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Many politicians have called themselves “Independent Democrats” over time, and they are not part of a single political party or movement. Independent Democrats have often had distinct reasons for identifying as such and they have been on different ideological flanks of the party. The first congressman to be elected as an Independent Democrat was a former Jacksonian Democrat who came to identify as an Independent Democrat after Jackson’s political time. Many Independent Democrats identified as such to show distaste for the party structure, either as opposition to local machine politics, or because of opposition to local party ideology, both from the left and the right. Others identified as Independent Democrats in a general election because they lost the party nomination to other Democrats (particularly early in the nation’s history, nomination processes were often not open to the general public, as they are today). There was an influx of elected Independent Democrats in the years before the civil war, and while many took the label as a sign of opposition to secession, others were secessionists themselves. Many Independent Democrats throughout US history would be reelected to later terms with the Democratic Party nomination. Some Southern Independent Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s were segregationist Democrats, as many politicians who were Democrats but who supported segregation ran under the banner of different parties for the presidency.