Today progressive, the Democratic Party was once the most conservative in the USA

During Lincoln’s presidency, the American Civil War, or Civil War, took place. From 1861 to 1865, the country’s southern states—represented by slave farmers who were mostly affiliated with the Democratic Party—fought to secede from the northern states. Anti-abolitionism was at the center of the interests of those trying to secede.

With the defeat of the South and the unity of the country, the Ku Klux Klan was founded. Many of the members of the racist terrorist organization were also members of the Democratic Party. The association between the two things was such that the organization came to be considered an armed wing of the party.

After the First World War, positions began to be redefined. Some former Democrats joined conservative Republicans within the party, while the Democratic Party began to adopt more welfare and worker-oriented policies.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy were some of the names responsible for changing the face of the Democratic Party. Roosevelt’s greatest act was the New Deal, the country’s recovery agreement after the 1929 crisis, which included, among other things, the payment of social benefits and the promotion of unions. Both Truman and Kennedy promoted the defense of civil rights.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton brought a new face to the party. The Democrats had been out of power for more than a decade and Clinton managed to regain it by defending a more centrist economic policy and a liberal social agenda, aspects that remained during the governments of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Barack Obama’s election cemented change in the party. With racist roots, the Democratic Party consolidated its shift to a progressive profile with the election of Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States.