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From the beginning
Abolishing slavery. Free speech. Women's suffrage. In
today's stereotypes, none of these sounds like a typical
Republican issue, yet they are stances the Republican
Party, in opposition to the Democratic Party, adopted
early on.
Reducing the
government. Streamlining the bureaucracy. Returning
power to the states. These issues don't sound like they
would be the promises of the party of Lincoln, the party
that fought to preserve the national union, but they
are, and logically so. With a core belief in the idea of
the primacy of individuals, the Republican Party, since
its inception, has been at the forefront of the fight
for individuals' rights in opposition to a large,
bloated government.
The
Republican Party has always thrived on challenges and
difficult positions. Its present role as leader of the
revolution in which the principles of government are
being re-evaluated is a role it has traditionally
embraced.
At the time
of its founding, the Republican Party was organized as
an answer to the divided politics, political turmoil,
arguments and internal division, particularly over
slavery, that plagued the many existing political
parties in the United States in 1854. The Free Soil
Party, asserting that all men had a natural right to the
soil, demanded that the government re-evaluate
homesteading legislation and grant land to settlers free
of charge. The Conscience Whigs, the "radical" faction
of the Whig Party in the North, alienated themselves
from their Southern counterparts by adopting an
anti-slavery position. And the Kansas-Nebraska Act,
which allowed territories to determine whether slavery
would be legalized in accordance with "popular
sovereignty" and thereby nullify the principles of the
Missouri Compromise, created a schism within the
Democratic Party.
A staunch
Anti-Nebraska Democrat, Alvan E. Bovay, like his fellow
Americans, was disillusioned by this atmosphere of
confusion and division. Taking advantage of the
political turmoil caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act,
Bovay united discouraged members from the Free Soil
Party, the Conscience Whigs and the Anti-Nebraska
Democrats. Meeting in a Congregational church in Ripon,
Wis., he helped establish a party that represented the
interests of the North and the abolitionists by merging
two fundamental issues: free land and preventing the
spread of slavery into the Western territories.
Realizing the new party needed a name to help unify it,
Bovay decided on the term Republican because it was
simple, synonymous with equality and alluded to the
earlier party of Thomas Jefferson, the
Democratic-Republicans.
On July 6,
1854, in Jackson, Mich., the Republican Party formally
organized itself by holding its first convention,
adopting a platform and nominating a full slate of
candidates for state offices. Other states soon
followed, and the first Republican candidate for
president, John C. Frémont, ran in 1856 with the slogan
"Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Fremont."
Even though
he ran on a third-party ticket, Frémont managed to
capture a third of the vote, and the Republican Party
began to add members throughout the land. As tensions
mounted over the slavery issue, more anti-slavery
Republicans began to run for office and be elected, even
with the risks involved with taking this stance.
Republican Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts
experienced this danger firsthand. In May 1856, he
delivered a passionate anti-slavery speech in which he
made critical remarks about several pro-slavery
senators, including Andrew F. Butler of South Carolina.
Sumner infuriated Rep. Preston S. Brooks, the son of one
of Butler's cousins, who felt his family honor had been
insulted. Two days later, Brooks walked into the Senate
and beat Sumner unconscious with a cane. This incident
electrified the nation and helped to galvanize Northern
opinion against the South; Southern opinion hailed
Brooks as a hero. But Sumner stood by his principles,
and after a three-year, painful convalescence, he
returned to the Senate to continue his struggle against
slavery.
The
first Republican
With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the
Republicans firmly established themselves as a major
party capable of holding onto the White House for 60 of
the next 100 years. Faced with the first shots of the
Civil War barely a month after his inauguration,
preserving the Union was Lincoln's greatest
challenge--and no doubt his greatest achievement. But it
was by no means his only accomplishment.
Amid the
fierce and bloody battles of the Civil War, the Lincoln
administration established the Department of
Agriculture, the Bureau of Internal Revenue and a
national banking system. Understanding the importance of
settling the frontier, as well as having a piece of land
to call your own, Lincoln passed the Homestead Act,
which satisfied the former Free Soil members by offering
public land grants. Hoping to encourage a higher level
of education, Lincoln also donated land for agricultural
and technical colleges to the states through the Land
Grant College Act, which established universities
throughout the United States.
Fully
sensitive to the symbolism of their name, the
Republicans worked to deal the death blow to slavery
with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation and the
passage, by a Republican Congress, of the 13th
Amendment, which outlawed slavery. Hoping to permanently
turn back the Democratic advance in the South,
immediately after the Civil War the Republican Congress
continued to push through legislation to extend the full
protection of civil rights to blacks.
During
Reconstruction, the mostly Democratic South, which had
seceded from both the Union and Congress, struggled to
regain its footing. Meanwhile, the Republicans took
advantage of their majority and passed several measures
to improve the quality of life for blacks throughout the
entire Union. First the Republicans passed a Civil
Rights Act in 1866 recognizing blacks as U.S. citizens.
This act hoped to weaken the South by denying states the
power to restrict blacks from testifying in a court of
law or from owning their own property.
Continuing to
take advantage of their majority, Republicans proposed
the 14th Amendment, which became part of the
Constitution in 1868, stating: "All persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall
make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws."
That same
year the Republican Congress also passed the National
Eight Hour Law, which, though it applied only to
government workers, brought relief for overworked
federal employees by limiting the work day to eight
hours.
Leading the way on the issues
Some people have argued that Republicans fought to give
blacks equal rights and then the vote as a way of
wresting control of the South away from the Democrats.
While it is true that almost all blacks voted
Republican, these were very dangerous and controversial
issues at the time. For whatever reason, many Republican
politicians risked their careers on that period's "third
rail" of politics and managed to not only abolish
slavery, but eventually even established a black's right
to vote as well. In fact, many blacks even held elected
office and were influential in state legislatures. And,
in 1869, the first blacks entered Congress as members of
the Republican Party, establishing a trend that was not
broken until 1935 when the first black Democrat finally
was elected to Congress.
Meanwhile,
Republicans continued being elected to the White House.
In 1868, Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant won the
presidency easily and was re-elected in 1872. Although
he seemed a bit bewildered by the transition from the
military life of a general to being president, under
Grant the Republican commitment to sound money policies
continued, and the Department of Justice and the Weather
Bureau were established. The Republicans in Congress
continued to boldly set the agenda, and in 1870 they
proposed and passed the 15th Amendment, which guaranteed
voting rights regardless of race, creed or previous
condition of servitude. Setting another precedent two
years later, the Republican Congress turned its sights
toward women's issues and authorized equal pay for equal
work performed by women employed by federal agencies.
It was around
this time that the symbol of the elephant for the
Republican Party was created by Thomas Nast, a famous
illustrator and caricaturist for The New Yorker. In
1874, a rumor that animals had escaped from the New York
City Zoo coincided with worries surrounding a possible
third-term run by Grant. Nast chose to represent the
Republicans as elephants because elephants were clever,
steadfast and controlled when calm, yet unmanageable
when frightened.
But, embracing a tradition established by George
Washington and the Republican Party, which had gone on
record opposing a third term for any president,
President Grant did not run for re-election in 1876.
Instead, in one of the most bitterly disputed elections
in American history, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won
the presidency by the margin of one electoral vote.
After the election, cooperation between the White House
and the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives
was nearly impossible. Nevertheless, Hayes managed to
keep his campaign promises. He cautiously withdrew
federal troops from the South to allow them to shake off
the psychological yoke of being a conquered land, took
measures to reverse the myriad inequalities suffered by
women in that period and adopted the merit system within
the civil service.
Not
surprisingly, the Republican appeal held in 1880 when
the party won its sixth consecutive presidential
election with the election of the Civil War hero James
A. Garfield and also managed to regain small majorities
in both the House and the Senate. Following Garfield's
assassination, Chester A. Arthur succeeded to the Oval
Office and, in 1883, oversaw the passage of the
Pendleton Act through Congress. This bill classified
about 10 percent of all government jobs and created a
bipartisan Civil Service Commission to prepare and
administer competitive examinations for these positions.
As dreary as this bill sounds, it was important because
it made at least part of the government bureaucracy a
professional work force.
Suddenly the
Republicans' fortunes changed, and embarking on a
decade-long period of quick reversals, the Republicans
lost the 1884 election. But by this time the party had
firmly established itself as a permanent force in
American politics by not only preserving the Union and
leading the nation through the Reconstruction, but by
also striking a chord of greater personal autonomy
within the national psyche. Yet while the presidency was
regained for one term with the 1888 election of Benjamin
Harrison, with the re-emergence of the South from the
destruction of the Civil War the Republicans were shut
out for the first time since the Civil War in the
election of 1892, as the Democrats won control of the
House, the Senate and the presidency.
