Republican Party

I

Introduction

Republican Party, one of the two major United States political parties, founded by a coalition in 1854. The coalition was composed of former members of the Whig, Free-Soil, and Know-Nothing parties, along with northern Democrats who were dissatisfied with their party's conciliatory attitude on the slavery issue. The early Republicans were united in their opposition to the extension of slavery into the western territories.

The Republicans achieved parity with the Democratic Party as the nation's second major party in the late 1850s. They were helped by growing concern in the North over southern influence in Washington, D.C., and by their effective efforts to reassure the antiforeign Know-Nothings that they were not uncaring about the social impact of immigration. In 1860 their candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was elected to the presidency; the southern states reacted by seceding from the Union, and the country was plunged into civil war.

II

Civil War and Reconstruction

The American Civil War and the Reconstruction period that followed gave the Republican party a solid core of strength and permanence. Republicans controlled most elective offices in the northern states during the war, and for a generation afterwards they were able to make full use of patriotic fervour to denounce the Democrats as traitors and friends of the South. This was an effective campaign tactic.

In the 1860s, however, moderate and radical Republicans quarrelled bitterly over their war aims, even as they fought together against their common Democratic enemy. Radicals wanted to use the war to end slavery and, to some degree, to reshape the society and power structure of the South. The moderates agreed on the abolition of slavery, but rejected the idea of imposing racial equality or attempting to reshape the South's social and economic structure. President Lincoln skilfully played off one faction against another, and after his death the battle for control of the party continued until the radicals' failure to oust President Andrew Johnson from office in 1868; the party then began to nominate increasingly moderate candidates.

The Republicans did try to build up support in the South by appealing to the long-established Whig groups there to join with newly enfranchised blacks, but were ineffective in the face of racist campaigns by the southern Democrats. Republican support for black rights waned when it was perceived that this support was costing the party needed votes, but even this did not help the party in the South, where the blacks were disenfranchised and the whites for the most part remained Democratic.

III

The Party's Changing Ideology

In the late 19th century new issues raised by the impact of the Industrial Revolution began to influence the Republicans. From its beginnings the party represented a certain kind of America: nationalistic, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, and committed to a strong federal government. In the post-Civil War period the party came to represent many of the new industrial forces in society as well. Despite resistance from some Republican leaders, the party's policy stances increasingly emphasized the promotion of industrial values, and Republican actions in office aided the emerging, highly centralized industrial economy. At the same time, Republicans were often openly hostile to the new waves of eastern European and Irish groups that were transforming the nation's cities. Republican state platforms frequently advocated government intervention to prohibit or limit liquor consumption and to shape school curricula in order to promote certain Protestant and American values against the threats posed by the newcomers, who became closely allied with the Democratic party.

The Republicans won five of seven presidential elections between 1868 and 1892, but had popular majorities in only three of them. The Republican ability to draw on rural, small-town, and western voters, who still remembered the Civil War, was effectively counterbalanced by the Democrats' solid core vote in the South and among urban immigrants.

IV

The Progressive Era

During the 1890s both major parties were hurt by the rise of agrarian protest, but infighting proved most divisive among the Democrats; their collapse at the polls followed in 1896. Beginning in that year, increased voter strength made the Republicans the majority party in the country for a generation. Party factionalism continued. The former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, who had promoted some progressive measures while in office, aided in the defeat of the Republican presidential candidate William Howard Taft in 1912. The Democrats controlled the presidency from then until 1920, when the voters, seeking a return to normalcy after World War I, brought the Republicans back to power under Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.

The Republican party remained dominant throughout the 1920s, and continued to foster industrial economic values in a time of extraordinary prosperity. Herbert Hoover, first as secretary of commerce, then as president from 1929 to 1933, symbolized Republican commitment to unbounded national prosperity rooted in massive industrial expansion.