Rebuilding The Republican Party: History of the Party

Today we continue our series on Rebuilding the Republican Party. So far we have laid out a new statement of principle for the party, and we discussed the importance of the Constitutional separation of powers, particularly as it applies to judicial activism and the improper shift of power (czars) from the legislature to the executive. Now, we step back slightly and outline the history of the Republican Party.

The left distorts the party's history to keep their own interest groups brainwashed and angry, but the fact is that (like them or not) the Republican Party has been the driving force behind almost every important innovation in United States governance since the Civil War.

Read on, you will be surprised.

The Republican Party (GOP) was founded in 1850 by anti-slavery activists, though its intellectual roots go back to the founding of the republic. Within a few years of its founding, the Republican Party replaced the Whig Party, which had itself replaced the Federalist Party, as one of the two main political parties of the United States.

The first official meeting of the Republican Party took place on July 6, 1854 in Jackson, Michigan. In 1856, the party became a national party, when it nominated John C. Fremont for President. He ran under the slogan: “Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Fremont.” These were references to the party’s opposition to slavery and its support for granting western land to settlers free of charge.

In 1860, Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican to become President of the United States. Lincoln gained national prominence after his run for the United States Senate in 1858, when he failed to unseat Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent Democrat. As part of that campaign, he and Douglas engaged in a series of seven famous debates that became known as the Lincoln Douglas Debates.

Republicans End Slavery and Guarantee Rights For All

In 1861, the Democratic Party-dominated South, seceded from the Union, beginning the Civil War. President Lincoln struggled between 1861-1865 to defend and reunite the Union. During the war, President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves. At the same time, Congressional Republicans passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery. The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection of the law for all persons, and prohibited the state from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed all citizens, of any race, the right to vote.


“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
-- Abraham Lincoln

In February 1870, Republican Hiram Rhoades Revels was sworn in as the nation’s first African-American United States Senator. The following month, Republican Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American member of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1872, Republican Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback became the nation’s first African-American governor, when he became governor of Louisiana.

Nearly one hundred years later, Republican support was crucial for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial segregation in schools, public places and employment. Desegregation of the military was completed by Republican President Eisenhower ten years prior. President Eisenhower also enforced the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

Republicans Pass Women’s Suffrage

In 1896, the Republican Party became the first majority party to favor women’s suffrage. This eventually resulted in the Nineteenth Amendment, which guaranteed women’s right to vote. Republicans controlled twenty-six of the thirty-six state legislatures that ratified the Nineteenth Amendment. In 1917, Jeanette Rankin, a Republican from Montana, became the first woman elected to Congress.

Republicans Protect America From Anti-Competitive Monopolies

Protecting the country and the free market from the abusive powers of monopolies and oligopoly trusts became a driving principle of the Republican Party in the 1890s.

In July of 1890, Republican Senator John Sherman introduced legislation to protect the free market from the distorting power of monopolies and other anti-competitive arrangements. This act was signed into law by Republican President Benjamin Harrison, “to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies.” This historic legislation, the Sherman Antitrust Act, remains the fundamental antitrust law in the United States today.

Republican President William McKinley thereafter appointed the U.S. Industrial Commission on Trusts, which investigated the market distorting practices of oligopoly trusts created by many of the industrial titans of the era, the so-called “Robber Barons.” Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, who earned the nickname the “Trust Buster”, seized upon this report to break up these anti-competitive arrangements, as did Republican President William Howard Taft, ushering a period of tremendous economic growth as the American economy and the nation's small businesses were freed from predatory economic practices.


“We demand that big business give the people a square deal.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt

Republicans Create the FDA

Republican President Roosevelt, promising a “Square Deal” to the average citizen, became the first President to seek to protect the consumer from the hidden dangers of impure food and bad drugs. The responsibility for monitoring food and drugs was given to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Bureau of Chemistry, which eventually became the Food and Drug Administration.

