During the 1860’s the Republicans were mostly abolitionists, while the Democrats favored the South and advocated slavery. Why is it the other way around now, with Democrats more popular in the north and in urban areas and the Republicans being viewed as conservative?
Er…not quite true.
Mississippi girl, relocated.
Democrats are very popular in the Southern US - among African American and poorer voters. They are perceived as the party of the people, as opposed to the Republicans being the party of rich old white guys.
Note, I don’t say that either stereotype is true, simply that that that seems to be the trend.
Now, I’d say the real question is - why do the Repubs keep getting elected down there? I have no cites, but I suspect that poverty and de facto disenfranchisement have a lot to do with it.
Grace
But that’s just the point: Republicans used to be the party of the people and the Democrats used to be the party of wealthy landowners.
Maybe this response is an oversimplifying, but I was taught that today’s Republican party <> the Republican party of Lincoln’s day. However, the GOP might like you to think otherwise…
My thinking is that it was a reaction to the New Deal - Repubs lost power for lots of years during the Depression, after all. Hoover (a Repub) was seen as the cause of the Depression and uncaring about people who were suffering. Roosevelt (a Democrat) came in with the New Deal and jobs and was viewed as a savior by the poor.
If I had to pick a turning point one to the other, I’d say that was it.
In the South previous to the New Deal the majority of African Americans DID vote Republican, and the white landowners hated them - which is where we get the term Carpetbaggers.
I agree with Jinx, however - the Republican party of Lincoln’s day isn’t anything like the party of today. And again I think the New Deal/Depression era was the turning point. But there were signs of a shift as early as the 1912 with Teddy Roosevelt split the party with his Bull Moose ticket caused by his dissatisfaction with Taft (a Republican), thus letting the Democrats to regain control of the presidency.
I think the Bull Moose movement was more the Repubs that were of the same mindset of the Lincoln era Repubs. Once they split off from the party, you get Harding, Coolridge and finally Hoover - and it can be said that their agendas are nothing like the Lincoln era Republican agendas. Blessed with a Roaring 20’s economy, they were able to favor big business and make budget cuts without many people noticing. When the Depression hit, the party was reveled for what it was and pretty much is today - a conservative bastion more interested in the financial bottom line than people’s individual sufferings.
That, is, of course, my WAG. 
Grace
"the 1912 with Teddy Roosevelt "
Er…if I wrote English, that would say…“1912 when Teddy Roosevelt…”
Oy. I need more Diet Pepsi.
Grace
And COOLIDGE. Not Coolridge.
Where in the hell is that Diet Pepsi??
ARGH!
Grace…who promises never ever to post again without reading it over first.
Back in the time of the Depression (1930s) BOTH parties were conservative. When Franklin Roosevelt, the Democratic governor of New York, was elected President in 1932, he undertook a series of federal welfare and public works programs. This action, opposed by Republicans, identified the Democrats as the party of the poor and the Republicans as the party for, as Liquid Grace put it "rich old white guys.
After World War 2, northern Democrats pushed very hard for civil rights for blacks. This debate came to a head during the 1948 Democratic convention, when southern Democrats walked out and ran their own candidate (Strom Thurmond, then-governor of South Carolina) for President. The southern Democratic opposition to civil rights continued through the 1950s and early 1960s. When Lyndon Johnson supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many southern Democrats officially or tacitly broke with the Democratic Party.
This situation became formalized in 1968 with Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy” (which appealed to white Southern voters who had opposed civil rights legislation.) When Alabama Governor George Wallace formally broke with the Democrats to run for President as an independent, much of the remaining white support for the Democrats in the South went with him.
That’s not a fair summary of Civil War-era politics. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to oppose the spread of slavery. The slavery issue (and related postwar civil rights controversy) cut across class lines and overshadowed economic issues from 1854 until about 1873.
Neither party had any clear economic orientation during this time. Some wealthy bankers and business owners were Republicans; some Democrats. Many poor Irish immigrants in New York were Democrats, but on the other hand Lincoln’s Republican supporters in Illinois proudly described themselves as “greasy mudsills and mechanics”–in other words, common laboring men.
After the 1870’s, racial issues did begin to fade (sad to say, because white Northerners simply stopped caring about the fate of African Americans in the South), and economic issues resumed their former importance. During this era the parties gradually assumed their modern “liberal/conservative” orientation (although the terms weren’t yet in use). Economic controversy in the late 1800’s tended not to involve government spending and taxes but rather the “currency question”, with conservatives favoring “sound money” (gold and deflation) and liberals favoring “easy money” (silver, paper money, and inflation). U.S. Grant put the Republican Party firmly on the side of “sound money” in the 1870’s, and William Jennings Bryan put the Democrats firmly on the side of “easy money” in the 1890’s.
Racial issues never entirely faded, however, leaving African Americans in somewhat of a quandary–the Republican Party tended to favor their interests as a race, but Democrats tended to favor their interests as a class. The tradeoff could be agonizing–Woodrow Wilson was generally liberal on economic issues, but he was easily the most racist President of the Twentieth Century. Most blacks continued to vote Republican until WWII. kunilou has already summarized the postwar reversal.
To give a little backstory to Kunilou’s post, in the Post-reconstruction South, the Republican Party had no real power. The Rebublican Party was associated with the North, the war and the real and perceived abuses of Reconstruction, and the “Solid South” voted en masse for the Democratic Party. Eisenhower was the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Southern states, and some states did not elect Republicans to state office until the Eighties.
It could be said that social programs, esp those who help out minorities (which is mainly considered liberal-democratic) just serve to make these people more dependant on the gov’t, and more likely to vote for people who expand these programs. So this kind of enslaves a group of people to continue to vote in their ‘masters’ to continue the meager benefits.
So I’m not sure I agree with the OP
Well, that’s why I’m opposed to affirmative action (plus, it means that less is expected of some people) but the modern Democrats are still generally considered to be for civil rights and helping out minorities (there aren’t too many “minorities” [I disagree with the usage of that word, but I digress] in the Republican party).
Odd that no one has metnioned the 1876 election. This was between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. When the voting was finished, each former Confederate state (or maybe not each but anyway several) had sent two slates of electors, one Republican and one Democrat. I forget the actual reasons, but I am sure a lot can be found on the web (or even in those obscure artifacts called “books”). At any rate, without those disputed southern electors, the Dems were one vote short of a majority. So what to do? Eventually a commission was struck consisting of 7 Democrats, 7 Republicans and the Chief Justice of the US, who was also a Republican. And when they voted, elector by elector, they voted 8-7 for each Republican. But there was a price paid. The Republicans agreed to end reconstruction. Never again, till Earl Warren in 1954, did any Republican question segregation. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but that election really did set the tone for the next 75 years or so. In retrospect, it seems that WWII broke that mold. And despite this, the south remained solidly Democrat until 1948 and even after, it still took 20 years for them to realize that they were philosophically Republican, strange to say. Of course, many refused to vote for Kennedy too, but that’s a different story. Objectively, this story makes no sense, but it is true for all that.