Talk:Stalwarts (politics)

This is too big a topic for me to handle on my own right now . . . But why no mention of slavery? Stalwarts turned to machine politics to counter the Democrats, who (until FDR) were the party of state's rights and segregation, and who used violence to oppose Reconstruction in the South. Anti-racism being a minority position in the 1880's, Stalwarts built a patronage machine to keep the Southerners out of power. Half-breeds, on the other hand, were willing to sell out Reconstuction to enact their economic agenda.

Anyone else have any thoughts? Innocent76 09:51, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Pitted against

"They were pitted against the Half Breeds for control of the Republican Party". Not entirely, if I remember my history correctly. They were pitted against the Mugwumps, with the Half Breeds being named for their being in an intermediate position.

You are a little early with the Mugwumps. That was part of a "Goo-goo" (Good Government-- a young Theodore Roosevelt was involved, but didn't become a Mugwump) faction that bolted from the party in 1884 upon the nomination of Blaine, who had some corruption issues. This led to the election of the Democrat Cleveland. But you are not entirely wrong. The reformist types like Hayes and Garfield were obviously part of the trend. But during the time of the Stalwarts, the nation was more fascinated by the battle between Grant/Conkling and Blaine, since the two sides had more cohesive followers and seemed to thoroughly hate each other.PhilD86 (talk) 06:39, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

With this and Innocent's comment above, still not really addressed, there appears to be a lot that could be written here. - Jmabel | Talk 21:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion of article more informative than article itself

I learned more about the term Stalwart and the related term Half-Breed from the discussion of the article than in the article itself!

Organization and Edits

I added some information on the Stalwarts that I found in a journal article. I didn't have any information on slavery per se, so I didn't add that. Also organized it a bit with some section headings.Alouette93 (talk) 20:02, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the debate was NO CONSENSUS to move page at this time, per discussion below. -GTBacchus^(talk) 09:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Move proposal discussion

Support

I believe this page should be the disambig. The current disambig should be moved here and this page should get it's own title. --JAYMEDINC 20:39, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Please provide some rationale for your argument. —  AjaxSmack  05:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

You will find a handful of ships and a military vehicle named stalwart. Also, their is more than one definition for stalwart. Because of this, I believe that Stalwart should be a disambig page leading to the things I just mentioned.

Oppose

• Oppose - barring any argument otherwise, I'm afraid I must oppose, per common usage. -Patstuart^talk|edits 19:59, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - I see a couple of relatively minor ships and a non-combat military vehicle, not good enough to displace this historically significant political faction. Plus, someone looking up one of the ships would probably already be using the HMS, USS, etc. --Groggy Dice T | C 03:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Why were the left-wing Radical Republicans succeeded by the center-right Stalwarts?

From what I understand, the Radical Republicans are considered left-wing, or something like that. Why did most become Stalwarts, who were center-right? Blue Director (talk) 22:18, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Like the rest of the Republican Party, the Stalwarts were hard-money types, but their distinguishing characteristics were a devotion to patronage, machine politics, and a strong and active commitment to Negro civil rights. I'm not particularly happy with this article in general. For example, the Half-Breeds were not as opposed to machine politics as is sometimes thought-- a lot of the differences were that of personality. Blaine and Conkling had a long-time personal animosity. The Half-Breeds may have been more willing to pay lip service to civil service reform, but it took a shocking act, the assassination of Garfield by a patronage seeker, to put it into effect.

But to go back to civil rights-- the Stalwarts were definitely the heirs of the Radical Republicans in this (The Radicals' counterparts were the Liberals, who took a laissez-faire attitude to the economy and civil rights.). The big Southern question in the Republican Party from the 1870s to the 1930s was whether to try to broaden their appeal by trying to pick up white votes by watering down their civil rights stances and patronage of black federal office holders, or stick with "black and tan" coalitions. The Stalwarts were definitely the latter type and held sway until Hoover upended the process, to no gain at all to the party.

The Stalwarts have gotten a bad name over time for several reasons: their unwitting complicity in Garfield's death, the abrasive personality of Conkling, the system of forced contributions from employees, and the corruption of some of their operatives. However, at their best, they were very competent administrators and their support for black civil rights is a plus in our eyes, even if it caused the denigration of the Grant administration in the past.PhilD86 (talk) 06:26, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I feel like the most reasonable action is to treat this page like the Half-Breeds one: get rid of the "political position" entirely. The story of the Republican Party in the 1870's is its ideological emphasis moving from radical social reform and civil rights to the explicit interests of Northern capital and hard money. In this, the Stalwarts unquestionably also moved right-ward. However which was the more "right-wing" side is probably debatable, and the Stalwarts' greater commitment to Black civil rights and the Half-Breeds' greater commitment to economic liberalism would make me inclined to think their positions on the political spectrum would be the other way around. Eggsandmarxism (talk) 22:29, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

So, allow me to get this straight: the Stalwarts represented a rightward shift in the GOP at the time, but still managed to not serve Southern interests, or did they use civil rights as a tool to gain support? Like, I wouldn't support them due to their capitalism, but I do support their pro-civil rights platform. Western Progressivist (talk) 14:31, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The trap into which the Radicals fell, was that they tied themselves to Grant's coattails even after it became clear that some of Grant's people were highly corrupt and using his reputation and that of some of the elder statesmen among the old Radicals to cover their tracks. To the extent that they were pro-patronage, it was in part (at least at first) because they saw it as a useful tool to reward and protect the remaining federal employees who were still committed to the goal of protecting the rights of the freedmen. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:21, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Blue Director, I was just asking and wondering the same after coming here, plus the Radical Republicans and Half-Breeds, through James A. Garfield's featured article. I thought the Radicals were the more left-wing and the Half-Breeds being the centrist faction, with the Stalwarts having moved to the right of the Radicals but still to the left of the Half-Breeds. Thanks to Eggsandmarxism, Orangemike, and PhilD86 for their insightful and helpful comments. Davide King (talk) 23:14, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

It is painful for somebody who likes a nice clear storyline, with villains and heroes, to realize that the "Liberal Republicans" were being liberal to the treasonous Southern aristocracy; that some of the fiercest remaining Republican champions of the rights of the freedmen were also often defenders of the genuinely corrupt members of the Grant administration; and that the "Liberal/People's Reform Party" movement in Wisconsin was basically a ploy by a disgruntled conservative Democratic railroad tycoon. In Wisconsin, the term "stalwart" was usurped to apply to conservative/orthodox opponents of the Greenbackers, Populists and La Follette's progressives/Progressives, long after it had ceased to be used elsewhere. --Orange Mike | Talk 01:25, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

On the usage of “liberal”

Conservatives are described here as “in reality more liberal” than Radical Republicans — then as opponents of both the extension of suffrage and “a system of free-market capitalism”.

Whatever connotations the word “liberal” has in present-day American political discourse, it’s clunky and anachronistic to use it in this ahistorical manner.

I cannot see how a politics premised upon free markets and the extension of the franchise could be construed such that opposition to it could be described as “liberal”.

On that note: on what grounds have editors opted to put quotation marks around the words “liberal”, “moderate”, and “conservative”? Again, it gives the impression of contemporary political ideologies being crudely retrofitted to the distant past. Foxmilder (talk) 04:32, 19 February 2024 (UTC)