The Republican Party was born in the middle of the national turmoil over the slavery question in the 1850s. Within a few years of its establishment, the Republicans were one of the two major political organizations that governed the United States of America. From 1865 onward, Republicans proudly described themselves as the party that won the war, restored the Union, freed the slaves and guaranteed their civil rights, and brought unparalleled growth and prosperity to the country. Voters agreed, and by 1896 the Republican Party had fashioned an electoral dominance over the presidency that lasted, with only two exceptions, until 1930.
The immediate reason for the founding of the Republican Party was the controversy over the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The debate over Stephen A. Douglas’s bill set off a fierce protest over the “Nebraska Outrage” throughout the North in the spring and summer of 1854. Northern anger over slavery’s possible extension into free territories sought a political outlet where none currently existed. The stability of the two-party system had been shaken with the demise of the Whig Party by the mid-1850s. Some Whigs had joined the Free-Soil Party, which was dedicated to halting the spread of slavery. Meanwhile, the American, or Know-Nothing, Party, based on antiIMMIGRATIon sentiment, had become a major force in politics, winning elections in the North and even in the South.
Many former Whigs, anti-Nebraska Democrats, and Free Soilers, however, were uncomfortable with joining a political party based on an anti-immigrant platform, also known as NATIVIsm. As the protests over the Kansas-Nebraska Act grew louder and larger, the disaffected groups determined to form a new political party. Most historians agree that the first official use of the term Republican came on February 28, 1854, at a meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin. The name, linking the new party with the legacy of 1776, quickly gained widespread acceptance. A great number of congressmen in Washington, D. C., formally adopted the name in time for the 1854 fall elections, in which the Democrats’ fortunes fell and the Republicans’ rose.
The Republican Party grew rapidly in the North, and the organization swelled with former Know-Nothings and Whigs. Indeed, the Whig Party provided most of the leaders and much of the economic program for the new political entity. The controversy over slavery in the territories continued unabated, and the Republican cause was helped by the uproar over the “little civil war” waged in Bleeding Kansas in 1855 and 1856. In 1856 the Republicans fielded their first presidential candidate, the western explorer John C. Fremont. “Free soil, free labor, free men, Fremont!” was the rallying cry. “Wide Awake Clubs” formed all across the Northern states, and huge rallies and parades spread the Republican message. The pro-Southern Democratic candidate James Buchanan of Pennsylvania was the election’s victor by a comfortable margin, but the Republicans did very well, particularly in New England and in Wisconsin, Michigan, and New York.
Republicans articulated and refined their platform in the four years between 1856 and 1860. Leaders such as William H. Seward of New York, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois broadened the appeal of the party. The Republican position on slavery was borrowed almost entirely from the Free-Soil Party: The national government should restrict the spread of slavery into the territories. Most Republicans pledged to protect slavery where it existed in the South but hoped that restriction would put it on the path to ultimate extinction. The opposition to slavery embodied in the Republican program did not stem primarily from moral concerns, however. Instead, the Free-Soil argument was focused on creating and maintaining opportunities for free white labor. There were some abolitionists in the Republican ranks who saw slavery as an evil unto itself, but in general the party cared more about preserving and extending rights and opportunities for white people than it did about bringing freedom and justice to the nearly 4 million slaves living in the Southern states.
The antislavery message of the Republican Party was tied to a powerfully appealing program designed to ensure upward mobility for the ordinary men and women of the country. Free labor everywhere, according to party leaders, would guarantee the kind of dynamic capitalism that stimulated individual initiative and achievement. Republican rule meant government aid to the economy in the form of TARIEEs (a tax on imported goods), loans for transcontinental railroads, a Homestead Act, a central bank, and funds for higher education. This progressive vision would benefit farmers and urban dwellers alike. In 1862 due to the absence of Southern Democrats in the national legislature, the Republican Party enacted into law almost every single one of its economic proposals. The passage of the Homestead Act, the Pacieic Railroad Act, and the Morrill Land-Grant Act, for example, laid the foundation for the surging postwar industrial economy.
