“The Spirit of Their Fathers Moves Within Them”: The Radical Conservatism of the Virginia Populists

Abstract

Evangelical Protestantism helped frame the thinking of many Populist Party members in Virginia, providing them with a prophetic voice that criticized the political and economic status quo, while also furnishing a traditional language that privileged rural custom and community. Rowland Berthoff once characterized American Populism as a “mixture of static peasant-Puritan-republican nostalgia and dynamic secular-millennial progressivism.” This article contends that Virginia Populists may best exemplify that peculiar hybrid.