A Quantitative Analysis of Party Unity and Division in the Antebellum Georgia Legislature from 1845-1854

Jacob Martin, West Virginia University

Historians and politicians alike have debated the existence of the Second Party System since its collapse. This research uses the case study of Georgia to build on this discourse. First, the study traces institutional factors and six societal structures informing the Georgian political system: honor culture, regionalism, economic change, religion, gender, and race. Then, this study quantitatively analyzes legislator voting records in the Georgia House of Representatives from the 1845 to 1854 sessions within the context of eleven variables to find which best explains political behavior: party, region, religion, incumbency, white population, political class, class, slave population, slave proportion, frontier status, and the ratio of cash crops to food crops. Additionally, the project employs the Rice Index to measure party coherency. The regressions indicate that party was the best explanation of voting behavior, followed by region, class, and slave proportion, respectively. Both parties exhibited low Rice Index scores, indicating low party cohesion. Moreover, Rice Indices of specific policy issue areas show that both parties became less coherent in most issues. The Whigs, critically, lost cohesion surrounding their vital issues of development, banking, and taxes. This reveals a decline in the viability of the Whig Party and invites further research into the transformation (rather than the disappearance) of the party. Thus, while the Second Party System existed within Georgia between 1845 and 1854, it lacked strict party lines. This research displays that the SPS existed longer in Georgia than previously thought, raising questions about the prewar political fragmentation that eventually paved the way for secession and inviting further quantitative examinations of the SPS at the state level.

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 Presented in Session 161. Theories of Consolidation, Legislative Politics, and Illiberal Contexts