The great enemy of economic, moral, and political progress, Republicans claimed, was the backward system of slavery and its protector, the “slave power,” which controlled the Democratic Party and, through it, the
Election poster for the Republican Party presidential candidate in the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln, and his running mate, Hannibal Hamlin (Hulton/Archive)
National government. Republicans pointed to the EUGI-TIVE slave act, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas controversy, the caning of Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and the Dred Scott decision as proof for their contention that the liberties and freedom of white Americans were being seriously threatened.
The election of 1860 brought the presidency to the Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln, a moderate from Illinois, captured the nomination over more prominent and experienced, but also more controversial, leaders such as Seward, Chase, and Edward Bates of Missouri. During the summer of 1860, the Democratic Party split into Northern and Southern wings. Lincoln’s main opponent was Democrat Stephen Douglas, but there were two other candidates who ran on a Southern-only ticket. The Republican platform reiterated their Free-Soil philosophy and accused Democrats of being the party of slavery, disunion, and corruption. When the votes were counted, Lincoln’s substantial majority in the Northern states gave him the win over the other three candidates.
With Lincoln’s victory, a party based wholly on sectional interest had captured the White House, and the cost was the Union. Seven Southern states seceded shortly thereafter, believing that their liberties were threatened. They quickly established the Coneederate States oe America. During the tense months between the end of Buchanan’s administration and Lincoln’s March inauguration, the new president formed a cabinet, tried to reassure a nervous public, and made several attempts to bring back the seceded states. All efforts at compromise foundered on Lincoln’s insistence that stopping slavery’s advance into the territories was not an issue that could be compromised.
Between 1861 and 1865, the Republican Party was responsible for waging war against the seceded states, devising plans for Reconstruction, and attending to the normal chores of national governance. Led by Lincoln and pushed by a group of Radical Republicans led by Sumner and Benjamin Wade in the Senate and Thad-deus Stevens in the House, the Republican Party passed the legislation that made the emancipation of the slaves a reality. Republicans soon divided into factions representing conservative, moderate, and radical positions over whether a harsh or lenient reconstruction policy should be implemented. President Lincoln provided a moderating voice and struggled to make the Republican Party into a truly national entity. In 1864 the Republicans were known briefly as the “National Union Party,” and as a gesture to inclusion, the wartime governor of Tennessee, former Democrat Andrew Johnson, was placed on the ticket with Lincoln.
After the defeat of the Confederacy and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, congressional Republicans battled with Johnson over the right to control the process of Reconstruction in the South. The major achievements of the party include the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Filteenth Amendments, the so-called Reconstruction amendments to the U. S. Constitution, which abolished slavery, established the criteria for federal and state citizenship and equal protection under the law, and ruled out race (but not gender) as a barrier to voting. In addition, Republicans passed other Reconstruction and civil rights acts that set up guidelines for readmitting the Southern states back into the Union.
Republicans narrowly missed removing Andrew Johnson from office in 1868, and in that same year their candidate for the presidency, Ulysses S. Grant, triumphed at the polls. President Grant and the Republican Party faced daunting challenges in putting a Reconstruction policy to work. They had two goals: The first was to remake the South from a slave society to a free-labor society, as close to the North as possible. The second was to protect the newly freed slaves’ rights against a hostile white population. To do this, Republicans had to control the Southern state governments and to establish a viable two-party system in the South. The Republican coalition of carpetbaggers, scalawags, and African-American voters could not withstand unrelenting and violent Southern white resistance. By the early 1870s “redemption” prevailed, and the South was once again becoming a solid Democratic Party stronghold controlled by white Southerners.
