THE WILD ASS OF THE OZARKS: JEFF DAVIS AND THE SOCIAL BASES OF SOUTHERN DEMAGOGUERY 1888-1913

In its broadest terms, this study is an examination of the "Southern demagogue" as a political, cultural, and social phenomenon. In its narrowest terms, it is an analysis of the career of a single politician, Jeff Davis of Arkansas (1862-1913). One of the post-Reconstruction South's most colorful politicians, Davis was an extraordinarily successful mass leader who earned such sobriquets as "a Karl Marx for Hill Billies," "the tribune of haybinders," and "the wild ass of the Ozarks." Elected state attorney general in 1898, he went on to serve three stormy terms as governor before moving up to the United States Senate in 1907. Re-elected to the Senate in 1912, he died in January 1913.;The sage of Jeff Davis is part of a much larger story--the story of a political tradition that dominated Southern politics for nearly three-quarters of a century. Along with "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman of South Carolina, "Fiddlin' Bob" Taylor of Tennessee, and James K. Vardaman of Mississippi, Davis served as a prototype for the twentieth-century "Southern demagogue." His remarkable career influenced countless politicians, including Huey Long, who was mesmerized by a Davis stump speech as a young boy. Although Davis was the product of a particular time and place, his style of politics was rooted in an ongoing cultural crisis which eventually affected all areas of the agrarian South.;Although Jeff Davis is the focal point of the dissertation, this study is also an analysis of a mass social and political movement which encompassed thousands of voters and hundreds of politicians. Using data from a wide variety of sources--federal census returns (both manuscript and published), tax records, business directories and gazeteers, state reports, and newspapers--this study reconstructs the social fabric and political tendencies of a large sample of Arkansas counties, cities, towns, villages, and rural townships. This "patchwork quilt" of data reveals that the cultural gap between town and country was the primary basis for Democratic factionalism in early twentieth century Arkansas. Davis's support was concentrated in rural precincts; he was especially popular among farmers who lived in remote areas. Within the agricultural community, his support cut across class lines; he appealed to all farmers who resented the fact that the locus of power was shifting away from rural communities. His followers were enraged by the quasi-colonial relationship between farmers and town-dwelling merchants, as well as the colonial relationship between North and South.;Davis's appeal was based on much more than an issueless politics of personality. His personality was important, but only because it was culturally keyed to the myths and realities of the agrarian South. He was not an effective reformer, but he did bring about a redistribution of psychological power by enhancing and legitimizing an agrarian world-view. He was a genuinely charismatic leader who dramatized and personalized the complaints of beleaguered white farmers. And he was an innovative politician who knew how to acquire and hold power. Nevertheless, his administrations produced more politics than government, more rhetoric than reform. He left an ambiguous legacy.;Vilified as a "demagogue" by many of his contemporaries, Davis was famous for his picturesque crusades against Yankee trusts, city dudes, and "high-collared aristocrats." Although he occasionally resorted to racial demagoguery, he was essentially an agrarian spokesman. A sincere if ineffectual reformer, Davis consistently championed the interests of downtrodden white farmers. One scornful Arkansas editor decribed him as "a carrot-headed, red-faced, loud-mouthed, strong-limbed, ox-driving mountaineer lawyer that has come to Little Rock to get a reputation--a friend to the fellow who brews forty-rod bug juice back in the mountains." Davis gloried in such descriptions and played the role of a hillbilly folk hero to the hilt.