Slavery and the Spoils System in American Political Development

• In Event: Groups and Parties in American Political Development

Abstract

Was the spoils system different in the antebellum south? By the mid-nineteenth century, political patronage had emerged as a central feature of mass party competition in the United States. But scholarship on the subject typically focuses on the north and west. What, then, about the South? Leading scholars contend that patronage politics, despite its importance to the Second Party System, largely failed to take root in states where Black enslavement predominated. Lack of sustained party competition, fewer appointive offices, the smaller number of southern newspapers and editors (and thus party organs and leaders), along with the persistence of anti-partyism—all seemingly reduced the spoils system’s importance. That prevailing view, however, seems at odds with other trends during the antebellum period. Enslavers were overrepresented in national government, and thus held considerable sway when appointments were decided. Southern representatives legislated and implemented major pro-slavery public policies, which required allies in lower offices. And, finally, the long boom in plantation commodities after the War of 1812 fostered new state functions associated with growing trade, conflicts over property, and, especially, the demand for greater coercive capacities to suppress slave revolts and prevent escape. This paper examines archival materials, newspapers, census documents, and the federal register to ask what was distinctive about patterns of southern political patronage between the 1830s and 1850s. If we simply count by the number of appointments in federal customhouses and post offices, the size of public contracts, and the prevalence of spoilsmen at political conventions, then it appears that patronage politics was indeed less important in the American south. However, if we consider cross-party, business, family, and ideological ties, their relation to the wider social power of enslavers in local communities, and southern control over patronage in other regions, then we need a broader understanding of the spoils system as a race-making institution. In northern, more urbanized states, officeseeking emerged as a semi-autonomous profession with a logic centered on popular voter mobilization. Patronage was no less central to southern politics; however, it emerged from the household patrimonialism associated with large plantation owners rather than party committees or nominating conventions. Southern spoilsmen tended to seek promotion through channels of elite social deference rather than via electoral performance. Patronage rewards for services rendered were less focused on internal party markets for lucrative offices, as careerists were in the north, than on converting political capital into greater ownership of slaves, the principal source of wealth and status in southern life. The spoils system in the antebellum south is a stark example of how sectional asymmetries shaped party development in American history.

Author

• Jeffrey Broxmeyer, University of Toledo