Response to the appeal was generally disappointing. Southern senators and congressmen considered it a “sugarcoated” Dixiecrat movement. However, the Governor was able to secure the calling of a convention of state party chairmen at Atlanta in July. This meeting adopted a resolution which urged unity but within the Democratic Party. Toward this end, another conference was recommended, this time to be attended by Southern governors, convention delegation chairmen and vice-chairmen, and members of the convention platform and resolutions committee.[414]
This second parley was also held at Atlanta in early August. Four governors and three United States senators attended along with approximately thirty other political officials. Again advocates of “Southern independence” were in a minority and the convention adopted a declaration which urged unity but again within the Democratic Party.[415] For all their efforts, Southern Democrats achieved only a minimum of unity.
The Morning News and Independent were skeptical of these maneuvers, viewing them as posing the threat of a potential third party movement. The Morning News, furthermore, pointed out the inconsistency of Southern Democrats damning the national party for its attention to minority groups and at the same time demanding special treatment because of minority standing.[416] But the News and Courier, not forgetful of Strom Thurmond’s leadership of the Dixiecrat movement in 1948, thought South Carolinians should take pride in Governor Timmerman’s emergence as leader of “Southern Independence” at a time when other Southern politicians were shielding their timidity “with the time worn cloak of party loyalty.”[417] Others were no less critical of the emphasis on unity within the party. The Record considered the declaration by the second Atlanta conference “quite docile,” “timid in tone,” and “disappointing.”[418]
At the Democratic National Convention in August the South Carolina delegation was primarily concerned with securing an acceptable platform. Governor Timmerman spoke for the delegation before the platform committee. He warned that a civil rights plank infringing upon the constitutional rights of the states, a pro-integration plank, or an approval of the school desegregation decision would insure a Democratic defeat in November. The basic issue was not “sectionalism, race per se, or special privilege,” he maintained. It was whether “this great Democratic party of individual freedom and states rights shall survive or ‘rot with radicalism.’”[419]
The pleadings of the Southerners were not without success for the civil rights plank adopted by the Democrats was much milder than it might have been. In regard to the Supreme Court decision it was nearer the Southern position than that of the Republicans. No direct endorsement was given the decision, and force was rejected as a method of accomplishing compliance. However the Democrats recognized Supreme Court decisions in general as “part of the law of the land.” Contrary to Southern wishes, the platform also endorsed previous Democratic accomplishments in the field of civil rights, e.g., armed forces integration, and urged the curbing of the filibuster in Senate debates.[420] In the latter respects the Democratic platform was further from the Southern position than was that of the Republicans.
Reaction to the platform varied with the more moderate elements generally considering it a compromise or a Southern victory. However, the News and Courier thought that despite “some weasel words,” the platform represented “a complete victory for Northern viewpoint and complete defeat of the South.” To the Charleston paper the platform added up to “FEPC, mixed schools, Federal investigation of white Southerners and enthusiastic endorsement of integration in the armed forces.” The trouble was that people had their terms confused, declared the News and Courier. A “compromise” on the civil rights issue would have been no civil rights plank at all. A Southern victory on the issue would have been a platform expressing opposition to the court decision, invasion of states rights, FEPC and integration in the armed forces.[421] The Record characterized the platform as “an effort at straddling, not actually the fence but an area just left of the fence.”[422]
Concerning nominees, the South was also not without success in that Adlai E. Stevenson, the least objectionable of the leading contenders to the South, won the nomination for President. However, the Tennessee liberal, Estes Kefauver, loathed by Southern extremists as a traitor to his section, was selected for Vice-President. The general strategy of the South Carolina delegation was to vote for Governor Timmerman as a favorite son in the hope that a candidate less enthusiastic about the Supreme Court decision than Stevenson would be nominated.
The News and Courier, as was to be expected, blasted the Democratic ticket. It described Kefauver as “an unprincipled opportunist, a Southerner who sold out the South for a mess of NAACP votes.” As for Stevenson, he was “another Franklin Roosevelt.” The rasping voice of Charleston warned that the United States would be unable to survive “another scholar-gentleman-socialist in the White House.” In general agreement, the Record thought Stevenson would be “under virtual compulsion from the NAACP, CIO and other integrationist groups to act federally against the South.”[423]
The upcountry Independent, on the other hand, heartily endorsed the Democratic ticket. Stevenson was characterized as “a man of decision, wisdom and an understanding of the basic problems confronting the American people.” The addition of Kefauver gave the Democrats “an exceptionally strong ticket.”[424] The Morning News, under Editor Rogers, was noncommittal.
The reconvening of the state party convention was the next act in the political drama. The delegates were about equally split as to whether to support the national party nominees or to back an independent movement. When one state party official after another endorsed party loyalty, the convention, by a narrow vote of 167 to 152½, officially agreed to stand by Stevenson and Kefauver.[425] The News and Courier pictured the party crawling back “‘into the bag’ of the socialistic integrators.” Governor Timmerman, who had urged party loyalty, received a special share of News and Courier wrath. Once “one of the South’s most lucid supporters of States Rights,” he had descended to using “unworthy demagoguery” in supporting “his retreat from the spirit of Southern independence.”[426]