Republican
voters returned to their party with the 1896 election,
electing William McKinley to the White House. His term
was the start of a consecutive four-term Republican
possession of the White House.
The
bull moose
Assuming the presidency when McKinley was assassinated
in 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt busied himself
with what he considered to be the most pressing issue,
ensuring the Republican principle of competition in a
free market. To do so, Roosevelt used the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act, passed in 1890 under Republican
President Benjamin Harrison, to successfully prosecute
and break up several large business monopolies.
In 1903,
Roosevelt became involved with foreign policy,
supporting revolutionaries who then formed the Republic
of Panama. His actions in Panama resulted in the treaty
that permitted construction of the Panama Canal. In
1905, Roosevelt--who popularized the West African phrase
"Speak softly and carry a big stick" to explain his view
on foreign policy--successfully negotiated the Treaty of
Portsmouth, ending the conflict between Russia and
Japan. Roosevelt's accomplishments as a peacemaker
earned him the Nobel Peace Prize and the distinction of
being the first American to receive this award.
Roosevelt
easily won a second term and proceeded to continue to
stand by his principles. Roosevelt, who was constantly
bucking public prejudice, appointed the Cabinet's first
Jewish member, Oscar Strauss. Then, in 1906, after
reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Roosevelt
instructed Congress to pass laws concerning meat
inspection and pure food and drug legislation. Two years
later he placed 150 million acres of forest land into
federal reserves and organized a National Conservation
Conference. Believing in the importance of work,
Roosevelt was also responsible for creating the
Department of Labor.
Although his
immense popularity almost guaranteed that he could be
elected to a third term, following precedent, Roosevelt
retired, allowing William Taft to become the next
Republican to hold the presidential office.
Discord
struck the Republican Party in the 1912 election as
Teddy Roosevelt, dissatisfied with President Taft, led
his supporters on the "Bull Moose" ticket against the
president. Playing to the advantage of a split
Republican vote, as they would again 80 years later, the
Democrats won the election with Woodrow Wilson. When
Wilson ran for re-election in 1916, he promised to keep
the United States out of World War I. Yet shortly after
his re-election, the United States stepped onto the
European battleground and entered the war. By mid-1918
the Republican Party won control of Congress as Wilson's
popularity began to wane because World War I dragged on.
Republican women
Standing in sharp contrast to the two existing political
parties' present stereotypes regarding minorities and
women, once again the Republican Party was the vanguard
in relation to women. In 1917, Jeannette Rankin, a
Montana Republican, became the first woman to serve in
the House. Committed to her pacifist beliefs, she was
the only member of Congress to vote against entry into
both World War I and World War II.
Shortly after
Ms. Rankin's election to Congress, the 19th Amendment
was passed in 1919. The amendment's journey to
ratification had been a long and difficult one. Starting
in 1896, the Republican Party became the first major
party to officially favor women's suffrage. That year,
Republican Sen. A. A. Sargent of California introduced a
proposal in the Senate to give women the right to vote.
The proposal was defeated four times in the
Democratic-controlled Senate. When the Republican Party
regained control of Congress, the Equal Suffrage
Amendment finally passed (304-88). Only 16 Republicans
opposed the amendment.
When the
amendment was submitted to the states, 26 of the 36
states that ratified it had Republican-controlled
legislatures. Of the nine states that voted against
ratification, eight were controlled by Democrats. Twelve
states, all Republican, had given women full suffrage
before the federal amendment was finally ratified.
The
Republicans trip
During the Roaring Twenties, three successive Republican
presidents kept a lid on government spending and taxes:
Warren G. Harding (1921-1923), who, according to A Short
History of the American Nation, balanced the budget and
reduced the national debt by an average of more than
$500 million per year; Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) and
Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), who was the last businessman
to make the successful transition to president. While
Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, the
U.S. economy expanded as free enterprise stimulated
business and industry. The Republicans' sound money
policies brought growing prosperity and steadily cut the
federal debt.
In 1929, the
Wall Street crash signaled disaster for the Republicans
as President Hoover emerged as the scapegoat for the
Great Depression. Despite his creation of the home-loan
banks and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to save
the American financial structures, Hoover's
anti-Depression efforts went unheeded as people turned
to the Democrats for a "New Deal."
Under
Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, the federal government
gained power and size while deficit spending rose as a
result of increased government involvement in the
economy.
