the 14 largest cities of Michigan, the Democrats averaged 48% of the vote while the Republicans averaged the same 48%, in the 22 largest cities in Ohio, the respective averages were 48% and 49%, and in the 9 major cities in Wisconsin, the Democrats averaged 46% and the Republicans 45%. It could not get closer than that. What is more, there had been little change in these relative percentages since the 1876 presidential race.

Neither could any class differentiation in voting be detected within the urban wards. In 1888, the correlation between the Democratic percentage and the percentage of working class in the wards was an extremely low +.035, a figure very close to zero. In Detroit, one wealthy ward gave the Democrats 46% of the vote, while another voted a substantial 56% for the Democracy. One the other hand, one very poor ward voted over 70% Democratic, while another, even poorer ward, voted only 47%. On the other hand, if we examine the religious composition of the wards, the party constituencies become clear. The strongest Democratic ward was the most heavily Catholic, largely Polish, while another poor and heavily working class ward had a low Democratic vote, and it was very heavily native-born and Protestant.

Similarly, in Milwaukee, while the four wealthiest wards only voted 40% Democratic in 1888, the five poorest only voted 37%. The poorest and most working-class ward, on the other hand, also voted the strongest Democratic in the city (68%), but another poor and working class ward was also the weakest Democratic (13%); the explanation is that the former was almost wholly Polish Catholic, while the latter was strongly Protestant.

In Chicago, in the same year, the correlation between the percentage of Catholics in each ward and the percentage voting Democratic was a very high +.90, and this correlation persisted whether within lower-class or upper-class wards, the former wards correlating at +.88 and the latter at +.90.

Orthodox historians have claimed that the farmers in this period were overwhelmingly Republican. But the difference was not very great, and in Ohio, in 1888, the parties tied (Republicans at 49%, Democrats at 48%). There was no significant correlation, furthermore, between party votes and the degree of rural prosperity; in fact, townships of the same economic level within the same rural county often differed widely in their party affiliation. There was no visible correlation, either, by occupation. Neither was there any native-born vs. immigrant bloc; far from being a monolith, immigrants varied widely in their voting patterns. The key, then, for both rural and urban areas, was ethnic-religious factors, which in contrast to the economic, have not been considered “real” by most historians.14

Let us, following Paul Kleppner’s research, go down the list of ethnic-religious groups and examine their voting records.15 Historians have been seduced by the prominence of Carl Schurz, German immigrant and leading Liberal Republican, into believing that the Germans were largely Republican.16 But Schurz was an anti-clerical liberal, who spoke only for his own small group of prominent anti-clericals; most Germans were staunchly Catholic or Lutheran, who would tend to reach against, rather than follow, the anticlericals. Most Germans were Democratic and anti-Republican.17 By the late 1880s, there were approximately one-and-a-half million German Protestants in the Middle West, and another one-and-a-half million Catholics. The German Catholics were overwhelmingly Democratic: in every section, urban or rural, of every state in the Midwest, on every economic level, and in every occupation. Every single German Catholic parish voted Democratic, from 1876 to 1888.

The one million Lutherans were grouped in diverse sects, ranging from conservative and ultra-liturgical down to largely pietist. The proportion voting Democratic correlates one-to-one with the degree by which each sect was liturgical. Thus, the most liturgical group was the Wisconsin Synod, which voted overwhelmingly Democratic. The next most liturgical group was the Missouri Synod, which voted less heavily Democratic, and so down the line.

A second factor determining voting was the province of Germany from which the voters had originally hailed. But here, too, different provinces of Lutherans differed in the degree to which they were liturgical or pietist. Pietism was strongest in Southern and Western Germany, especially in Wurttemberg, while it was weakest in Northern and Eastern Germany, in particular Pomerania. Hence, the Pomeranians were the strongest Democrats, and the Wurttembergers were the least Democratic.18 The most liturgical provincial group was the “Old Lutherans,” who had come early to the United States from Pomerania in the years 1839 to 1845. They had emigrated in reaction to the attempts of the Prussian monarchy to compel the unification of the Lutheran with the Reformed Churches. The Old Lutherans were therefore fiercely anti-evangelical and anti-pietist, and their townships tended to vote far more Democratic than others.

Even the Old Lutherans, as with the other provinces, split in accordance with the degree of their devotion to liturgy. Thus, the ultra-liturgical among the Old Lutherans joined the Wisconsin Synod, while those rather less devoted to liturgy entered into the conservative but less rigorous Missouri Synod. As we might expect, the most heavily Democratic of the German Lutherans were the districts peopled by Old Lutheran members of the Wisconsin Synod. For example, let us consider two townships in Wisconsin of Old Lutheran Germans. Lebanon township, Dodge County, consisting of members of the Wisconsin Synod, averaged no less than 90% Democratic from 1870 to 1888. On the other hand, Mequon township, Ozaukee County, consisting of Old Lutherans, Missouri Synod, averaged 75% Democratic during that period.

On the other hand, if we take Pomeranians who were not “Old Lutherans,” they were far less Democratic than the latter, but, again, within that group, the Wisconsin Synod members were far more Democratic than the Missouri Synod. Thus, within the same county of Wisconsin, Marathon County, Berlin township (made up of non-Old Lutheran Pomeranians of the Wisconsin Synod) voted 76% Democratic in 1880, while Texas township (consisting of Pomeranians of the Missouri Synod), voted only 47% Democratic in that year.

The Missouri Synod, in its turn, was far more liturgical than other German Lutheran groups. A striking contrast may be seen between two groups of (non-Old Lutheran) Pomeranians in the same Presque Isle County, in Michigan. In 1888, the Missouri Synod Pomeranians, who made up the voters of Moltke township in that county, voted 59% Democratic. On the other hand, Bismark township, comprised of Pomeranian members of the pietistic General Council, voted only 8% Democrat in the same year.

The Mecklenbergers were less liturgical and less Democratic than the Pomeranians, but again, the Wisconsin Synod members were more Democratic than the Missouri or other synods. Thus, Greenville township, in Outagamie County, Wisconsin, a Wisconsin Synod Mecklenberger area, voted 59% Democratic, while Plymouth township, Sheboygan County, made up of Missouri Synod Mecklenbergers, voted 36% Democrat. And in the same Marquette County in Wisconsin, made up of a mixed group of Pomeranians and Mecklenbergers, Mecan township, consisting of members of the Wisconsin Synod, voted 72% Democratic while Crystal Lake township, of the Missouri Synod, voted only 46% Democrat.

A third factor influencing voting patterns was the backlash effect; that is, in those townships or wards where opposing religious groups lived side by side, friction and hostility came much more intensely to the fore. In particular, in those townships where German Lutherans, even highly liturgical ones, had to rub elbows with their ancient foes, the ultra-liturgical Catholics, the Lutherans tended to vote more heavily Republican. A striking example is two townships in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. In Mishicott township, made up of Wisconsin Synod Germans, the vote in 1880 was 87% Democratic; but in Manitowoc township, consisting of a mixed group of Wisconsin Synod and German Catholics, the Lutherans in reaction voted Republican en masse, making the total Democratic vote only 33%.

The German Sectarians, evangelical and pietistic to the core, advocates of Prohibition and a holy Sabbath, voted largely Republican. The German Evangelicals voted heavily Republican, as did the United Brethren and the German Methodist Episcopals. On the other hand, the German Reformed Church, though pietistic, hated the more extreme German Evangelicals and voted mildly Democratic, although the vote fluctuated considerably over time. In general, the Sectarian groups — in the backlash effect — voted more strongly Republican if living near other, more liturgical, Germans, while they were willing to vote more evenly for the Democrats if there were no other German religious groups in the vicinity.

The Scandinavians, whether recent immigrants or not, voted very strongly anti-Democratic.19 This included the Norwegian Lutherans, whose votes for the Democratic Party varied from 0 to 38%, and most places fluctuated only from 0 to 8%. Why was this true even of the Norwegian Synod, which tended to be liturgical? The reasons were rooted in recent Norwegian history. The Norwegian Lutheran Church was a compulsory, State Church — one that was highly formalized and liturgical. By the turn of the 19th century, a pietistic reaction took place in Norway, led by Hans Nielsen Hauge, which was revivalist and evangelical. The Haugeans, however, formed a movement within the state Lutheran Church, and never broke off from the official church. And since, the Norwegian Church had a very low ratio of clergy to population, there grew up a great many lay services in the country, headed by Haugean laymen. So influential were the Haugeans that a less pietistic but highly influential movement, the Johnsonian Awakening headed by Gisle Johnson, developed within the State Church in the 1840s and 1850s. The pietistic Johnsonian pastors were willing to work with the more extremely pietistic Haugean laymen to reform the Church. The result was a thoroughgoing pietizing, or evangelizing, of the Norwegian Synod.

Hence, while in the United States, the Haugeans headed by Elling Eielsen, broke off from the Norwegian Synod to form their own sect, both wings of Norwegian Lutherans were heavily pietistic and hence strongly anti-Democratic. But whereas, the Norwegian Synod Lutherans ranged between 0 and 38% Democratic, the more extreme Haugeans tended to vote about 5% Democratic. Both wings were strongly anti-alcohol and in favor of stern anti-Sabbath-breaking laws.

The Swedish Lutherans, for their part, were even more Republican than the Norwegians, ranging from 0 to 28% Democratic. The Swedes, pastors as well as laymen, had about all been pietistic dissenters within the established liturgical church of Sweden. It is clear from the Norwegian and the Swedish examples that the Democratic vs. Republican breakdown was not really “native” vs. “immigrant.” For, in contrast to Catholic immigrants, the pietistic Scandinavian immigrants took their place very promptly with the Republican Party. Even though, the Norwegian Synod operated their own parochial schools, more important to them were the pietistic issues of the drinking of liquor and the “desecration” of the Sabbath.

The British-Americans, English, Cornish, or Welsh were pietist and were also heavily Republican and anti-Democratic. Within the Gaelic British community, the ardently pietistic Welsh Methodists were more strongly anti-Democrat than the Cornish Methodists. Thus, in Iowa County, Wisconsin, two townships made up mainly of Cornish Methodists, Dodgeville and Mineral Point, voted 34% and 44% Democratic respectively in 1880, whereas Linden and Mifflin townships, both largely Welsh Methodists, voted 25% and 24% Democratic. And, in Columbia County, Wisconsin, Hazel Green township, which was mainly Cornish Methodist, voted 47% Democratic, while nearby Courtland township, being Welsh Methodist, voted only 18% Democratic. In Michigan, on the other hand, the Cornish voted about 20% less Democratic than they did in Wisconsin, for in the former state there were constant battles between the Cornish and the Irish Catholics, who were heavily Democratic; again the backlash effect was at work.

A fascinating example of a meaningful religious breakdown of even a township vote was Wilkesville township, in Vinton County, Ohio. Wilkesville township, in 1880, voted 51% Democratic. But this moderate figure conceals a dramatic split between two precincts within the township, a split that took place even though both precincts were very poor farming areas. And yet, the eastern precinct voted 21% Democratic, while the western precinct voted 72%. The difference was that the eastern precinct was English and Welsh Methodist, while the western precinct was Irish Catholic.

As for the Irish, the Catholics, both urban and rural, were very strongly Democratic, while the Protestants, being pietist, were equally strongly Republican. Among the Canadians, the Protestant English Canadians were heavily Republican, while the French Catholics were equally strongly Democratic. We can see the ethnic religious factor at work, again, within the same occupational group. Baraga township in Baraga County, Michigan, and Saulte Ste. Marie township, in Chippewa County, both lumbering areas, which were French Canadian, voted heavily Democratic (78% and 67% in 1876, respectively). Also in Chippewa, on the other hand, Pickford, the English Canadian lumbering township, voted strongly Republican in 1888 (only 36% Democratic), and Hiawatha township, in Schoolcraft County, also English Canadian and lumbering, voted only 22% Democratic in 1876.

Among the Dutch, as we would now expect, the Catholics were strongly Democratic, racking up 94% of the vote in some precincts in 1876, while the Reformed were strongly anti-Democratic, voting as low as 19%. The Dutch Reformed Church of Michigan was less Calvinistic than one might expect. For in the 1830s in Holland, a pietistic “New Light” secession occurred in the Reformed Church, led by Gijsbertus Voetius. Voetius stressed pietism and puritanical conduct and opposed a formal orthodox creed. A group of Voetius followers emigrated from Holland to western Michigan in 1846, led by Albertus Christiaan Van Raalte. By the 1850s, however, a group of rather more traditional Calvinists broke off from the Van Raaltean Dutch Reformed Church and formed the “Christian” or “True” Reformed Church. As we might expect, while both groups of Dutch Reformed in Michigan were anti-Democratic, the Van Raalte faction was far more so. Thus, in Ottawa County, a Dutch Protestant stronghold, the Dutch Reformed townships of Georgetown and Zeeland voted 38% and 33% Democratic in 1876. But Blendon and Oliver townships, in the same county, which contained more Dutch Christian Reformed members, voted 46% Democratic in the same year.

The “natives” — defined as the second generation of native born who generally had emigrated from New England or the Middle Atlantic states, tended to vote Republican, but the proportions varied greatly — not by economic status or by state of origin, but by the degree of pietism. The great exception is migrants from the South, who tended to keep supporting their sectional loyalty and vote Democratic. Here the Southern Presbyterians tended to be less strongly Democratic — and hence less tied to past struggles — than the Southern Baptists or the Disciples of Christ. Among these “Old Stock” religious sects, highly pietistic New York Methodists, the Congregationalists, and the Free Will Baptists tended to be very strongly Republican, while the less pietistic and more rationalistic Presbyterian was strongly Republican but not nearly as heavily. The lesser degree of support for Republicans among Presbyterians reflected a split between the “Old School” and “United” Presbyterians, who were largely liturgical, and the “New School” pietists. The two wings had formally reunited in 1869, but the fundamental differences remained. For their part, the New York Baptists were about evenly split — again reflecting the fragmentation of Baptist sects between varying degrees of pietist or liturgical. Thus, the small group of Free Will Baptists were ultra-pietist; as can be seen in the table below. On the other hand, the Primitive Baptists were ultra-Calvinists, and therefore liturgical. The far larger group of Regular Baptists were themselves fragmented: most local churches being pietist and others (such as the Landmarkeans) being liturgical. The pietistic Quakers were strongly Republican but they, too, were divided. The Quakers from Pennsylvania, in Penn township, Cass County, Michigan, voted 41% Democratic in 1876 while the Quakers, who had moved from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, got fiercely involved in the fight against slavery, and then moved West, voted only 17% Democratic in Calvin township of the same county.

Within the Catholic groups, all were Democratic, but some were more overwhelmingly so than others. The Poles and Irish tended to be most overwhelmingly Democratic, followed slightly behind by the Germans, Dutch, and Bohemians, and then by the French Acadians and “Old French” Catholics of French extraction. The non-Catholic Bohemians, in contrast, tended to vote Republican.

Paul Kleppner presents a ranked tabulation of the average Democratic voting percentages of the religious groups in an illuminating way to summarize the above conclusions. He divides them into “natives,” second-generation and older stock native Americans, and “immigrants,” including actual immigrants and first-generation born in the United States. The table is as follows:20

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With the ethnoreligious demographics of the Midwest broken down, we can now begin to analyze the crucial political issues that consumed the region in the late 1880s and early 1890s, which brings us one step closer towards understanding the election of 1896.

4. Reform and the Drive for Prohibition21

We have pointed out that, in the early 1850s, the pietists had managed to outlaw alcohol in 12 states. The leading Midwestern states — Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Indiana — were among those who joined the drive, and the Minnesota Territory also outlawed liquor. In the resurgent drive for prohibition after the Civil War, the prohibitionists attempted to pass constitutional amendments outlawing liquor in all the Midwestern states in the early 1880s. Added to this drive was a move for local option laws for prohibiting the saloon in numerous counties, cities, and townships. As in most of the United States, Prohibition was the most vital issue in the Middle West during the 1880s.

