The Late, Not So Great, Republican Party:: Rise and Fall of the Republican Empire: Their Beginnings, Transformations,

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INTRODUCTION

The imminent death of the Republican Party has become something that is accepted by the masses and cannot be controlled, even by the Republicans.

While the causes behind the collapse of the Republican Party are diverse and not clearly understood, it is partially due to the undermining of the platform itself which leads to a general disbelief of what the party stands for. Ignoring the minorities and/or not fully understanding the power of the minority vote, is one of the biggest mistakes of the Republican Party. The sum-total of minorities exceeds the white majority, which has been running the country for many years.

Here, we present the history of the party, some of the more famous members, and infamous members, and facts to demonstrate why the Republican Party is the late, not so great, Republican Party.

CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Republican Party history timeline

1797: The first Republican stirrings

Two major political parties emerge: one supports President’s Washington’s policies and becomes known as Federalist; the other opposed those policies and is christened Democratic-Republican or Jeffersonian Republican.

1825-1828: But we are all still Republicans…

Curiously, all Presidential candidates of the 1824 election called themselves Republicans, but this four year period saw the separation of Republicans into two camps: pro-Adams/anti-Jackson and pro-Jackson/anti-Adams.

1829: A tale of two factions

Two very clearly opposed factions existed within the old Republican Party, with the Democratic Republicans on one side and the National Republicans on the other.

1833: The Whigs

One-time National Republicans become generally known as Whigs, a name meant to evoke the English political faction that opposed the English monarchy during the 17th century. This Whig party was born with a specific purpose: opposing Andrew Jackson and Vice President Martin Van Buren.

1848: Setting the stage

Two big issues set the destruction of the Whig Party in motion: slavery and the birth and decay of the American Party.

1850: The slavery issue

Whigs split into two factions over slavery in the new western states and the territories appropriated from Mexico, particularly after The Compromise of 1850, which dealt with the idea of squatter sovereignty.

1852: All together now

After John P. Hale, presidential candidate for the Free Soil Party, gets only 155, 825 votes in the election held that year, Free Soilers decide to join the Whig faction that will eventually become the Republican Party.

1854: The split becomes final

After the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Northern Whigs gather abolitionists, those supporting the spreading out of slave territories and proponents of higher custom duties. They join forces with the American Party (which officially came out after strong victories in local and congressional elections), members of the Free Soil Party and others to plant the seed of a major new party: the Republicans.

Southern Whigs coalesce around support for slavery and lower tariffs, and would eventually join the Democrats.

July 6th, 1854: The Republican Party is born

The Republic Party Convention is inaugurated in Jackson, Michigan. Its members were mostly from non-slave states. In fact, abolitionists were a crucial component in the creation of the Republican Party.

The notion of abolishing slavery was not new; the Somerset Decision of 1771 abolished slavery in Great Britain, and that helped precipitate the American Revolution. With the abolition of slavery in all British colonies in 1833, America seemed to be on a low moral footing. And, of course, as Mexican President Guadalupe Victoria had also abolished it on Mexican soil, including its northern territories, somewhere around 1824, the later debates about extending slavery back to the war looted, ex-Mexican territories and states (where freedom was automatically granted for slaves) made Americans extremely aware of the abolitionist position.

The original Republican Party had 40 members, who were elected into the U.S. House of Representatives.

1856: The Grand Old Party

Republican Party goes from lesser party status to being the Democrats’ main rival to date.

1858: The splits continue

Internal disagreements cause most northern members of the American Party to join the Republicans.

1860: Beaten by Lincoln

Further splits between the Whig-American Party-Republican factioncaused this wary coalition to lose the presidency to Abraham Lincoln.

THE CIVIL WAR

Five significant events mark the U.S.’s fall into the Civil War:

The Missouri Compromise

The 1850 Compromise,

The Kansas/Nebraska Act,

The Dred Scott Decision,

The election of the first Republican President.

The Missouri Compromise (which dates back to 1820) established that Maine would be admitted as a free state and Missouri as a slave state.

It was also planned to declare the Louisiana Territory - the parts of sovereign native Indian nations – a free state. With this, apparently, the spread of slavery would come to an end.

But the military invasion and dispossession of Texas in 1845 and sending the U.S. Army all the way down to Mexico City (resulting in the death of nine students at a Mexico City Military Academy over the holidays), extorted the rest of northern Mexico in 1848, and the political equation changed a lot. These states stolen from Mexico were free – no slavery states, and when stolen – but became part of the slavery zone of the US. Yes, the political equation was no longer balanced.

The new states kept their names and borders, but the inhabitants were forced to use a new official language and a new national flag.

It was not a terribly proud episode in U.S. history as a nation. California (even if it was split into two; the lower part remaining with Mexico) was the most heavily populated of the conquered territories and applied to become a free state in 1849.

That would make the free states a majority and slavers feared this would turn into a political defeat. In 1850, after a debate in Congress, California was admitted as a free state. However, New Mexico and Utah had to decide for themselves if they wanted to allow slavery.

The District of Columbia forbid the slave trade, but not slavery itself; and the Fugitive Slave Act was enacted. Citizens in free states opposed this Act; their view was that slaves escaped to a free state should be free.

So, a lot of these citizens were driven into an abolitionist posture when they learned about re-captured slaves, and of the prosecution of those involved in the Underground Railroad.