Renewing the party
The next 20 years were a time of rebuilding for the
Republican Party. This effort included establishing a
greater role for women. Launching a tradition that the
RNC chairman and co-chairman be of opposite sex, in
1937, Marion E. Martin was named first assistant
chairman of the Republican National Committee. Three
years later, the Republican Party became the first major
political party to endorse an equal rights amendment for
women in its platform.
In the
post-Depression era, five presidential terms were shared
by only two presidents. The Democrats ignored the
two-term tradition upheld by the Republican Party and
allowed Roosevelt to run for and win an unprecedented
four terms. Following Roosevelt's death, Vice President
Harry S Truman became president. It was not until 1946,
with the 80th Congress, that the Republicans won a
majority in both the Senate and the House. Notably, it
was this Congress that produced the first balanced
federal budget since Republican Herbert Hoover was
president.
With the
Truman administration held responsible for failure to
arbitrate a crippling steel strike, escalating inflation
and the Korean War, in 1950 the renewed Republican Party
made strong gains in Congress.
Two years
later World War II hero Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected
president, carrying the party to its first presidential
victory in almost 25 years. During Eisenhower's two
terms, the nation quickly recovered from the economic
strain of the war. Focusing on rebuilding the nation and
re-establishing its pre-eminence, as well as his
party's, he established the Interstate Highway System
and forged ahead with America's space exploration
program. Continuing the Republicans' commitment to
women, in 1953 he appointed a woman, Oveta Culp Hobby,
as the first secretary of his newly created Department
of Health, Education and Welfare.
The
Eisenhower administration also made special efforts to
enforce the 1954 Brown vs. The Board of Education
Supreme Court decision that declared "separate but
equal" school accommodations unconstitutional. On the
heels of implementing this decision through the
protection of the National Guard, Eisenhower completed
formal integration of blacks in the armed forces.
Charged with upholding the rights of blacks, Eisenhower
appointed a Civil Rights Commission and created a civil
rights division in the Justice Department. All of these
actions culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1957,
which gave the attorney general power to obtain
injunctions to stop Southern registrars and officials
from interfering with blacks seeking to register and
vote.
Turmoil
Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, lost the
1960 presidential election to John F. Kennedy by the
narrowest margin in U.S. history, and, with the
establishment of the Camelot mystique, it seemed the
Republican Party was again at an ebb in the political
tide. Yet four years later, Sen. Barry Goldwater emerged
to revitalize the grass-roots strength of the GOP with
his energy and his laissez-faire principles, and despite
losing the presidential election to Lyndon B. Johnson,
the Republican Party slowly re-established itself.
In 1968,
Nixon led the party to victory in a hard-fought
presidential contest. In the next four years, Nixon
established his place in history as an expert in foreign
affairs. He firmly believed that the United States had a
form of government that was better than any other
system, and therefore, the United States should play a
major role in world politics in order to protect
American interests as well as to promote our values. He
opened relations with mainland China, which not only led
20 years later to a major market for American products
but also fundamentally altered the Cold War strategic
balance. He ended the U.S. involvement in Vietnam--a war
that had torn this country apart. He dramatically
improved American security through his policy of detente
with the USSR, which led to the signing of the ABM and
other arms control treaties.
Domestically, Nixon brought inflation under control by
implementing the traditional Republican policy of fiscal
control and by the innovative tactic of cutting the
dollar loose from the gold standard. In addition, The
Clean Air Act, which began the process of environmental
controls in the United States, was crafted and passed
under the Nixon administration. His administration also
promoted America's manned space program.
Nixon won a
landslide victory in 1972, carrying every state except
Massachusetts. In 1973, Spiro Agnew resigned as Vice
President while under investigation for corruption
during his term in the 1960s as county executive of
Baltimore County, Maryland. Using provisions of the 25th
Amendment, President Nixon appointed House Republican
Leader Gerald R. Ford to the vice presidency. When Nixon
resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1974,
Ford assumed the presidency, selecting former Gov.
Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president.
Under the
Ford administration, the United States regained its
confidence in politics and in the integrity of national
government. At the same time, America's double-digit
inflation rate was cut in half, taxes were cut
significantly and the role of municipal and state
governments was enhanced by reducing federal government
expansion. However, the country's first appointed
president was denied election to office in 1976 by a
narrow loss to Jimmy Carter.
A new
renaissance
In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran for president promising a
"New Federalism." On the theory that local governments
reflected both the will and the wisdom of the citizenry
better than the remote bureaucracy-ridden government in
Washington, Reagan planned to transfer some functions of
the federal government to the states.
