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Who Were The Republicans In The Civil War

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Gop Overthrown During Great Depression

What if Civil War broke out between Republicans and Democrats?

The pro-business policies of the decade seemed to produce an unprecedented prosperityuntil the Wall Street Crash of 1929 heralded the Great Depression. Although the party did very well in large cities and among ethnic Catholics in presidential elections of 19201924, it was unable to hold those gains in 1928. By 1932, the citiesfor the first time everhad become Democratic strongholds.

Hoover was by nature an activist and attempted to do what he could to alleviate the widespread suffering caused by the Depression, but his strict adherence to what he believed were Republican principles precluded him from establishing relief directly from the federal government. The Depression cost Hoover the presidency with the 1932 landslide election of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition controlled American politics for most of the next three decades, excepting the presidency of Republican Dwight Eisenhower 19531961. The Democrats made major gains in the 1930 midterm elections, giving them congressional parity for the first time since Wilson’s presidency.

Election Of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was born into relative poverty in Kentucky in 1809. His father worked a small farm. In his youth, Lincoln held down a variety of jobs before moving to Illinois and becoming a lawyer.

Lincoln sarted to get involved in local politics. Lincolns political views came to the fore after the Kansas Nebraska Act where he spoke out against the spread of slavery.


1860 was the presidential election year. In the spring the two main parties, the Democrats and the Republicans chose their candidates.

  • Abraham Lincoln . The Republicans held their convention in Chicago. Lincoln was chosen with overwhelming support.
  • Stephen Douglas . The Democratic Party was split. Northern Democrats wished for further compromise over slavery. Douglas was chosen as their candidate.
  • John Breckinridge . The Southern Democrats wanted no compromise on slavery. They wished to see slavery guaranteed and were trying to take over the party. They left the Democrat Convention in Baltimore and selected their own candidate John Breckinridge.
  • John Bell . The Constitutional Union Party was trying to prevent the country dividing over the issue of slavery.

The election campaign of 1860 was unusual. Lincoln only campaigned in the North and Breckinridge in the South. Stephen Douglas exhausted himself by campaigning in all the states.

The result was that Lincoln became President. He won all 17 states in the North but none in the South. The country was now more divided than ever.

Opinionheres What Getting Rid Of Mississippis Confederate Flag Means And Doesnt

In the summer of 1864, for example, the war was going poorly, and Republicans feared that a public sick of defeat would toss Lincoln out of office. Then Gen. William T. Sherman won a resounding victory at Atlanta in September. Lincolnâs landslide re-election in 1864 seemed to many at the time and since then to be the result of that military success.

But by analyzing House elections in 1864, Kalmoe uncovered a different story. In the 1860s, congressional contests were held over the course of the entire year, rather than on the same day as the presidential contest. If Republicans were in trouble before September, House GOP candidates should have been crushed by Democratic challengers. But instead, Kalmoe found, Republican vote share changed little over time. Lincoln was on his way to win before Atlanta. Republican partisans supported the president even though the war was going poorly, as they did when the war was going well.


In the Civil War era, partisanship had a strong effect on how people interpreted good or bad news.

Republican refusal to abandon Trump seems ominous. Trumpâs disastrous response to a national health crisis has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. If his voters arenât moved by that, how can we hold government accountable to the people at all? Partisanship seems to be a recipe for denial, dysfunction and death.

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President Truman Integrates The Troops: 1948

Fast forward about sixty shitty years. Black people are still living in segregation under Jim Crow. Nonetheless, African Americans agree to serve in World War II.


At wars end, President Harry Truman, a Democrat, used an Executive Order to integrate the troops.

These racist Southern Democrats got so mad that their chief goblin, Senator Strom Thurmond, decided to run for President against Truman. They called themselves the Dixiecrats.

Of course, he lost. Thurmond remained a Democrat until 1964. He continued to oppose civil rights as a Democrat. He gave the longest filibuster in Senate history speaking for 24 hours against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

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Republicans And Democrats After The Civil War

Spanish Civil War, a Republican group of volunteer British ...

Its true that many of the first Ku Klux Klan members were Democrats. Its also true that the early Democratic Party opposed civil rights. But theres more to it.


The Civil War-era GOP wasnt that into civil rights. They were more interested in punishing the South for seceding, and monopolizing the new black vote.

In any event, by the 1890s, Republicans had begun to distance themselves from civil rights.

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Horace Greeley Proceedings Of The First Three Republican National Conventions Of 1856 1860 And 1864 78

  • “Republican Party Platform of 1856, American Presidency Project, at , accessed April 25, 2014.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Carlinville, Illinois, August 31, 1858, in Abraham Lincoln Association, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy Basler, at , accessed April 25, 2014.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863, at United States National Archives, Americas Historical Documents, at , accessed April 25, 2014.
  • University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab, Voting America: Presidential Election, 1864, at , accessed January 9, 2014.
  • History Of The Republican Party

    Republican Party

    The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP , is one of the two major political parties in the United States. It is the second-oldest extant political party in the United States; its chief rival, the Democratic Party, is the oldest.

    The Republican Party emerged in 1854 to combat the KansasNebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into American territories. The early Republican Party consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and after 1866, former black slaves. The party had very little support from white Southerners at the time, who predominantly backed the Democratic Party in the Solid South, and from Catholics, who made up a major Democratic voting block. While both parties adopted pro-business policies in the 19th century, the early GOP was distinguished by its support for the national banking system, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs. The party opposed the expansion of slavery before 1861 and led the fight to destroy the Confederate States of America . While the Republican Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States at its inception, it was very successful in the Northern United States, where by 1858 it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free SoilDemocrats to form majorities in nearly every Northern state.


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    How Did The Spanish Civil War End

    The final Republican offensive stalled at the Ebro River on November 18, 1938. Within months Barcelona would fall, and on March 28, 1939, some 200,000 Nationalist troops entered Madrid unopposed. The city had endured a siege of nearly two-and-a-half years, and its residents were in no condition to resist. The following day the remnant of the Republican government surrendered; Franco would establish himself as dictator and remain in power until his death on November 20, 1975.

    Spanish Civil War, , military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and NaziGermany. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union as well as from the International Brigades, composed of volunteers from Europe and the United States.

    Pietistic Republicans Versus Liturgical Democrats: 18901896

    MOOC | The Radical Republicans | The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1865-1890 | 3.3.5
    Voting behavior by religion, Northern U.S. late 19th century

    % Dem
    90 10

    From 1860 to 1912, the Republicans took advantage of the association of the Democrats with “Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. Rum stood for the liquor interests and the tavernkeepers, in contrast to the GOP, which had a strong dry element. “Romanism” meant Roman Catholics, especially Irish Americans, who ran the Democratic Party in every big city and whom the Republicans denounced for political corruption. “Rebellion” stood for the Democrats of the Confederacy, who tried to break the Union in 1861; and the Democrats in the North, called “Copperheads, who sympathized with them.


    Demographic trends aided the Democrats, as the German and Irish Catholic immigrants were Democrats and outnumbered the English and Scandinavian Republicans. During the 1880s and 1890s, the Republicans struggled against the Democrats’ efforts, winning several close elections and losing two to Grover Cleveland .

    Religious lines were sharply drawn. Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Scandinavian Lutherans and other pietists in the North were tightly linked to the GOP. In sharp contrast, liturgical groups, especially the Catholics, Episcopalians and German Lutherans, looked to the Democratic Party for protection from pietistic moralism, especially prohibition. Both parties cut across the class structure, with the Democrats more bottom-heavy.

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    Birthplace Of The Republican Party

    Meeting at a in Ripon on March 20, 1854, some 30 opponents of the called for the organization of a new political party . The group also took a leading role in the creation of the in many northern states during the summer of 1854. While conservatives and many moderates were content merely to call for the restoration of the or a prohibition of slavery extension, the group insisted that no further political compromise with slavery was possible.

    The February 1854 meeting was the first political meeting of the group that would become the Republican Party. The modern , a Republican think tank, takes its name from Ripon, Wisconsin.


    Ripon is located in the northwest corner of .

    According to the , the city has a total area of 5.02 square miles , of which, 4.97 square miles is land and 0.05 square miles is water.

    Presidency Of George W Bush

    In the aftermath of the , the nationâs focus was changed to issues of national security. All but one Democrat voted with their Republican counterparts to authorize President Bushâs 2001 invasion of Afghanistan. House leader Richard Gephardt and Senate leader Thomas Daschle pushed Democrats to vote for the USA PATRIOT Act and the invasion of Iraq. The Democrats were split over invading Iraq in 2003 and increasingly expressed concerns about both the justification and progress of the War on Terrorism as well as the domestic effects from the Patriot Act.

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    Social Conservatism And Traditionalism

    Social conservatism in the United States is the defense of traditional social norms and .


    Social conservatives tend to strongly identify with American nationalism and patriotism. They often vocally support the police and the military. They hold that military institutions embody core values such as honor, duty, courage, loyalty, and a willingness on the part of the individual to make sacrifices for the good of the country.

    Social conservatives are strongest in the South and in recent years played a major role in the political coalitions of and .

    The Founding Fathers Disagree

    What were the most feared and brutal weapons of the ...

    Differing political views among U.S. Founding Fathers eventually sparked the forming of two factions. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams thus formed The Federalists. They sought to ensure a strong government and central banking system with a national bank. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison instead advocated for a smaller and more decentralized government, and formed the Democratic-Republicans. Both the Democratic and the Republican Parties as we know them today are rooted in this early faction.

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    On This Day The Republican Party Names Its First Candidates

    On July 6, 1854, disgruntled voters in a new political party named its first candidates to contest the Democrats over the issue of slavery. Within six and one-half years, the newly christened Republican Party would control the White House and Congress as the Civil War began.


    For a brief time in the decade before the Civil War, the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson and his descendants enjoyed a period of one-party rule. The Democrats had battled the Whigs for power since 1836 and lost the presidency in 1848 to the Whig candidate, Zachary Taylor. After Taylor died in office in 1850, it took only a few short years for the Whig Party to collapse dramatically.

    There are at least three dates recognized in the formation of the Republican Party in 1854, built from the ruins of the Whigs. The first is February 24, 1854, when a small group met in Ripon, Wisconsin, to discuss its opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The group called themselves Republicans in reference to Thomas Jeffersons Republican faction in the American republics early days. Another meeting was held on March 20, 1854, also in Ripon, where 53 people formally recognized the movement within Wisconsin.

    On July 6, 1854, a much-bigger meeting in Jackson, Michigan was attended by about 10,000 people and is considered by many as the official start of the organized Republican Party. By the end of the gathering, the Republicans had compiled a full slate of candidates to run in Michigans elections.

    The Uss Hispanic Population Swells

    In recent decades, America has gone through a major demographic shift in the form of Hispanic immigration both legal and illegal.

    The legal immigration has major electoral implications, as the electorate is becoming more diverse, and there is a new pool of voters that the parties can try to win over. Currently, the Democrats are doing a better job of it this population growth already helped California and New Mexico become solidly Democratic states on the presidential level, and helped tip swing states Florida and Colorado toward Barack Obama too.

    But meanwhile, illegal immigration has also risen to the top of the political agenda. Democrats, business elites, and some leading Republicans have tended to support reforming immigration laws so that more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants in the US can get legal status. Many conservatives, though, tend to denounce such policies as “amnesty,” and being “tough on illegal immigration” has increasingly become a badge of honor on the right.

    The bigger picture is that while the country is growing increasingly diverse, non-Hispanic whites are still a majority, and Trump’s strong support among them was sufficient to deliver him the presidency.

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    If There Was A Republican Civil War It Appears To Be Over

    The party belongs to Trump for as long as he wants it.

    By Jamelle Bouie

    Opinion Columnist

    That there is a backlash against the seven Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump of inciting a mob against Congress is not that shocking. What is shocking is how fast it happened.

    Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, for example, was immediately censured by the Louisiana Republican Party. We condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the vote today by Senator Cassidy to convict former President Trump, the party announced on Twitter. Another vote to convict, Richard Burr of North Carolina, was similarly rebuked by his state party, which censured him on Monday. Senators Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania are also in hot water with their respective state parties, which see a vote against Trump as tantamount to treason. We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said hes doing, one Pennsylvania Republican Party official explained. We sent him there to represent us.

    That this backlash was completely expected, even banal, should tell you everything you need to know about the so-called civil war in the Republican Party. It doesnt exist. Outside of a rump faction of dissidents, there is no truly meaningful anti-Trump opposition within the party. The civil war, such as it was, ended four-and-a-half years ago when Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president.

    Ideology And Political Philosophy

    MOOC | The Radical Republicans | The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1861 | 1.6.6

    In terms of governmental economic policies, American conservatives have been heavily influenced by the or tradition as expressed by and and a major source of influence has been the . They have been strongly opposed to .

    Traditional conservatives tend to be anti-ideological, and some would even say anti-philosophical, promoting, as explained, a steady flow of “prescription and prejudice”. Kirk’s use of the word “prejudice” here is not intended to carry its contemporary pejorative connotation: a conservative himself, he believed that the inherited wisdom of the ages may be a better guide than apparently rational individual judgment.

    There are two overlapping subgroups of social conservativesthe traditional and the religious. Traditional conservatives strongly support traditional codes of conduct, especially those they feel are threatened by social change and modernization. For example, traditional conservatives may oppose the use of female soldiers in combat. Religious conservatives focus on conducting society as prescribed by a religious authority or code. In the United States, this translates into hard-line stances on moral issues, such as and . Religious conservatives often assert that “America is a Christian nation” and call for laws that enforce .

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