REPUBLICANS: The South Reacts

Twelve years ago the South rose in hotheaded revolt, sent its voters to the polls, and knocked over a political tradition which had stood firm for half a century. Democratic since the last Yankee administrator went home in 1877, the South in

1928 split clean in two, gave six of its twelve States to the Republican Party. Herbert Hoover that year won 72 electoral votes in the South, Al Smith 64. Engineer Hoover won 1,957,000 popular votes, Catholic Smith 1,985,000.

Last week, remembering 1928’s upheaval and having heard that it might be repeated, Republican Nominee Wendell Willkie announced that he would try to break the Solid South again in 1940. Too soon it was to judge the practical force of Willkie sentiment stirring in the South. But there were seeds of a revolt against entrenched politics. To Wendell Willkie went hundreds of telegrams from Southern Democrats (see p. 14). In Richmond, Charleston, Atlanta, in Texas, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas, Tennessee, Willkie clubs sprang up overnight, formed by lifelong Democrats to back a Republican candidate.

Pope’s Shadow. New Dealers were inclined last week to shrug away these straws. They pointed out that unlike Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt is no Roman Catholic. But, although fiery crosses crackling on lonely hilltops, and red-faced spellbinders warning that the Pope was on his way to the White House played their part in the 1928 election, other things helped to defeat Smith: many a Southern voter turned thumbs down on liquor, on Tammany, on Manhattan’s East Side, on New York City domination in general. The States that went for Hoover in 1928 were not the politically naïve backwoods regions that might have been expected to fear the Pope’s shadow. They were North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas—which have their share of hillbillies but also, politically and industrially, harbor many of the South’s most sophisticated areas.

This year Republicans base their hopes not on a single explosive issue, but on a change in the political complexion of the entire U. S., including the South, accomplished by no less a magician than Franklin Roosevelt himself.

How Solid? The South as a political unit (see map) consists of the eleven Southern States which seceded in 1860-61 to form the Confederacy; and Oklahoma, which became a State in 1907, has generally voted with its Democratic neighbors, Texas and Arkansas. Kentucky likes to think of itself as a Southern State; so do Missouri, Maryland, Delaware. But most Southerners and politicians regard these four as border States, likely to blow North or South with the winds.

Democratic solidarity is a powerful tradition in the South, born in the time of Thomas Jefferson, when cotton was king, strengthened by Civil War and Reconstruction. But the South has never been completely solid. In 1920, to rebuke Woodrow Wilson for involving the U. S. in Europe’s problems, Tennessee and Oklahoma went Republican. In all but four Southern States there are counties which are traditionally Republican. Winston County, Ala., actually seceded from the Confederacy in 1861, named itself the “Free State of Winston,” furnished five companies of infantry for the Union Army. Except in 1900 (when Winston went for Bryan) and in 1932 (when Roosevelt carried the county by 1,006 votes to 1,005), it has been Republican ever since. Another rebellious Southern county was the “Free State of Jones,” which seceded from Mississippi, later returned to the Democratic fold.

Southern Republicans are strongest in Tennessee (38 counties), North Carolina and Oklahoma (17 counties each). They would be stronger, except for Democratic gerrymandering of Congressional districts to keep down Republican representation in Washington. The eighth district of North Carolina, for instance, winds all over the middle part of the State to avoid Republican counties.

Sentiment. The South’s most distinctive characteristic is a conservatism as ingrained as that of Republican Tories in the North.

Most Southerners, rich and poor, farmer and industrialist alike, frown on social experiment, mistrust unions, abhor any truck with Communists such as WPA has sometimes harbored. They don’t like the New Deal’s catering to the Negro vote in Pennsylvania, New York, other Northern States. They resent being called “the nation’s No. i economic problem” as the President’s National Emergency Council called the South two years ago.

The South has distrustfully watched Franklin Roosevelt lean closer year by year to such Yankee advisers as Rhode Island’s Tommy Corcoran, Boston’s Joe Kennedy, to social workers like Harry Hopkins. It watched him at Chicago last fortnight lean on the support of old-line party bosses like Frank Hague in New Jersey, Ed Kelly in Illinois, while many of its own Senators were out in the cold.

Wrote Scripps-Howard’s Kansas-born Hugh Johnson last week: “In the President’s Cabinet there are only two indubitable Democrats—Hull and Farley. There are now four Republicans—Stimson, Knox, Wallace and Ickes; two Socialists or something—Hopkins and Perkins; and a couple of no pronounced political parentage. . . . As for Jeffersonian policies . . . Mr. Roosevelt opposes every one. . . .”

Traces of potential Willkie sentiment began to appear in the press of the South. A Richmond Times-Dispatch poll showed Roosevelt strength in Virginia down to 59% from his 80% majority over Landon (which dropped to 68% on election day) in a similar tabulation in 1936. In Tennessee Scripps-Howard’s potent Memphis Commercial Appeal came out for Willkie. So of course did the Knoxville Journal, only important Republican daily in the South.

In Charleston, S. C., last week a group of Willkiecrats announced that they will form a fusion party, support Democratic candidates for local office, Republican Presidential electors. New Deal-hating Editor William Watts Ball, son of a Confederate Army officer, announced himself for Willkie in the Charleston News & Courier.

Also for Willkie was the Charleston Post.

Greenville citizens, writing to their news papers, accused President Roosevelt of ruling out Jimmy Byrnes for Vice President because of a rumor that he was once a Catholic. In Georgia theatres last week, for the first time in the memory of man, newsreel shots of a Republican candi date drew loud applause. In Alabama (which missed going Republican by only 7,000 votes in 1928) the State’s first Willkie club was formed in Jasper, Speaker William Bankhead’s home town, and Willkie’s newsreel face was cheered.

Louisiana’s sugar planters, smarting un der Henry Wallace’s restriction quotas, were reported going over in droves to the G. O. P.—in Louisiana’s third (Sugar Bowl) district, a Democratic candidate for Congress withdrew in favor of Republican David W. Pipes Jr. (a Democrat too until 1940). In Florida Willkie clubs popped up over the State, and a onetime Democratic Governor, Gary Augustus Hardee, took up Willkie’s banner. And in Texas Peter Molyneaux’s Texas Weekly declared: “There are millions of Americans who do not think President Roosevelt is indispensable, who believe that the wel fare and security of the United States will be better insured by the election of Mr. Willkie. . . .” The Right to Woo. All of this added up to a large amount of potential Willkie strength in the South, but it did not add up as yet to a single Southern vote for Willkie in the Electoral College. Whether such anti-New Deal sentiment will be converted into Willkie votes depends entirely on what sort of campaign Candidate Willkie puts up. He can talk Jeffersonian issues till his face is blue, but the chances are that the South will remain Democratic—unless he shows himself the kind of man to capture Southern imaginations. All that the South showed last week amounted to little more than a willingness to be wooed.