Republicans De-Politicize The Federal Workforce

In 1883, Republican President Chester A. Arthur created the bipartisan Civil Service Commission, which required that most federal jobs be awarded on the basis of merit rather than the “spoils system.” The most famous commissioner of the Civil Service Commission was Theodore Roosevelt.

In 1938, the Republicans worked with Democratic Senator Carl Hatch to pass the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from engaging in political campaigning on the job; forbids officials paid with federal funds from promising jobs, financial assistance, contracts or other benefits to coerce campaign contributions or political support; and prohibits the use of federal funds for lobbying. This act was in direct response to discoveries that funds allocated to the Works Progress Administration had been misused by WPA staff members and local Democratic Party politicians to promote the Democratic Party in the 1938 congressional elections.

Republicans Promote Environmental Conservation

The Republican Party has a strong tradition of environmental protection. Abraham Lincoln set Yosemite apart for public use. Republican President Ulysses S. Grant created Yellowstone National Park. Theodore Roosevelt established the Forest Service to promote environmental conservation and to protect federal land. He also achieved passage of the Antiquities Act, which allowed him to designate historic landmarks as national monuments, allowing for their protection and preservation. Additionally, he created fifty-three national wildlife refuges and eighteen national park and preserves, including the Grand Canyon, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, and the National Bird Preserve on Pelican Island, Florida.


“To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them.”
-- Theodore Roosevelt

Republican representatives cosponsored the Wilderness Act of 1964, protecting wilderness areas across the United States. President Richard Nixon pushed for the Clean Air Act, which set standards for pollution emissions, and for the Endangered Species Act, which sought to protect endangered species and their ecosystems. Other environmental acts promoted by Republicans addressed toxic substances, safe drinking water, oil pollution, and river preservation, among others. President Nixon also created the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to protect workers’ safety.

Republicans Bring Economic Prosperity

Republican policies have always brought economic prosperity to the United States. Republican President Calvin Coolidge observed that “the business of the American people is business.” Coolidge’s administration decreased personal income taxes in 1924, ushering in the period of unparalleled economic growth which became known as the “Roaring Twenties.”


“Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery.”
-- Calvin Coolidge

In the early 1900’s, President Theodore Roosevelt created the Panama Canal, shortening the distance from New York to San Francisco by 8,000 miles. The Panama Canal remains one of the most important routes for world trade to this very day.

Ronald Reagan became President in 1980, promising a combination of tax cuts and decreased regulation. This policy, labeled Reaganomics, led to the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth and prosperity in American history.


“The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: if it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
-- Ronald Reagan

In 1994, the Republican Party seized the majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years. The Republicans immediately turned to balancing the federal budget, which they cut by 10%; reforming the welfare system, which had discouraged work; improving Medicare, which was nearing insolvency; and commissioned the first independent audit of Congress in its history. These policies led to a surge in growth and prosperity, and brought about a surplus in the national budget.

Republicans Keep America Strong

After decades of isolationism, Theodore Roosevelt steered the United States more actively into world politics. His foreign policy, which he characterized as “Speak softly but carry a big stick,” included sending the Great White Fleet on a goodwill tour of the world, ensuring construction of the Panama Canal, and mediating an end to the Russo-Japanese War, for which he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

President Warren G. Harding, who coined the phrase “founding fathers” in his keynote address to the 1916 Republican National Convention, negotiated the Washington Naval Treaty in 1923, which slowed the world’s naval arms race, reduced tensions between western navies, and ultimately led the United States to develop naval aircraft carriers, which allowed America to defeat Japan in World War II and which remain the basis of American military power throughout the world today.

President Eisenhower championed the creation of the nation’s interstate highway system in 1956.

Ronald Reagan rebuilt America’s military, which had languished after Vietnam, and won the Cold War, bringing down the Soviet Union and freeing millions of Eastern Europeans from communist oppression.

Top that democrats. . .