A time for Doughfaces?
I’ve been thinking about Doughfaces a lot recently.
That’s not something that I normally do, it’s just that I’ve been reading The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War, by Joanne B Freeman. It’s not a tricky title or anything. The book is about the way actual and threatened violence in congress was a harbinger of, precursor to, and contributing cause of the American Civil War. Doughfaces figure prominently in the tale.
In the years before the Civil War, Doughfaces were the Northern politicians, mostly Democrats, who sided with Southern slaveholders rather than their fellow Northerners whenever a dispute over slavery arose in congress. During that time of tenuous Union, Southern congressman (uniformly slaveholders and supporters of expanding slavery) used threats of secession backed up by acts of violence (often wrapped in the cloak of an “honor code”) to get their legislative way. While men like John Quincy Adams used a formidable array of legislative tools to oppose Slaveholder bullying, for decades a coalition of Slaveholders and complicit Doughfaces generally held a working majority in congress.
At first, the stress on the Doughfaces wasn’t so bad. The demands of the Slaveholders weren’t that extreme in the context of the times and a Constitution that endorsed slavery. Voters back home valued the preservation of the Union more than Abolition. The few Northerners bent on ending slavery entirely could be written off as crackpots, and even those advocating for merely restricting the expansion of slavery could be labeled as extremists if they weren’t willing to negotiate and compromise with the Slaveholders. Doughfaces were sometimes caught in the middle of political disputes, but it was comfortable middle ground for a politician to be in.
Life got harder for the Doughfaces soon enough. The Abolitionist movement gained strength in the North at the same time the Slaveholder demands for the expansion of slavery into new territories grew more extreme, a feedback loop destined to bring conflict. Instead of occupying a comfortable middle ground, Doughfaces soon found themselves caught in a vast chasm between two opposing factions. Each of those factions grew ever more aggressive in pushing its demands. The middle ground was no longer a comfortable place for a politician to occupy.
At this point, the nation was hurtling toward Civil War and life as a Doughface was hard, what with being bullied by Southerners in congress and then belittled back home. Doughfaces were increasingly replaced by representatives less inclined to bow to the demands of Slaveholders. Meanwhile, whether due to political expediency or just growing sick and tired of the constant fighting over slavery, some former Doughfaces finally decided that they had had enough and started resisting efforts to expand slavery into new territories.
Doughfaces had been a peculiar glue holding the nation together, so as Doughfaces became less common in the House and Senate the Civil War became first a possibility and then a reality. Several elections maintained an uneasy balance between Slave Power and various types of Abolitionists in federal office until the Election of 1860 tipped the balance of power toward the Free Soil advocates. After losing at the ballot box, the Doughface fear of disunion became a reality as Southern states began to secede.
It’s easy to criticize the Doughfaces. They perpetuated slavery even while many of them purported to oppose it. Doughfaces often conducted themselves one way in the halls of power while portraying themselves very differently back at home (the advent of the telegraph went a long way to ending that charade, since it allowed news from Washington to travel around the country faster than a tricky politician could obfuscate). The only principle Doughfaces consistently stood up for was their commitment to make any sacrifice to keep the Slave States within the Union, a stand that ensured that the representatives of the Slave States consistently required new sacrifices under the threat of secession. Eventually, as Freeman details, the time for Doughfaces was past.
It’s both easy and lazy to make simple comparisons between our own time and the strife of Antebellum America. Today’s political dividing lines have some similarity to those before the Civil War, and there are analogies in the rapid change of communication technology (then, the telegraph, today the internet), but the partisans and the issues have changed. Thankfully, as coarse as our discourse has become, we no longer have brutal attacks on the floors of congress.
Today is very different from the days leading up to the Civil War, but I’ve still been thinking a lot about Doughfaces and how they compare to modern politicians desperate for compromise. The Doughfaces of yore don’t get much love, which is good because they don’t deserve the affection, but their devotion to preserving the Union at all costs let our young nation survive until the fledgling Abolition movement could strengthen and grow. In the rearview mirror of history, the Doughfaces were wrong about pretty much everything, yet their deplorable pliability on principles let America survive long enough to expunge the scourge of slavery. In a way, the Doughface compromises that bought our nation time to strengthen in those early years are the reason America abides to this day. I can’t endorse the Doughface approach, but I do understand that there were some fights that Free Staters couldn’t win during those days. Whether intentional or not (and it probably was not), the Doughface tactic of delaying conflict worked in the end by deferring the all too literal fight until the side of freedom could win.
For decades, I have heard and sometimes joined in complaints from grassroots Democrats about “Republican-lite” moderates in our Party. Internal battles have raged between the self-proclaimed “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party” and groups of avowedly moderate Democrats. I’ve listened to the moderates’ arguments that Democrats have to win elections if we’re ever going to govern, and sometimes I’ve even been persuaded that winning the most votes has required stances from candidates that I find disagreeable. For most of the past several decades, moderates have been ascendant within the Democratic Party.
Even while I disagree with the concessions made over the years, I appreciate the half-loaves that we have won. Now I also wonder whether decades of compromise may not have bought us enough time to reach the cusp of a new political era. Young voters, bless them, are much more progressive than people my age and older. While I think it’s always worthwhile to try to find common ground with our fellow citizens, perhaps the political center of gravity has shifted enough to at least change where compromise must occur.
Moderate Democrats certainly seem to be mistaken if they expect to compromise with Republicans in congress. Politicians used to be able to agree on welfare reform or criminal justice changes, in part because Democrats made difficult, problematic concessions, but also because opposing politicians were willing to make a deal. Today the price of compromise is even higher, and the other party doesn’t seem inclined to move an inch either. Americans still say they want respect for political adversaries and compromise, but they want the respect and compromise to come from the other side of the aisle. It’s hard to see how compromise can be found in today’s political climate with our current crop of politicians. Perhaps, rather than a time for seeking impossible compromises, now is the time to change the political dynamic at the ballot box instead. Fortunately, one of the glorious differences between today and the time of the Doughfaces is that I don’t think secession will be the response to losing an election anymore.
Only time (and elections) will tell, but perhaps the time for the relentless pursuit of moderate Democratic compromises with conservatives has ended, at least for a season.
