Abstract
Pitchfork Ben Tillman was the forerunner of southern demagoguery. Responding to the South's awakening democracy and the agrarian unrest which accompanied it, Tillman devised strategies of mass appeal not unlike those used by an earlier group of American reformers confronting Jacksonian democracy. An examination of Tillman's rise to power not only shows his kinship with earlier agitators but also reveals the ideological alienation that made his name synonymous with southern demagoguery.