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The Solid South or Southern bloc was the electoral voting bloc of the Southern United States states for issues that were regarded as particularly important to the interests of white Democrats in the Southern states. The Southern bloc existed especially between 1877 (the end of Reconstruction) and 1964 (the year of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964). During this period, the Democratic Party controlled state legislatures and most local and state officeholders in the South were Democrats, as were federal politicians from these states. The control of the Southern Democrats after disenfranchisement of blacks at the turn of the century meant that a candidate's victory in Democratic primary elections was tantamount to election to the office itself. Though regarded by most as an example of racial segregation, white primaries further entrenched white Democratic party control of the political process in the South.〔Dewey W. Grantham, ''The life and death of the Solid South: A political history'' (1992).〕 The "Solid South" is a loose term referring to the states that made up the voting bloc at any point in time. The Southern region as defined by U.S. Census comprises 16 states plus Washington D.C. -Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas. This definition does not necessarily correspond to the states in the definition of the Solid South. Maryland was occasionally considered part of the Solid South and Missouri is classified as a Midwestern state by the U.S. Census. ==History == At the start of the American Civil War, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states. Eleven of these slave states seceded from the United States to form the Confederacy: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The slave states that stayed in the Union were Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky, and they were referred to as the border states. In 1861, West Virginia was created out of Virginia, and admitted in 1863 and considered a border state. By the time the Emancipation Proclamation was made in 1863 Tennessee was already in Union control. Accordingly the Proclamation applied only to the 10 remaining Confederate states. Several of the border states abolished slavery before the end of the Civil War — the District of Columbia in 1862, Maryland in 1864,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Archives of Maryland Historical List: Constitutional Convention, 1864 )〕 Missouri in 1865,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Missouri abolishes slavery )〕 one of the Confederate states, Tennessee in 1865, and West Virginia in 1865.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=On this day: 1865-FEB-03 )〕 However, slavery persisted in Delaware,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Slavery in Delaware )〕 Kentucky,〔 In 1866, Kentucky refused to ratify the 13th Amendment. It did ratify it in 1976.〕 and 10 of the 11 of the former Confederate states, until the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery throughout the United States on December 18, 1865. Abolition of slavery was a condition of the return of local rule in those states that had declared their secession. The Reconstruction era came to an end in 1877. Democratic dominance of the South originated in the struggle of white Southerners during and after Reconstruction to establish white supremacy and disenfranchise blacks. The Federal government under the Republican Party had conquered the South, abolished slavery, and enfranchised blacks. In several states, black voters were a majority or close to it. Republicans supported by blacks controlled state governments in these states. Thus the Democratic Party became the vehicle for the white supremacist "Redeemers". The Ku Klux Klan, as well as other insurgent paramilitary groups such as the White League and Red Shirts from 1874, acted as "the military arm of the Democratic party" to disrupt Republican organizing, and intimidate and suppress black voters.〔George C. Rable, ''But There Was No Peace: The Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction'' (1984), p. 132〕 By 1876, Redeemer Democrats had taken control of all the state governments in the South. From then until the 1960s, state and local government in the South was almost entirely monopolized by Democrats. The Democrats elected all but a handful of U.S. Representatives and Senators, and Democrat Presidential candidates regularly swept the region – from 1880 through 1944, winning 182 of 187 states. The Democrats reinforced the loyalty of white voters by emphasizing the suffering of the South during the war at the hands of "Yankee invaders" under Republican leadership, and the noble service of their forefathers in "the Lost Cause". This rhetoric was effective with many Southerners. (However, this propaganda was totally ineffective in areas that had been loyal to the Union during the war, such as eastern Tennessee. Eastern Tennessee welcomed Union troops as liberators, and voted Republican after the war, right down to the present.)〔Gordon B. McKinney, ''Southern Mountain Republicans, 1865–1900: Politics and the Appalachian Community'' (1998)〕 Even after white Democrats regained control of state legislatures, some blacks were elected to local offices and state legislatures in the South. Black U.S. Representatives were elected from the South as late as the 1890s, usually from overwhelmingly black areas. Also in the 1890s, the Populists developed a following in the South, among poor whites resentful of the Democratic party establishment. Populists formed alliances with Republicans (including blacks) and challenged the Democrat bosses, even defeating them in some cases.〔C. Van Woodward, ''The Origins of the New South, 1877–1913'' (1951) pp 235–90〕 To prevent such coalitions in the future and to end the violence associated with suppressing the black vote during elections, southern Democrats acted to disfranchise both blacks and poor whites. From 1890 to 1910, beginning with Mississippi, southern states adopted new constitutions and other laws including various devices to restrict voter registration, disfranchising virtually all black and many poor white voters.〔(Richard M. Valelly, ''The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement'' University of Chicago Press, 2009, pp. 146–147 )〕 These devices applied to all citizens; in practice they disfranchised most blacks and also "would remove (voter registration rolls ) the less educated, less organized, more impoverished whites as well – and that would ensure one-party Democratic rules through most of the 20th century in the South."