As the party was failing to establish a stronghold in the South, many Republicans were anxious to recast the message of the party for the future. Called Half Breeds, and led by the dynamic James G. Blaine of Maine, they looked to strengthen the economic nationalism of their party with policies furthering the development of an urban-industrial economy. Blaine and his supporters argued that most Americans were tired of hearing about the problems of the South and more interested in other issues like the TARILL or monetary reform. Opposed to Blaine were the “stalwarts,” like Roscoe Conkling of New York, who, while supporting economic advancement, wished to continue to try to make the South a good place for the Republican Party.
As Grant’s administration became mired in scandals and charges of corruption, a group of disaffected “Liberal Republicans” called for civil service reform. Typical practice up to that time had been for presidents to appoint individuals to government jobs based on their party loyalty rather than their honesty or competence for the job. The Liberals wanted to end corruption in government, stop the “spoils men” from looting the treasury, and put the running of the government on an efficient and businesslike basis. This movement was led by the Missouri politician Carl Schurz, who formed an alliance with the Democratic Party in the election of 1872. Their candidate was the newspaper publisher Horace Greeley. Although Grant won handily, the threat to the Republican Party was clear. The chilling effects of the depression of 1873 led to a rise in support for the Democratic Party. Additionally, Northern voters turned a deaf ear to pleas from desperate Southern Republican governments fighting the Ku Kiux Klan. Northerners did not support Grant’s use of federal troops to stop Klan violence, nor were they pleased with the passage of the Civil Rights Act ol 1875. The House fell to Democrats in 1875, the Senate in 1879, and the presidency in 1884.
The disputed presidential election of 1876, in which Ohio Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was awarded the election over the New York Democrat Samuel Tilden, is traditionally considered the end of Reconstruction. From that point on, the Republican Party would strive to maintain its majority status by stressing broad issues of economic advancement and culturally conservative issues like prohibition, appealing to its Protestant, native-born base. The freedmen would not again receive attention from a major party until the 1930s.
See also abolition; impeachment ol Andrew Johnson.
Further reading: Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Lewis L. Gould, Grand Old Party: A History of the Republicans (New York: Random House, 2003); Phillip Shaw Paludan, The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994); Mark W. Summers, Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity: Aid under the Radical
Republicans, 1865-1877 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Revels, Hiram R. (1827-1901) Union chaplain, politician
Born free on September 27, 1827, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Hiram Rhoades Revels became the first African American elected to the U. S. Senate. Revels was ordained a minister in 1845 and served at several African Methodist Episcopal Churches, traveling widely and often. In 1850 Revels married Phoebe A. Bass, and they had six children.
Before the Civil War, Revels did not join or publicly support the abolitionist movement, although he later wrote that he had helped escaping slaves. Once the war started, however, Revels offered his support. He organized the first two black regiments in Maryland and a later one in Missouri. He served as a chaplain to African-American troops in the Union army, and he later worked with the Freed-men’s Bureau, helping to establish schools in Mississippi. Revels’s first position in government came when Mississippi governor Adelbert Ames appointed him alderman for Natchez, Mississippi, in 1868. He went on to be elected to the Mississippi State Senate.
In 1870 Revels moved onto the national political stage when the Mississippi legislature chose him to fill the remaining year of the state’s Senate seat, previously held by Jefferson Davis. While in Washington, D. C., Revels championed education issues, calling for an end to segregated schools. Revels’s term ended on March 3, 1871, when he was appointed the first president of Alcorn University, the first black land-grant university in the United States. He served Alcorn from 1871 until 1874, when his support for Democrats in Mississippi resulted in his removal by the Republican governor. When the Democrats resumed control of Mississippi politics in 1875, Revels was restored to his position at Alcorn, which he held until 1882.
For the last 20 years of his life Revels served as assistant pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Holly Springs, Mississippi, taught theology, and was a trustee at Rust College. He died at a church meeting on January 16, 1901.
Further reading: Elizabeth Lawson, The Gentleman from Mississippi: Our First Negro Congressman, Hiram R. Revels (New York: n. p., 1960).
World History
