Courthouse clique
[1] As in England, the justices were responsible for managing local affairs including setting taxation rates, regulating businesses, and maintaining roads.
State legislatures created new statutes and wrote new constitutions which dispensed of the justices and empowered themselves or the citizens of a given county to elect judges for fixed terms.
However, by the 1870s the planter class, well-embedded in the Democratic Party, began a campaign to "redeem" the South from the control of Radical Republicans, which had disrupted the previous social order and elevated the political prominence of black freedmen, "carpetbaggers", and "scalawags".
In Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina the Democrats successfully stripped the ability of citizens to choose their local governments and made such choices the purview of either the state legislature or governor.
[10] The cliques were never formal organizations, but were instead groups of men who had social prominence, business connections, and long residency in public office that managed affairs through personal relationships.
[12] The Democratic dominance of the South provoked the ire of Republicans and independents, who frequently complained of courthouse cliques wielding control of public affairs.
[6] The perception of county political machine control also upset poor white farmers and contributed to the growth of the Populist movement in the 1890s and its demands for reform.
[16] Corruption in county governments led civic groups such as the National Short Ballot Organization to begin calling for reform in the early 20th century.
[16] The promulgation of the one man, one vote doctrine by the United States Supreme Court in Baker v. Carr and Gray v. Sanders and subsequent reapportionment shifted political power away from rural counties and towards urban areas.
[20] Southern candidates stopped seeking the endorsement of local politicians and their networks and instead began appealing directly to the electorate through mass media for support.
[21] Journalistic exposés, scholarly works, movies, and fictional writings have emphasized the historical importance of courthouse cliques in Southern politics and led to the creation of a stereotype portraying county governments in the South as dominated by corrupt politicians who use undemocratic methods to protect their power and their wealthy allies.
[1] While no longer forming extensive political networks or wielding wide influence, county office-holders still retain a significant amount of responsibility for law enforcement and the delivery of public services in their jurisdictions.