〔(Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon" ), ''Constitutional Commentary'', Vol.17, 2000, p.10, Accessed 10 Mar 2008〕〔Glenn Feldman, ''The Disenfranchisement Myth: Poor Whites and Suffrage Restriction in Alabama'', Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004, pp. 135–136〕 All the southern states adopted provisions that restricted voter registration and suffrage, including new requirements for poll taxes, longer residency, and subjective literacy tests. Some also used the device of grandfather clauses, exempting voters who had a grandfather voting by a particular year (usually before the Civil War, when blacks could not vote.)〔Michael Perman.''Struggle for Mastery: Disenfranchisement (sic) in the South, 1888–1908'' (2001), Introduction〕 White Democrats also opposed Republican economic policies such as the high tariff and the gold standard, both of which were seen as benefiting Northern industrial interests at the expense of the agrarian South in the 19th century. But holding all political power was at the heart of their resistance. White Democrats passed "Jim Crow" laws which reinforced white supremacy through racial segregation.〔(Connie Rice: Top 10 Election Myths to Get Rid Of : NPR ) The situation in Louisiana was an example—see John N. Pharr, Regular Democratic Organization#Reconstruction & aftermath, and the note to Murphy J. Foster (who served as governor of Louisiana from 1892 to 1900).〕 In the Deep South (South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas), Democrat dominance was overwhelming, with 80%–90% of the vote, and only a tiny number of Republican state legislators or local offficials. In the Upper South (Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia), Republicans retained a significant presence, even winning occasional governorships and often drawing over 40% in presidential votes. Democratic candidates won by large margins in the Southern states in every presidential election from the election of 1876 to 1948 except for 1928, when the Democrat candidate was Al Smith, a Catholic New Yorker; and even in that election, the divided South provided Smith with nearly three-fourths of his electoral votes. Scholar Richard Valelly credited Woodrow Wilson's 1912 election to the disfranchisement of blacks in the South, and also noted far-reaching effects in Congress, where the Democratic South gained "about 25 extra seats in Congress for each decade between 1903 and 1953."〔 The Fourteenth Amendment provided for apportionment of representation in Congress to be reduced if a state disenfranchised part of its population. But this clause was never applied to southern states that disenfranchised blacks. No blacks were elected to any office in the South for decades after the turn of the century; and they were also excluded from juries and other participation in civil life.〔 By the 1920s, as memories of the Civil War faded, the Solid South cracked slightly. For instance, a Republican was elected U.S. Representative from Texas in 1920, serving until 1932. The Republican national landslides in 1920 and 1928 had some effects. However, with the Democratic national landslide of 1932, the South again became solidly Democrat. Southern demography began to change as well. From 1910 through 1970, about 6.5 million black southerners moved to urban areas in other parts of the country in the Great Migration. From 1876 through 1944, the national Democratic party opposed any calls for civil rights for blacks. In Congress southern Democrats blocked such efforts as Republicans made on the issue.〔Jeffery A. Jenkins, Justin Peck, and Vesla M. Weaver. "Between Reconstructions: Congressional Action on Civil Rights, 1891–1940." ''Studies in American Political Development'' 24#1 (2010): 57–89. (online )〕 In the 1930s, black voters outside the South largely switched to the Democrats, and other groups with an interest in civil rights (notably Jews, Catholics, and academic intellectuals) became more powerful in the party. This led to the national Democrats adopting a civil rights plank in 1948. A faction of Deep South Democrats bolted the party, and ran their own "Dixiecrat" presidential ticket, which carried four states, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.〔Kari A. Frederickson, ''The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968'' (2001).〕 The Republican Party began to make gains in the South, building on other cultural conflicts as well. Demographics began to change southern states in other ways. Florida began to expand rapidly, with retirees and other migrants from other regions becoming a majority of the population, which did not share the traditional southern hostility to the Republicans. By the mid-1960s, changes had come in many of the southern states. Former Dixiecrat Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina changed parties in 1964; Texas elected a Republican Senator in 1961; Florida and Arkansas elected Republican governors in 1966. In the upper South, where Republicans had always been a small presence, Republicans gained a few House and Senate seats. Republican President Richard Nixon adopted a "Southern Strategy" for the presidential election of 1972: continue enforcement of the civil rights legislation of the 1960s, but be quiet about it, so that offended Southern whites would continue to blame the Democrats, while talking up the Democrats' increasing association with liberal views. He was aided by centrist Democrats' attacks on the eventual nominee as a radical. This strategy was wildly successful – Nixon carried every southern state by huge margins. The South was still overwhelmingly Democratic at the state level, with majorities in all state legislatures, and most U.S. Representatives as well. Over the next 30 years, this gradually changed. Veteran Democrat officeholders retired or died, and older voters who were still rigidly Democrat also died off. There were also increasing numbers of migrants from other areas, especially in Florida, Texas, and North Carolina. With the "Republican Revolution" in the 1994 elections, Republicans captured a majority of Southern House seats for the first time. Today, the South is considered a Republican stronghold at the state and federal levels, with Republicans holding majorities in every southern state after the 2014 elections. Political experts have often cited a southernization of politics following the fall of the Solid South. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Solid South」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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