Pure Democracy

“What has happened since then has been a sort of rupture in the laws of supply and demand…In 2000, New York City’s population was 8,008,278. In 2023, the Census Bureau estimated that it was 8,258,035. In a safe and prosperous quarter century, the most important city in the…

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) March 3, 2025

I read this earlier this morning and thought this was interesting and worth sharing.

The following excerpt comes from Jon Grinspan’s book The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought To Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915

“Words like cure and settled capture the anticipation of many in the victorious North in 1865, convinced that their nation stood on the threshold of a new era. The war was not yet over, and no one knew how to reconstruct the nation, but it was clear that American democracy was about to change. It was time, Will Kelly told an African American social club in Philadelphia, to “perpetuate a pure democracy, with powers subject only to the revision of the people.”

What Kelley called “pure democracy,” the belligerent New York congressman Roscoe Conkling called a “moral earthquake.” Things were about to get a lot less “settled.” It was time to shake loose the old bonds that had restrained politics for far too long, to ensure that “the will of the majority must be the only king; the ballot-box must be the only throne.” …

It was easy for northern Republicans to boast about majorities in 1865. They had the numbers. In the defeated Confederacy, many grumbled that they would never vote again, and in the North conservative Democrats accused the Republican Party of conspiring “to carry out its spite / to elevate the black man and trample on the white.” But the Republican Party held unprecedented sway, controlled over 70 percent of the seats in Congress in 1865, soon to rise to 80 percent. The next census would find that three-quarters of Americans lived outside the former Confederacy, with more people in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio than in all the formerly seceded states combined. If the four million newly freed African Americans were able to win political rights, they would further strengthen this ruling alliance.”

King Numbers.

“Pure democracy.”

A “moral earthquake.”

Ultimately, it all about the sectional power struggle within the Union. 3 out of 4 Americans lived outside the former Confederacy in 1870. Voting rights were given to blacks during Reconstruction because the end of slavery had brought about the end of the 3/5th clause. Northern Republicans wanted to dominate the country and they had the numbers to do it. They wanted to consolidate the power shift to the North. Destroying slavery also eliminated the economic basis of Southern wealth.

Fastforward to the present day.

Demographically, America has been turned upside down. 57 million Americans live in the Northeast. 68 million live in the Midwest. 130 million live in the South. The 2030 Census is going to shift the electoral equivalent of Wisconsin to Red States led by Florida and Texas. In 1870, more Americans lived in New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio than in all of the states of the former Confederacy, which when you think about it explains the entire arc of American politics over the following century. Florida was still a swamp when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was pushed down our throats. Power follows population.