The Catholics, as we have indicated, were overwhelmingly opposed to Prohibition. There emerged within the Catholic Church, however, and among the Irish-American clergy, a quasi-pietistic movement akin to French Jansenism, which pervaded the French Church and had deeply influenced Irish seminarians studying in France since the 18th century. Led by Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, this pietistic movement stressed evangelistic missionary fervor as well as strict personal moral standards of behavior. Archbishop Ireland, while not in favor of total prohibition of alcohol, did take a quasi-prohibitionist stance: leading a Catholic temperance movement, condemning saloons, and urging local option prohibition as well as very high license fees to be imposed on saloons. Ireland, in fact, was a founder of the Anti-Saloon League, which was to take the lead in the drive for total prohibition. In his quasi-prohibitionist stance, Ireland was supported by other neo-Jansenist bishops: including James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, Bishop John Spalding of Peoria, and Bishop John Keane of Dubuque. He also found many adherents in the Paulist order. The neo-Jansenists formed the Catholic Total Abstinence Union, held Catholic retreats that were organized to closely resemble pietistic Protestant revival meetings. With his beliefs, it is not surprising that Archbishop Ireland was less than wholly devoted to the Catholic parochial schools, and was himself an ardent member and advocate of the Republican Party.

The pietistic softness on prohibition of this small circle of clerics had little influence among the Irish Catholic masses, much less the Catholic voters of other ethnic groups. Indeed, both the Germans and the Poles resented what they considered to be Irish hegemony within the American Church. The Germans were bitter, also, about Archbishop Ireland and about what they considered to be a Jansenistic trend and an underemphasis on liturgy in the American Church. Ireland they denounced as a “Puritan” Republican who was bent on “Protestantizing” the Catholic Church.

The Protestant Episcopal Church was firmly anti-prohibitionist, particularly its Anglican, or high-church, wing which was dominant in the Middle West. The only prohibitionists among them were in the far less liturgical, low-church minority. The views of the Anglicans on Prohibition were well expressed by Bishop Charles C. Grafton of Fond du lac, Wisconsin. Puritanism, he declared, tries to lessen the temptation to intemperance

by force, law, or prohibition. It is a judicial mode of dealing with a moral problem. The Church looks rather to the aid of moral restraint, and to the aid of grace. ... For great as is the evil of any fleshly sin, it often, by the shame it brings, leads to repentance ... while on the other hand the spiritual sins of pride, self-sufficiency ... are more deadly because unsuspected and more lasting ...22

Among the Presbyterians, the more doctrinally oriented Calvinists tended to be “wets,” in favor of drinking in moderation. It should not be surprising that the high-church Episcopelians were mainly Democrats, while the low-church members tended to support the Republican Party. An example was the leading wet Presbyterian minister from New York City, the Rev. Howard Crosby. The leading Calvinist theologian in America, Charles Hodge of Princeton University, favored the use of more liturgy in the Presbyterian Church and was also bitterly opposed to Prohibition.

Two leading Presbyterian laymen, who faced each other twice for the presidency of the United States, reflected the differences within the Church in their attitudes toward religion and politics. The outstanding Calvinistic Presbyterian attorney from Buffalo, Grover Cleveland, was the son of a Calvinist clergymen, a leading Democrat, a wet, and a bon vivant; the prim pietistic Benjamin Harrison of Indiana was a dry and a leading Republican.

As for the German Lutherans, the conservative and liturgical Missouri Synod, a “wet” group in favor of moderate drinking, spoke for many Liturgicals when it denounced Prohibition as “directly adverse to the spirit, the method and the aim of Christian morals.” For the prohibitionist, “instead of relying on God’s spirit, ... puts his trust in fallible legislators ... the tricks and treacheries of politicians.”23

The change in ethnoreligious demographic factors was crucial to the change in the prohibition question, and hence the overall question of the Midwest.

• 1[Editor’s footnote] A condensed version of Chapters 4–6 can be found in Rothbard, “A History of Money and Banking,” pp. 169–79.
• 2The Republicans, much less the Whigs, had no interest, however, in freeing the slaves in the South — only preventing an expansion of slave labor into the Western territories.
• 3[Editor’s footnote] For a similar broad overview of the history of America’s libertarian tradition up to the Civil War, see Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, 2nd ed. (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2011 [1978]), pp. 7–10. The narrative is only present in the revised edition. It is described more in depth in Murray Rothbard, “Report on George B. DeHuszar and Thomas Hulbert Stevenson, A History of the American Republic, 2 vols.” in Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard, David Gordon, ed. (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2010 [1961]), pp. 96–136. For a Rothbardian analysis of the Jacksonians that stresses the ethno-religious aspects, see Leonard Liggio, “Murray Rothbard and Jacksonian Banking,” in The Contributions of Murray Rothbard to Monetary Economics (Winchester, VA: The Durell Institute, 1996), pp. 8–17.
       For more on the libertarian strengths and weaknesses of the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians and the rifts in the Democratic Party over the slavery and territorial expansion issue, see Arthur Ekirch, Jr., The Decline of American Liberalism (Oakland, CA: Independent Institute, 2009 [1955]), pp. 55–115; Jeffrey Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 1996), pp. 76–128. The Locofocos were a Northeastern branch of the Jacksonian Democracy most dedicated to laissez-faire, including in the monetary sphere. Their leader was the social theoretician William Leggett. See Lawrence White, “Foreword,” in William Leggett, Democratik Editorials: Essays in Jacksonian Political Economy (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1984), pp. xi–xix; Lawrence White, “William Leggett: Jacksonian editorialist as classical liberal political economist,” History of Political Economy 18 (1986): 307–24. For a sweeping history of the Locofoco movement, see Anthony Comegna, “‘The Dupes of Hope Forever’: The Loco-Foco or Equal Rights Movement, 1820s–1870s” (doctoral dissertation in history, University of Pittsburgh, 2016).
       For an overview of America’s monetary history during this time, see Rothbard, “A History of Money and Banking,” pp. 68–147. For more on the hard money aspects of the Jacksonian Democracy at the federal level, see Murray Rothbard, An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought: Classical Economics (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2006 [1995]), vol. 2, pp. 210–16, 232–35.
• 4The long run decline of the Republicans in this period is seen by the fact that in 1860, the Republican Party captured 59% of the vote in the North Atlantic states and 54% in the Midwest; while in 1892, the percentages had declined seven percentage points, to 52% and 47% respectively. Furthermore, the South had been re-Democratized and far more intensively than before the Civil War, after the end of the Reconstruction period. In the presidential election of 1892, the Democrats gained 46% of the popular vote, and the Republicans only 43%, with the rest going to minor parties. It looked as if the Democrats were on the threshold of becoming the dominant party in the United States. [Editor’s remarks] For the above statistics, see Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850–1900 (New York: The Free Press, 1970), pp. 5–6.
• 5[Editor’s footnote] Some of the historians and their works Rothbard is referring to are Richard J. Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888–1896 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971); Samuel T. McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893–1896 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972); Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral System, 1852–1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979).
• 6[Editor’s footnote] Rothbard would later expand on this thesis using eschatology (the doctrine of last things) and describe the religious interventionists as “Yankee Postmillennial Pietists,” who were evangelized through the frenzied revivals of Reverend Charles Grandison Finney during the Second Great Awakening of the late 1820s. They were a group of pietist English descendants that lived in rural New England, upstate New York, Northern Ohio, Northern Indiana, and Northern Illinois, who were “postmillennialist” in that they believed the world must be improved for a thousand years before Jesus would return to usher in the end of history. In order to bring about this “Kingdom of God,” the postmillennial pietists took it as their moral duty to stamp out the sin of others, even if it required the coercive hand of government. Over time, these crusaders lost their religious zeal and became “secularized,” but still maintained their enthusiasm for wielding state force. See Chapters 10, 11, and 13 below, pp. 295–99, 327–40, 397–407, 420–36. See also Gary North, “Millennialism and the Progressive Movement,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 12 (Spring 1996): 121–42.
• 7Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest, p. 64.
• 8We are not trying to claim any apodictic certainty for these causal connections. That is, it is perfectly possible to have pietists who are consistent libertarians, or who are inconsistent between personal and economic liberty, and it is perfectly possible to have liturgicals who are statists or who are inconsistent. All we are claiming is that this is what the contrasting religious groups in America in the late 19th century believed, and that this is how their belief system originated and developed. We are not making any similar claims for any other time or place in world history. ([Editor’s remarks] For a prominent example of one such pietist libertarian described by Rothbard, in which he explicitly cites the work of Kleppner and Jensen, see Murray Rothbard, “Introduction” in Lysander Spooner: Libertarian Pietist, Vices Are Not Crimes [Cupertino, CA: Tanstaafl, 1977], pp. xiii–xvii).   
       It should be noted, however, that the leadership on behalf of economic freedom and individual liberty taken by the British pietists in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as earlier, may be a bit deceiving. For these Dissenters or Nonconformists were reacting against an established Anglican (liturgical) Church, and they would naturally favor religious liberty when confronting a State in opposition hands. It should also be pointed out that British Liberalism in that era was continually being split by the penchant of the Nonconformist masses to be (a) in favor of Prohibition, and (b) in favor of crushing the Irish Catholics. In that way the Liberal party’s devotion to individual liberty was repeatedly undercut and comprised.
• 9[Editor’s footnote] Kleppner, The Cross of Culture, pp. 71–91; Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest, pp. 58–88.
• 10[Editor’s footnote] The post-Civil War laissez-faire and hard money Democrats were known as the “Bourbons.” They were generally centered in the Northeast, but were also in the Midwest. On the other hand, there were the much more statist and inflationist “Populist” Democrats, based in the South and Far West. The Democratic upheaval in 1896 refers to the Populist faction defeating the Bourbon Democracy and transforming the party from one that championed laissez-faire to one that was much more supportive of government interventionism. See Rothbard, “Report on George B. DeHuszar,” pp. 137–39, 148.
• 11[Editor’s footnote] Further analysis of religion in early American history can be found in Murray Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty, vol. 2, “Salutary Neglect”: The American Colonies in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2011 [1975]), pp. 654–71.
• 12[Editor’s footnote] Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest, pp. 68–70.
• 13[Editor’s footnote] Kleppner, The Cross of Culture, pp. 8–9.
• 14[Editor’s footnote] Ibid., pp. 19–34.
• 15[Editor’s footnote] Ibid., pp. 36–69.
• 16[Editor’s footnote] After the Civil War, there were two main factions of the Radical Republicans. The first, headed by Charles Sumner, was in favor of free trade and resuming specie payments. The second, headed by Thaddeus Stevens, was in favor of high tariffs and greenbacks. The Sumner faction lost out and eventually morphed into the Liberal Republicans who, in addition to the above policies, were in favor of ending reconstruction and especially enacting civil service reform, driven by their northern Yankee postmillennial background. They would later be known as “Mugwumps,” or independent northeastern voters who favored free market policies and civil service reform. See Rothbard, “Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States,” pp.  42–43, 55–56, 71–72. 
• 17Even the great Schurz, when campaigning for the Republicans in his own hometown, was greeted by his fellow German-Americans with a barrage of rotten eggs and shouts of “ein verdammte Republikaner”; William F. Whyte, “Chronicles of Early Watertown,” Wisconsin Magazine of History 4 (1920–21): 288–90. Cited in Kleppner, Cross of Culture, p. 38.
• 18The rank order of Democratic voting, as well as degree of Liturgicalism, was as follows, beginning with the most Democratic province: Pomeranians, Hanoverians, Mecklenbergers, Oldenburgers, Palatines, and Wurttembergers.
• 19The percentage of Democratic or anti-Democratic is a better gauge than the percentage of Republican, since such third parties as the Prohibitionists were ultra-pietist, and thereby should be added to the Republicans to constitute the anti-Democratic vote.
• 20Adapted from ibid., p. 70.
• 21[Editor’s footnote] For more on prohibition and pietism, including up into World War I, see Chapter 13 below, pp. 400–07. For a general history of the prohibition movement in the United States, see Mark Thornton, “The Fall and Rise of Puritanical Policy in America,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 12 (Spring 1996): 146–57.
• 22Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest, p. 78.
• 23From the Lutheran Witness (February 7, 1889). Cited in Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest, p. 83. [Editor’s remarks] See ibid., pp. 69–83.