Did you know that contempt for democracy among the educated steadily grew through the Gilded Age and that reactionaries eventually won? pic.twitter.com/0G82M3jsnE
— Hunter Wallace (@LutherEnjoyer) January 18, 2025
As I pointed out on X, American culture turned against the idol of Democracy over the course of the Gilded Age. From Andrew Jackson until the Compromise of 1877, American democracy was in a bull market and the franchise expanded until the fervor peaked during Reconstruction.
In the 1880s, skepticism of Democracy became increasingly commonplace as the reaction against Reconstruction gained momentum in the North and South. In 1888, Massachusetts became the first state to adopt the Australian ballot. In 1890, Mississippi adopted a new state constitution which featured literacy tests and the poll tax. The Mississippi Plan was adopted across the South after the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 cleared the path toward Jim Crow. By 1901, Rep. George Henry White was giving his farewell address to Congress. Blacks disappeared from Congress for about 25 years.
Reactionaries actually won.
Democracy wasn’t defeated outright. Mass disenfranchisement was still too high of a constitutional hurdle to overcome. Instead, the 14th and 15th Amendments were essentially nullified in the South, and the North gave up on civil rights after the failure of the Force Act of 1890. Reformers came up with all sorts of ingenious schemes to restrain and limit democracy like the poll tax and the literacy test. New laws were passed in the Progressive era to require permits for public demonstrations. There was a conscious effort to make politics so dry and boring that only the educated would bother to vote.
After 1900, turnout in American elections crashed. The “respectable White man” was emancipated as the working class lost interest in elections. This established the 20th century pattern of voting where college educated voters are more likely to vote than working class voters. In the late 19th century, the opposite was true. Voting was held in disrepute among the educated. Workers were enthusiastic partisans. Gentlemen ceded the public square to the lower classes. This only began to change during the Progressive era.
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