Doughface
Encyclopedia
The term doughface originally referred to an actual mask
Mask
A mask is an article normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance or entertainment. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes...

 made of dough
Dough
Dough is a paste made out of any cereals or leguminous crops by mixing flour with a small amount of water and/or other liquid. This process is a precursor to making a wide variety of foodstuffs, particularly breads and bread-based items , flatbreads, noodles, pastry, and similar items)...

, but came to be used in a disparaging context for someone, especially a politician, who is perceived to be pliable and moldable. In the 1847 Webster's dictionary doughfacism was defined as "the willingness to be led about by one of stronger mind and will." In the years leading up to the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

, "doughface" was used to describe Northerners who favored the Southern position in political disputes. Typically it was applied to a Northern Democrat
History of the United States Democratic Party
The history of the Democratic Party of the United States is an account of the oldest political party in the United States and arguably the oldest democratic party in the world....

 who was more often allied with the Southern Democrats than with the majority of Northern Democrats.

Origin of the term

The expression was coined by John Randolph
John Randolph of Roanoke
John Randolph , known as John Randolph of Roanoke, was a planter and a Congressman from Virginia, serving in the House of Representatives , the Senate , and also as Minister to Russia...

, a Representative from Virginia, during the Missouri Compromise
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise was an agreement passed in 1820 between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States Congress, involving primarily the regulation of slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in the former Louisiana Territory north of the parallel 36°30'...

 debates. Randolph had no respect for northerners who voted with the South, considering them, in historian Leonard Richards' words, "weak men, timid men, half-baked men." Randolph said of them:


John Randolph may actually have said "doe faces" instead of "dough faces": the pronunciation would have been identical, and Randolph was a hunter, sometimes bringing his hunting dog with him to Congress. Ascribing "doe faces" (or "doe's faces") to those he despised would have been Randolph's comment on the weakness of these men.

In 1820 seventeen doughfaces made the Missouri Compromise possible. In 1836 sixty northern congressmen voted with the South in the passage of a gag rule
Gag rule
A gag rule is a rule that limits or forbids the raising, consideration or discussion of a particular topic by members of a legislative or decision-making body.-Origin and pros and cons:...

 to prevent anti-slavery petitions from being formally received in the House of Representatives. In 1847 twenty-seven northerners joined with the South in opposing the Wilmot Proviso
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso, one of the major events leading to the Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or in the future, including the area later known as the Mexican Cession, but which some proponents construed to also include the disputed...

, and in 1850 thirty-five supported a stronger fugitive slave law. By 1854 the South had changed its position on the Missouri Compromise and fifty-eight northerners supported its repeal in the Kansas-Nebraska Act
Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through Popular Sovereignty if they would allow slavery within...

.

The 1850s

While the term originated in the House, doughfaces eventually had their greatest influence in the United States Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

. In the House the greater growth of the northern population gave it a greater proportion of votes, but in the Senate the even balance of slave and free states required that only a few northerners needed to support the South in order to hold the House in check. The clearest case came in the Wilmot Proviso
Wilmot Proviso
The Wilmot Proviso, one of the major events leading to the Civil War, would have banned slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico in the Mexican War or in the future, including the area later known as the Mexican Cession, but which some proponents construed to also include the disputed...

 votes of 1846 and 1847 when the Senate rejected the Proviso after its passage in the House.

Of course, many Southerners still looked at these doughfaces from the same perspective as Randolph—weak men who, without any firm moral commitment to their cause other than political expediency, could prove at some critical point in the future to be unreliable. Richards has classified 320 congressmen in the period from 1820 to 1860 as doughfaces. The two U.S. Presidents
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 preceding Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...

, Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce
Franklin Pierce was the 14th President of the United States and is the only President from New Hampshire. Pierce was a Democrat and a "doughface" who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. Pierce took part in the Mexican-American War and became a brigadier general in the Army...

 and James Buchanan
James Buchanan
James Buchanan, Jr. was the 15th President of the United States . He is the only president from Pennsylvania, the only president who remained a lifelong bachelor and the last to be born in the 18th century....

, were both commonly referred to as doughfaces. Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen A. Douglas
Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Northern Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed...

 was severely criticized by Lincoln as the "worst doughface of them all," even though he broke with his party over the Lecompton Constitution
Lecompton Constitution
The Lecompton Constitution was the second of four proposed constitutions for the state of Kansas . The document was written in response to the anti-slavery position of the 1855 Topeka Constitution of James H. Lane and other free-state advocates...

 for Kansas
Kansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...

 in 1857. Other such doughfaces were Charles G. Atherton
Charles G. Atherton
Charles Gordon Atherton was a Democratic Representative and Senator from New Hampshire.-Biography:The son of Charles Humphrey Atherton and Mary Ann Toppan-Atherton, Charles G. Atherton was born in Amherst, New Hampshire on 4 July 1804...

, the author of the gag rule
Gag rule
A gag rule is a rule that limits or forbids the raising, consideration or discussion of a particular topic by members of a legislative or decision-making body.-Origin and pros and cons:...

, and Jesse D. Bright
Jesse D. Bright
Jesse David Bright was the ninth Lieutenant Governor of Indiana and U.S. Senator from Indiana who served as President pro tempore of the Senate on three separate occasions...

, the only northern senator expelled for treason during the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

.

The ultimate weakness of the doughfaces, from a Southern perspective, came over the issue of popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty
Popular sovereignty or the sovereignty of the people is the political principle that the legitimacy of the state is created and sustained by the will or consent of its people, who are the source of all political power. It is closely associated with Republicanism and the social contract...

. At the time of the Kansas-Nebraska Act popular sovereignty was accepted by both the northern and southern Democrats as the proper states' rights position. It protected against federal consolidation and insured the equality of the states to compete in the territories. Douglas and many northern Democrats remained consistent through 1860 in their support for popular sovereignty. Southerners, on the other hand, saw the increasing strength of the anti-slavery movement in the North and by the late 1850s were no longer content simply to rely on preventing the Federal government from interfering in the territories. They now insisted on Federal intervention to protect slavery in the territories and prevent any decision on slavery until a territory
Historic regions of the United States
This is a list of historic regions of the United States.-Colonial era :-The Thirteen Colonies:* Connecticut Colony* Delaware Colony* Province of Georgia* Province of Maryland...

 prepared a constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...

 as part of an application for statehood. Northern Democrats and Stephen A. Douglas could not go that far with the South. The doughface, as an agent for sectional compromise, had outlived his usefulness.

Modern usage

In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s book The Vital Center
The Vital Center
The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom is a 1949 book, by Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., defending liberal democracy and a state regulated market economy against the totalitarianism of communism and fascism....

, he applied the term to modern liberalism in the United States, referring to the part of the movement perceived as weak.

External links

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