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.