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.The voting behavior in these homogeneous townships is then taken to representthe voting of the entire group in a state or region.51 Critics have charged that suchcommunities were atypical, because group pressures would be unduly strong there.Would a German Lutheran living in a largely German village in Wisconsin votedifferently than a fellow church member who was living among Irish Catholics inChicago?The alternative to finding homogeneous areas is to estimate the relativeproportion of ethnoreligious groups per county for an entire state or section of thecountry, either in whole or by sampling.The ideal, which no one has yet at-tempted, is to draw a random township and ward sample of the northeasternUnited States, compile township-level aggregate data on religion, ethnicity, oc-cupation, wealth, and other pertinent variables in the period 1850 1900, andthen, using multiple regression analysis, determine the relative relationships be-tween religion and voting, taking into account the effects of all of the othervariables.52 Until such a large project is undertaken, we must rely upon the severaldozen case studies at the state and local level completed in the mid-twentiethcentury.These studies cover the years from 1820 to 1900 in the northeastern andmidwestern states.53Ethnoreligious GroupsAlthough regional variations existed, the findings generally agree in the politicalcategorization of the major ethnoreligious groups.The various groups can bestbe arranged in four categories: strongly Democrat (75þ percent), moderatelyDemocratic (50 75 percent), moderately Whig or Republican (50 75 percent),and strongly Whig or Republican (75þ percent) (see Table 7.1).Strongly Ethnoreligious Political Behavior in the Mid-Nineteenth Century 155Democratic groups were all Catholics (Irish, German, French, French Canadian,Belgian, Bohemian, etc.), Southern Baptists, and southern Methodists.Moder-ately Democratic groups were old (i.e., colonial) German Lutheran, old Germanand old Dutch Reformed, old British Episcopalians, New England Universalists,southern Presbyterians, and southern Disciples of Christ.Moderately Whig andRepublican in their voting were the German pietist sects (Brethren, Mennonites,Moravians, Amish), new German and Danish Lutheran, new Dutch ChristianReformed, Old School Presbyterians, regular and missionary Baptists, midwest-ern Universalists, and the Christian church.Strongly Whig and Republican werenorthern Methodists (including Irish, Cornish, and Welsh Methodists), FreeWill Baptists, Congregationalists, New School Presbyterians, Scots-Irish Pres-byterians, Unitarians, Quakers, French Huguenots, Swedish and NorwegianLutherans, Haugean Norwegians, new Dutch Reformed, Canadian English andNew England Episcopalians, and black Protestants.(Groups designated old immigrated prior to the American Revolution; new arrived afterward.)The ethnoreligious specialists deserve credit for discovering these groupvoting patterns.Some distinctions are extremely subtle.For example, amongMichigan s Dutch Calvinist immigrants of the mid-nineteenth century, themajority group affiliated with the largely Americanized old Dutch Reformedchurch in the East in 1850, but a minority opposed the union, seceded, andformed an independent immigrant church, the Christian Reformed church.Oneof the major doctrinal issues in the split was the conviction of the seceders that theDutch Reformed espoused a revivalist free-will theology and used evangelicalhymns and other tainted aspects of Yankee pietism.54 In their politics, Kleppnerfound that the Dutch Reformed after the Civil War consistently voted Republicanmore strongly than did the Christian Reformed (66 percent versus 59 percent).55Even among a homogeneous immigrant group like the Dutch Calvinists, theinroads of revivalism strengthened commitments to the Yankee political party.Religion and PoliticsNot only for the Dutch Calvinists but for all ethnoreligious groups, revivalismwas the engine of political agitation.56 Evangelist Charles G.Finney beganpreaching revival in the mid-1820s throughout New England and its Yankeecolonies in western New York.By 1831, religious enthusiasm had reached a feverpitch in the area, and mass conversions swept town after town.Church mem-bership doubled and tripled, and large portions of the populace were reclaimed forProtestantism.Finney challenged his followers to pursue entire sanctification orperfectionism and to become Christian social activists.The converts first entered Table 7.1.Political Orientation of Major Ethnoreligious Groups,1830 1890Strongly Whig/Republican Moderately Whig/Republican75 100% 50 75%Quaker Christian Church (Disciples)Scots-Irish Presbyterian Missionary BaptistFree Will Baptist Regular BaptistCongregationalist Universalist (midwestern)New School Presbyterian Old School PresbyterianUnitarian New German LutheranNorthern Methodist Danish LutheranIrish Methodist German PietistsCornish Methodist AmishWelsh Methodist BrethrenSwedish Lutheran MennoniteNorwegian Lutheran MoravianHaugean Norwegian New Dutch Christian ReformedNew England EpiscopalCanadian English EpiscopalNew Dutch ReformedFrench HuguenotBlack ProtestantsStrongly Democratic Moderately Democratic75 100% 50 75%Irish Catholic Old British EpiscopalGerman Catholic Southern PresbyterianFrench Catholic Universalist (New England)Bohemian Catholic Southern Disciples of ChristFrench Canadian Catholic Old German LutheranSouthern Baptist Old German ReformedSouthern Methodist Old Dutch ReformedSources: works cited in note 11, especially Kleppner, Cross of Culture and Third ElectoralSystem; Jensen, Winning of the Midwest; and Formisano, Birth of Mass Political Parties. Ethnoreligious Political Behavior in the Mid-Nineteenth Century 157politics in the anti-Masonic movement in New York in 1826 1827.By the mid-1830s, the evangelicals entered national politics by opposing slavery, alcohol, andother social ills that they believed the Jackson administration condoned.Convertssuch as Theodore Dwight Weld became leaders in the antislavery movement.And in the 1840s and 1850s, revivalist regions of the country developed strongantislavery societies and voted Liberty, Whig, and later Republican.57 Ultimately,the allegiance of pietists to the Whig party led to its demise because the pietistsput ethical goals, such as abolition of slavery, above party loyalty.The idea of aparty system built on patronage and discipline was much stronger in Democratthan in Whig ranks.Evangelicals had a disproportionate share of antiparty men.In their estimation, popery, Masonry, and party were all threats to freedom ofconscience and Christian principles
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Tematy
IndexJoel Fleishman The Foundation, A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World (2009)
Philip Gordon, Jeremy Shapiro Allies At War, America, Europe and the Crisis Over Iraq (2004)
Jane Elliott Popular Feminist Fiction as American Allegory, Representing National Time (2008)
Patricia Allen Together At The Table, Sustainability And Sustenance In The American Agrifood System (2004)
Harpercollins, Oops 20 Life Lessons From The Fiascoes That Shaped America [2006 Isbn0060780835]
George Annas American Bioethics Crossing Human Rights and Health Law Boundaries
Peter Richardson American Prophet, The Life and Work of Carey McWilliams (2005)
Renee K. Harrison Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America (2009)
Gary Dorrien Imperial Designs, Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (2004)
Steven Green The Second Disestablishment, Church and State in Nineteenth Century America (2010)