Posted by The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to combat the expansion of slavery into the Western territories. In its first decades its members consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professional businessmen, ex-slaves and prosperous farmers. It met with immediate success in the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and it dominated American politics until 1932. In the nineteen elections between the election of Lincoln to the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Republicans won fifteen and Democrats won four.
In the 19th century, the Republican Party, led by Lincoln and especially by Ulysses S. Grant, was staunchly in favor of protecting the rights and freedoms of African Americans. But as reconstruction came to an end, and Southern states became increasingly dominated by the Democratic Party, Republican (and Northern Americans) support for reconstruction waned. During the Gilded Age (approximately 1870-1900), the American economy boomed, and many entrepreneurs became extremely wealthy. It was an age dominated by the railroads, and by heavy industry such as steel and later petroleum. Republicans favored high tariffs and resisted trust-busting until the emergence of the Progressives.
With high rates of immigration, the two dominant political parties not only had different economic policies, but also represented different cultures. The Republicans were largely main-stream Protestant, while the Democrats were increasingly Catholic. Republicans tried to associate the Democrats with “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion,” and were often the party in favor of prohibition.
By the end of the 19th century, the Republicans were allied with Northern and Eastern issues, while the Democrats were the party of the South and the West. Thus, Republicans favored the gold standard which kept credit limited and interest rates high, while the Democrats favored easier credit and a shift to silver (William Jennings Bryant’s famous speech, “You shall not crucify man on a cross of gold” was given at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in favor of a bimetal standard). The Democrats, being in part a Southern party, favored Jim Crow laws and white supremacy.
A Republican satire on Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech, 1896 via Wikimedia Commons
Although the Republican Party of William McKinley was firmly in the hands of business, McKinley was succeeded after his assassination by Theodore Roosevelt, who was the giant of American politics at the turn of the century. The twentieth century saw a renewed Progressive Republican Party, led by Roosevelt. The progressives favored breaking up the monopolies and trusts which had dominated the American economy since the Gilded Age. This new stance was made possible by a number of muckraking journalists such as Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, who revealed the corruption that ran deep in the relationships between the trusts and the government that was supposed to regulate them.
After two terms of Woodrow Wilson, the country was ready to return to the Republicans. This was the Jazz Age, the Prohibition era when business boomed. In succession, the American people chose Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover to lead them. But in October of 1929, the stock market crashed and America and the world were forever changed.
The Republican Party that opposed FDR’s New Deal was bereft of new ideas, and spent most of the next twenty years fighting the changes that the Democrats, faced with the collapse of the American economy, had brought to America:
- Social Security (the United States being the only westernized country without a social security program).
- New relief programs, including expanded public works (such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electrification).
- Farm support programs such as the Agricultural Adjustment Act which was ruled unconstitutional in 1936.
- The Farm Settlement Agency, the most enduring contribution of which was the wonderful photographs by, inter alia, Dorothy Lange and Gordon Parks, that documented rural poverty.
- The National Labor Relations Board which ensured the right of collective bargaining, which in turn supported the growth of labor unions during this time.
- A major infrastructure program which built, among other things, the Lincoln Tunnel and the San Francisco Oakland Bridge.
The post-war period saw a resurgence of moderate Rockefeller Republicanism, marked by the policies of President Eisenhower, Senators Charles Percy, Jacob Javits and Edward Brooke. According to Luke Philips, the Rockefeller Republicans presented a continuation of the Whig tradition in American politics, emphasizing good government, rather than small government. In my next post I will discuss how extremists took over the Republican Party and ousted a generation of moderates.
