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 (see Free-Soil Party; Know-Nothings; Whig Party). The early Republicans were united in their opposition to extending slavery into the Western territories. In 1856 they nominated John Charles Frémont for the presidency. He won about a third of the popular vote, but alienated many potential supporters by his failure to oppose immigration.

The Republicans joined the Democrats as one of the nation’s two major parties in the late 1850s. They gained support as concern grew in the North over Southern influence in Washington, D.C., and they reassured the antiforeign Know-Nothings that they cared 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 the Civil War (1861-1865).

II

Civil War and Reconstruction

The 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 afterward they were able to make full use of patriotic fervor to denounce the Democrats as traitors and friends of the South. This was an effective campaign tactic. “Waving the bloody shirt” against the South and the Democrats united all Republicans behind their memories of the great crusade to save the Union.

The Democratic Party remained strong, however, and the Republicans were also troubled by internal dissension. In the early 1860s moderate and radical Republicans quarreled 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 skillfully played off one faction against another, and after his death the battle for control of the party continued until the radicals failed to oust President Andrew Johnson from office in 1868; the party then began to nominate increasingly moderate candidates.

---

---

The Republicans did try to build support in the South by appealing to the long-established Whig groups there to join with newly enfranchised blacks. Republican leaders argued that Whigs and blacks had a common belief in the need for strong government action in society, but these arguments were ineffective in the face of racist campaigns by the Southern Democrats. Support for black rights waned when Republicans 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 disfranchised 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.

Factionalism continued to divide the party. Prohibitionists and those who wished to exclude foreigners, for example, demanded heavy emphasis on their particular concerns and were not always enthusiastic about the party’s other commitments. At the same time, another group, the Liberal Republicans, disgusted by corruption in the Republican administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, fought against the party’s unwillingness to do anything about it. The party bosses, needing money to run expensive election campaigns and not particularly scrupulous about its source, resisted the reformers.

These factions bedeviled the party because national elections remained close until the mid-1890s. 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. As a result, a small prohibitionist vote or defections to economic reform parties could cost the Republicans dearly in a key state or two. The defection of the mugwumps, a reform faction that refused to back James G. Blaine, the party’s presidential candidate in 1884, helped the Democrats win the presidency for the first time in many years.

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. Beginning in the 1890s a group of Republicans known as the progressives sought to balance the party’s commitment to the industrial elite with the use of federal power to correct some of the worst excesses of the monopolies and trusts that dominated the economy. The former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, who had promoted some progressive measures while in office from 1901 to 1909, later became the presidential candidate of the Progressive (Bull Moose) Party; as a splinter group it aided in the defeat of the Republican presidential candidate William Howard Taft in 1912. The Democrats continued to control the presidency 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, its strength unaffected even by another progressive defection in 1924. Despite opposition from agricultural and progressive Republicans, the party 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.

	More from Encarta
	•  7 tips for funding an online degree •  How to succeed in the fashion industry without being a top designer •  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain