Happy Birthday, Republicans
The Republican Party officially began on this day in 1854. Why, and how Democrats responded are worth revisiting.
Monday, March 20th, isn’t only celebrated as the first day of Spring (or last day of Winter) and ushering in the hope of April showers, May flowers, and warmer, sunnier days. It’s also the birthday of the Republican Party this day in Ripon, Wisconsin schoolhouse.
Or, as some Democratic partisans might call it, “Happy Insurrectionist Day.”
And while the Grand Old Party (GOP) is called many things today, “reactionary” isn’t wrong. Its the reaction to what that may surprise people who’ve been indoctrinated to believe Republicans are a bunch of angry, violent, insurrectionist white supremacist racist Nazis (MAGA Republicans!), a party defined more by January 6, 2021, than March 20, 1854, or anytime in between.
I see some of you nodding.
I might suggest another very different reaction to the same event that gave birth to the GOP. It defined the other major political party of the day, the Democrats.
Those who’ve toured the US Capitol with me and visited the “Old Senate Chamber” you know what I’m talking about.
The defining “event” was the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. That bill was largely crafted by the “little giant,” US Sen. Stephen Douglas (D-IL), effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1850. The 1850 law effectively prohibited the expansion of slavery west of the Mississippi. Douglas, harboring presidential ambitions and seeking to complete the transcontinental railroad, tried to have his cake and eat it, too, on slavery.
Few acts of Congress more profoundly impacted our nation than the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Douglas’s bill, signed into law by President Franklin Pierce, allowed Kansas, Nebraska, and future states to decide whether to be “free” or “slave” based on Douglas’s notion of “popular sovereignty.” Nebraska chose to be “free.” The Sunflower State, on the other hand, became known as “Bleeding Kansas” as pro-Union and pro-Confederate marauders poured into the state with violent results.
Meanwhile, in Ripon, Kansas, a gaggle of disaffected anti-slavery “Free Soil Democrats” (free land for pioneering farmers) and the dissolving Whig party evolved into the new Republican party and its support for a national bank and high tariffs, and the elimination of expansion of slavery. Both political parties - Democrats and the new Republicans - were pro-business. It was the slavery issue that divided and defined them.
Republicans predominated in the North and most of the Midwest, Democrats in the South. The rest of the continent was up for grabs.
Whigs and Free Soilers agreed on their new name - Republicans - at a Ripon, Wisconsin, schoolhouse on March 20, 1854. Later that summer, they held their first convention in Jackson, Michigan, 35 miles south of Lansing. In 1856, they nominated explorer John C. Freemont as their first presidential nominee at a convention in Philadelphia. He lost to Pennsylvania Democrat James Buchanan, a bachelor who would serve only one term as the Civil War broke out during his final months.
But the stage was set. A couple of stages, actually. The other major “reaction” to the Kansas-Nebraska Act occurred on May 22, 1856, on the floor of the US Senate. This time, it was the Democratic Party’s turn.
US Sen. Charles Sumner, a Whig-turned-Republican, delivered a long speech over the two previous days entitled “Crimes Against Kansas,” lamenting the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He also personally attacked US Sen. Andrew Butler (D-SC) for being in the embrace of the “harlot,” slavery. Butler’s cousin, US Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC), took offense and, accompanied by two colleagues, walked into the Senate chamber while Sumner was mostly alone, working at his desk, and proceeded to bludgeon him with his gold-tipped cane.
He continued to beat Sumner senselessly as he tried to escape. Brooks’ Democratic colleagues kept at bay anyone who tried to intervene. Sumner was so badly injured that he could not return to the Senate chamber for three years.
But the event proved a precursor to the Civil War. The issue of slavery would only be resolved through violent means. Some 700,000 casualties, and several years later, it was.
Yes, subsequent events - the Civil War, Reconstruction, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement, etc. - have resulted in major political realignments. Racism has been turned on its head among most Democrats, just not in the way envisioned by the late Martin Luther King. Republicans are more associated with “free trade” than with high tariffs. Catholics have long been more identified with Democrats, and neither party is known any longer for “temperance.”
States that once routinely supported Republicans for federal office - New Jersey, Vermont, and most of the Northeast - are now loyally Democratic. And much of the South has evolved into a Republican stronghold. Those shifts are continuing and may accelerate, and major shifts toward the GOP are being spotted now among Hispanics and Asians while once traditionally GOP suburbs have other ideas. Once populist and reliably Democratic rural areas - Oklahoma, Minnesota, etc. - are now staunchly GOP.
But today is a good day to celebrate and remember why it exists and refresh its collective memory of its origins. It is still the party of freedom, defined by limited government, “sound money,” and defending individual rights enshrined in the Constitution while promoting individual responsibility.
Wikipedia outlines much of the GOP’s history here, all worth celebrating.
From its inception in 1854 to 1964, when Senate Republicans pushed hard for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against a filibuster by Senate Democrats, the GOP had a reputation for supporting blacks and minorities. In 1869, the Republican-controlled legislature in Wyoming Territory and its Republican governor John Allen Campbell made it the first jurisdiction to grant voting rights to women. In 1875, California swore in the first Hispanic governor, Republican Romualdo Pacheco. In 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman in Congress—and indeed the first woman in any high level government position. In 1928, New Mexico elected the first Hispanic U.S. Senator, Republican Octaviano Larrazolo. In 1898, the first Jewish U.S. Senator elected from outside of the former Confederacy was Republican Joseph Simon of Oregon. In 1924, the first Jewish woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives was Republican Florence Kahn of California. In 1928, the Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Charles Curtis of Kansas, who grew up on the Kaw Indian reservation, became the first person of significant non-European ancestry to be elected to national office, as Vice President of the United States for Herbert Hoover.[189]
Blacks generally identified with the GOP until the 1930s. Every African American who served in the U.S. House of Representatives before 1935 and all of the African Americans who served in the Senate before 1979, were Republicans. Frederick Douglass after the Civil War and Booker T. Washington in the early 20th century were prominent Republican spokesmen. In 1966, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate.
Oh, sure, you’ll hear some partisans talk about Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy” in 1968 that was a “dog whistle” to white racists (completely false - Nixon still lost most of the south that year and his appeal, on crime issues, was directed towards the suburbs), as they continue to smear southerners as racists. And, yes, the Democrats usually win bidding wars when creating and building popular federal programs, including Social Security and Medicare (both now going broke).
But the essential building blocks of the GOP - freedom, opportunity, and individual responsibility - remain. Republicans are also rediscovering their rural roots, as established at that small schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. And many first and second-generation Americans, especially Hispanics and Asians, find the GOP’s values and policies increasingly appealing. Republicans hold governorships and a majority in legislatures in most states.
So today, blow out a birthday cake and enjoy a cold one. Pull out a few old party platforms and peruse them, for old-time’s sake. You’ve earned it.
Just don’t forget that real work lies ahead.
Thanks for the History lesson, I never really knew the background of the Republican Party.
Thanks Kelly!!
This is real history from someone who knows the GOP inside out.
William Hamilton, Ph.D.