Both the past
and the future of the Republican Party were represented
in Reagan's election to the presidency. Appealing to the
same conservative constituency that had been attracted
to Barry Goldwater, he also captivated a broad spectrum
of America with his easygoing and reassuring manner. His
sense of humor lightened the pessimism pervading
America--as when John Hinckley Jr. shot him in the
chest. Although seriously wounded, as Reagan was wheeled
into the operating room for emergency surgery, he told
the team of doctors that he hoped they were all
Republicans.
His sincerity
and strength led to an emotional tidal wave at the
polls. Reagan restored America's pride in itself. As he
once commented, "America's best days are yet to come.
Our proudest moments are yet to be. Our most glorious
achievements are just ahead. America remains what
Emerson called her 150 years ago, 'The country of
tomorrow.' What a wonderful description and how true."
Continuing
the Republican tradition of leading the way in
furthering the position of women, Reagan's first term
included several notable appointments. He selected
Sandra Day O'Connor as the first female Supreme Court
justice, Elizabeth Dole as the first female secretary of
transportation and Jeane Kirkpatrick as the first female
U.S. representative to the United Nations. With Dole,
Kirkpatrick and Margaret Heckler as the secretary of
health and human services, it was also the first time in
history three women served concurrently in a president's
Cabinet.
In his 1984
re-election, President Reagan received the largest
Republican landslide victory in history. Under the
leadership of President Reagan and his successor, George
Bush, the United States experienced the longest economic
expansion period in its history--more than 20.7 million
new jobs were created as a result. His steadfastness in
the face of the communist threat led to the
surprising--to all but himself--collapse of communism in
1989. Reaching milestones economically and
diplomatically, President Reagan, "The Great
Communicator," earned his place in history among our
greatest presidents.
Although
Reagan was a hard act to follow, President Bush's
leadership was proven when he lay a solid groundwork for
U.S. policy in such critical areas as nuclear
disarmament, free trade, the Middle East peace process
and the future of NATO. Relying on his illustrious
military experience, he brought together an
unprecedented coalition to maintain the forces of law in
the Persian Gulf region. In the wake of Operation Desert
Storm, President Bush's popularity soared to record
levels. As a result of his leadership after the war, a
delegation from Israel sat face to face with
Palestinians for the first time in thousands of years.
Unfortunately
President Bush was blamed for a worldwide economic
slowdown triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union
and involving the transition of the global economy from
an industrial base to a high-technology base, and he was
unsuccessful in his bid for re-election in 1992. Nearly
20 percent of voters were drawn to the blunt
anti-government candidacy of Ross Perot, and another 43
percent elected "New Democrat" Bill Clinton, who
promised to reinvent government.
The
Republicans look toward the future
After Haley Barbour's election as chairman of the
Republican National Committee in January of 1993, the
party began concentrating on organizing its grass-roots
strength. Focusing on the principles that had
historically made the Republicans a strong party,
Barbour emphasized individual freedom, personal
responsibility and reduced government. As a result of
that work, House Republican members and candidates
together created the Contract With America , a bold
agenda of 10 specific pieces of legislation based on
Republican principles of individual liberty, economic
opportunity, limited and effective government, personal
responsibility and strong security. All told, 367
candidates signed the Contract With America to bring
fundamental change to the way business is conducted in
the people's House of Representatives.
On November
8, 1994, the American people responded to the Republican
promise of concrete change and voted for a new American
majority in the greatest midterm majority swing of the
20th century. After 40 years of a Democratic-controlled
Congress, Republicans gained majorities in both the
House and Senate, as well as a majority of the states'
governorships for the first time in two decades. Not a
single incumbent Republican governor, senator or
representative lost.
The swearing
in of the 104th Congress marked the start of the process
of change embodied in the Contract With America. For
example, Republicans have made Congress abide by the
same laws it imposes on the rest of us; commissioned the
first independent audit of the Congress in history; cut
Congress' budget by at least 10 percent--more than $200
million; eliminated three congressional committees, 25
subcommittees and one of every three committee staff
jobs; imposed term limits on committee chairs and the
speaker; planned a balanced budget reducing the deficit
to zero in seven years without raising taxes; and worked
to protect, preserve and improve Medicare.
The actions
of the 104th Congress not only promise to fundamentally
alter the way that Washington, and indeed the nation,
works, they also signal the continuation of a long
Republican history of offering fresh ideas and
principled approaches to the challenges facing our
nation
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