Origins of the Republican Party
The Republican Party is often thought of as having a congruent and consistent platform that is reflective of the republican ideology of the forefathers of the US. It must be said that the Republican Party, like any other ideological institution is the result of many years of evolution and development, in response to other movements and the power and personages of its early years. To develop, from an ideal, an organization there must be the inclusion of compromise, personality and conflict and the period between 1854 and 1860 was just such a time in the Republican Party. The period reflects the build up to one of the greatest national conflicts in the history not only of the nation but of the world, the Civil War and the election of the mouthpiece of the republican ideals, Lincoln. The ideals of the conflicts between parties and individuals are eloquently demonstrated in primary and secondary source work of the period as well as more modern secondary sources and represents conflict and creation in the development of the nation and the parties that dominate the political thoughts of the nation, even today. The build up of the development of the Republican Party is as Gienapp states a development in response to many years of ethno-c
In truth the concept of the abolition of slavery, even in the 1850s was considered extremist, as abolition rejected a whole segment of the American economy and lifestyle. To a very large degree race had very little to do with the issues associated with slavery, economics was the divining rod that determined the outcomes of m any social and moral dogmatisms of the day. " 31 The Republican Party had no real intention of abolishing slavery as a response to the moral turpitude of the institution, but transforming it to such a degree that the southern population, relying upon it would no longer be able to compete with free white labor. Although the Republicans could use their control of the popular branch of the national legislature for political ends, and had at their disposal the machinery of a national organization, they had merely approached their problems, not solved them. 12 Lastly, the platform then goes on to state the intentions of the party to ask that the national government step back, return Kansas to itself, and immediately admit it to the union as a free state. The party sought to inform the public in the North and South of the need for regime change and did so by using every existing and many new formations of affiliation. In this subject the die is cast--and we must win or lose by the event. Frederick Law Olmstead's The Seaboard Slave States was opportunely published and was received as added evidence of the condition of the South. The south almost unanimously voted for the Democratic candidate, resolving to keep the system, as it was and allow them to expand it into new territories. Additionally they sought to expand the infrastructural support of the south through the expansion of the transcontinental railroad into the southern states, a rout that would support their basic need for manufactured goods as well as easier access to necessary food products. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. Thanks to the work of a generation of social historians, the complex consequences of the market revolution are now familiar. 13 Resolved, That Kansas should be immediately admitted as a state of this Union, with her present Free Constitution, as at once the most effectual way of securing to her citizens the enjoyment of the rights and privileges to which they are entitled, and of ending the civil strife now raging in her territory. Free White Men: It is imperative to note that the early members of the republican movement were not only free white men but as Foner points out the group only marginally included the variation of freedom that was represented in wage labor earners. In spite of the advantage afforded them by the political chaos in the North and by the "anti-everything" state of mind that existed there, large numbers of men would still hesitate to support a party, the victory of which seemed to mean certain disruption of the Union.
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Acceptance Essays
