Alva Review-Courier -

The Civil War began in April 1861 as a conflict – according to Republican President Abraham Lincoln – to “preserve the Union.” Before it was over, the war also became one to abolish slavery.

A few days after the war ended in April 1865 Lincoln was – as everyone knows – assassinated by so-called southern “sympathizer” John Wilkes Booth.

For the next 12 years Republican leaders set about to “reconstruct” the South so that southern society and northern society would be alike.

Republicans not only freed the South’s slaves but they granted those who were adult men the right to vote. Moreover, they punished white southerners who had supported the Confederacy by taking the vote away from them.

During Reconstruction (and for several years after it ended in 1877) numerous African American men held political office in the South. The same was true of white Republicans who were elected with support from black voters.

As we saw last week, the Democratic Party had become before the war the political party of choice for most white southerners. That situation only strengthened during the Reconstruction Era as every former Confederate state went through a period of Republican rule.

For nearly a century white southerners (generally, although not completely) rejected the Republican Party. The eleven former Confederate states became known as the “solid South” – staunch supporters of Democratic candidates.

A good example of this can be seen in the four presidential elections that Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt won from 1932 to 1944. In those contests, Roosevelt won every single Confederate state all four times!

Roosevelt’s elections were all landslides so the southern electoral votes he won just added to his comfortable margins of victory.

But the next presidential election, that of 1948, is quite instructive. Roosevelt died during his fourth term to be succeeded by fellow Democrat Harry Truman.

Truman won the historic 1948 election in a huge upset (at least, according to the polls). The southern electoral votes Truman got fueled his victory – as we will see next week in part 4 of this article.