The 1850 Compromise consisted of 5 bills, which managed to placate both pro and anti-slavery states. This compromise ended a 4-year conflict over territories gained from the Annexation of Texas (1845) and the Mexican-American War (1846 – 1848). The Compromise of 1850 gave the North some very desired territory in Southern California, keeping intact the boundaries established by the Missouri Compromise (1820). In turn, the South was allowed the potential of popular sovereignty in the New Mexico and Utah Territories, the Fugitive Slave Act was strengthened, and the and slavery was preserved in the federal capital. The third major political compromise over slavery in the Nation’s history, the Compromise quieted regional conflict yet again—but this time, not for much longer (see Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854).

The Kansas/Nebraska Act in 1854 created both the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Controversy arose after the concept of settlers deciding whether or not to allow slavery was written in. Detractors denounced the Act as a concession to Southern power and a direct attack on the Missouri Compromise of 1820. With the crushing defeat of the Whig Party in the 1852 Presidential election, Democrats had no major party to challenge their policies (s). So the foundation of the Republican Party is a direct result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act: with the aim to stop the expansion of slavery, the Republicans soon became the dominant political party in the North and placed themselves in direct opposition to the Southern influenced Democratic Party.

The Republican Party could have vanished, just like the American Party and the Whigs, had it not been for the debate over the slavery issue, which in Kansas almost turned into a civil war.

Finally, the Dred Scott Decision (about a slave that fled) tipped the northern states against the tradition of the Democratic Party.

We must remember that the American Constitution legitimated slavery about the same time the British Parliament was abolishing the slave trade. So, the debate over slaverywas among individual states.

Dred Scott had hopes that it would end up making clear that slaves who reached a free territory would be free.

However, the Supreme Court (mostly Democrat) declared that Dred Scott should remain the property of his owner and even that no state could deny a citizen the right to place his property, including slaves, anywhere he decided.

The election of the first Republican President, the presidential election of 1860, was interesting: the Whig-American-Republican side had lost the presidency in the previous election because their vote was divided among the three.

But the Democrats did exactly the same with their vote in 1860! This was because the voters were now emotional about slavery, and there were fights between slavers and anti-slavery militias in Kansas.

Slavery and the Republican Party

Since President Obama was elected, the atmosphere surrounding his critics has created an image of the stereotypical radical, racist and uneducated religious fanatic that puts all his or her beliefs in the extreme right. This rhetoric is used in the debate between conservatives and liberals stating that the Democratic party, currently the party of liberals, actually supported slavery while Republicans sought to end it.

This was true. But these parties have not remained static since the time of their founding, and this argument is no longer valid at all.

The Democrats split into southern and northern factions. Stephen Douglas was the most recognized northern Democrat, supporting each state’s right to decide to allow slavery or not. That was not acceptable to radical slave masters, who intended to extend slavery.

What remained of the southern Whig and American parties merged into the new Constitutional Union Party and emphasized the preservation of the union, avoiding the issue of slavery altogether.

Although the Constitutional Union Party candidate took away votes that probably would have gone to Lincoln, the Democrats were more closely divided. So, although Lincoln only obtained 40% of the votes (1,866,452), he received 180 Electoral College votes, compared to 123 in all total for the other combined. All of those votes were from northern (free) states, plus California and Oregon.

Emotionally charged decisions usually lead to bad judgment, and the slavers made a series of mistakes that pushed Lincoln (and of course the Republicans) to abolish slavery.

1861: Lincoln was to be inaugurated

The slavers still were in a position of political advantage. The majority of the Supreme Court was pro-slavery. Republicans did not have a majority in Congress. The abolition of slavery would require amending the Constitution, and that could be blocked by one-quarter of the states; slavers controlled almost one-half of the states.

Just before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven States (South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas) announced they had seceded from the U.S.

They formed the Confederate States of America, under Jefferson Davis, a leading Democrat. They were soon joined by another four States (Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee).Notorious southern states businessmen and politicians worried about the Republicans for another reason beyond slavery. Several Republican politicians, including Abraham Lincoln, had the support of northern businessmen, particularly, the owners of railroad and manufacturing corporations.

The cotton growers were worried about higher protective tariffs on imported manufactured goods, and the south was already much indebted to northern bankers and providers.

Southerners did not take the matter to the Supreme Court, although it was very likely with five southern State members on it, it would have ruled that states may secede. However, the Southerners were adamant to admit any jurisdiction of the Supreme Court over them.

Not happy to see a greatly reduced United States, the Republican Party and those opposing secession (northern Democrats were pro-slavery but anti-separation) left no other alternative but civil war upon the now split nation.

There were two clear effects of the Civil War that fell upon the Republican Party (apart from winning the war): it became the party of Big Government and high taxes. It also favored a national government over state. The war effort launched by the Republicans obliged them to raise taxes to pay for men and weapons, which –as of today- they still use as an incentive for the economy (along with a consequential growth of industry that went along with those temporary needs).

Therefore, the Republicans became closely tied to northern manufacturing interests, which included a growing class of millionaires who surged from the war profits coming from unaccounted sales done in a rush. Favoring the abolition of slavery and supporting the improvement of conditions for economically deprived citizens, which were mostly recent immigrants or negroes, improved their image.

1862:This role was further enhanced by the 1862 Homestead Act, which offered free