Review
"In this richly informed and timely book, Lewis Gould provides an illuminating, ¦u-ent, and persuasive history of the Republican Party. His saga addresses both issues and leaders in the frequently contentious politics of the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, their heirs, their enemies, and their legacy. This is required reading for all political junkies, Republicans and Democrats alike.”
--John Morton Blum, Sterling Professor Emeritus, Yale University
"Is the party of George W. Bush the party of Abraham Lincoln or of William McKinley? Will the election of 2000 prove to have been like the election of 1896 or the election of 1928? Are Republicans conservatives by political pedigree or radicals? Lewis Gould reports learnedly, insightfully, entertainingly; you decide.”
--H. W. Brands, author of The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
"How a party that once believed in big government became the party that believes in small government is the story well told in this fascinating book by one of America’s preeminent political historians. Lewis Gould unravels the mystery like a real-life Sherlock Holmes.”
--Rick Shenkman, editor of the History News Network
"Lewis L. Gould is one of our ablest political historians. His Grand Old Party offers a lively yet penetrating history of the Republican Party from its founding in the 1850s through the contested election of 2000. With a suitable mix of fast-paced narrative and convincing analysis, Gould places the party’s policies and outlook within a broad political, social, and economic context.”
--Charles W. Calhoun, professor of history, East Carolina University, and editor of The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America
From the Inside Flap
From Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War through the disputed election of George W. Bush and beyond, the Republican Party has been at the dramatic center of American politics for 150 years. In this exciting new book, the Þrst comprehensive history of the Republicans in 40 years, Lewis L. Gould traces the evolution of the Grand Old Party from its emergence as an antislavery coalition in the 1850s to its current role as the champion of political and social conservatism. Gould brings to life the major Þgures of Republican history--Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea-gan, and George W. Bush--and uncovers a wealth of fascinating anecdotes about Republicans, from the Plumed Knight, James G. Blaine, in the 1880s, to Barry Goldwater in the 1960s, to Newt Gingrich in the 1990s. Gould also uncovers the historical forces and issues that have made the Republicans what they are: the crusade against slavery, the rise of big business, the Cold War, and opposition to the power of the federal government.
Written with balance and keen insight, Grand Old Party is required reading for anyone interested in American politics. Republicans, Democrats, and independents alike will Þnd their understanding of national politics deepened and enriched. Based on Gould s research in the papers of leading Republi-cans and his wide reading in the party s history, Grand Old Party is a book that will outlast the noisy tumult of today s partisan debates and endure as a deÞnitive treatment of how the Republicans have shaped the way Americans live together in a democracy. For the next presidential election and for other electoral contests to come, this book (a perfect companion to Party of the People by Jules Witcover, a history of the Democratic Party published simultaneously by Random House) will be an invaluable guide to the unfolding saga of American politics.
From the Back Cover
"In this richly informed and timely book, Lewis Gould provides an illuminating, ¦u-ent, and persuasive history of the Republican Party. His saga addresses both issues and leaders in the frequently contentious politics of the party of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan, their heirs, their enemies, and their legacy. This is required reading for all political junkies, Republicans and Democrats alike.”
--John Morton Blum, Sterling Professor Emeritus, Yale University
"Is the party of George W. Bush the party of Abraham Lincoln or of William McKinley? Will the election of 2000 prove to have been like the election of 1896 or the election of 1928? Are Republicans conservatives by political pedigree or radicals? Lewis Gould reports learnedly, insightfully, entertainingly; you decide.”
--H. W. Brands, author of The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin
"How a party that once believed in big government became the party that believes in small government is the story well told in this fascinating book by one of America’s preeminent political historians. Lewis Gould unravels the mystery like a real-life Sherlock Holmes.”
--Rick Shenkman, editor of the History News Network
"Lewis L. Gould is one of our ablest political historians. His Grand Old Party offers a lively yet penetrating history of the Republican Party from its founding in the 1850s through the contested election of 2000. With a suitable mix of fast-paced narrative and convincing analysis, Gould places the party’s policies and outlook within a broad political, social, and economic context.”
--Charles W. Calhoun, professor of history, East Carolina University, and editor of The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America
About the Author
Lewis L. Gould is the Eugene C. Barker Centennial Professor Emeritus in American History at the University of Texas at Austin. A winner of awards for outstanding teaching and writing, he is the author of numerous works of political history. He lives with his wife in Austin, Texas.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
The Party of Lincoln, 1854-1865
CHICAGO HAD NEVER seen anything like it. Ten thousand Republicans had crammed themselves into a pine-board frame building called the Wigwam to nominate a candidate for president in mid-May 1860. After two days of deliberations about the platform, the enthusiastic delegates turned to the key business of nominations on Friday, May 18. Everyone knew who the front-runners were: William H. Seward of New York and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. Two or three dark horses were also in the mix. The Illinois crowd clamored for Lincoln; some timely printing of bogus tickets helped inflate the crowd with supporters of "Honest Abe." After Lincoln's name was placed in nomination, the arena exploded with noise. "No language can describe it," said one observer. "A thousand steam whistles, ten acres of hotel gongs, a tribe of Comanches, headed by a choice vanguard from pandemonium, might have mingled in the scene unnoticed."
In the balloting that followed, Seward led Lincoln on the first tally, but neither had the 233 votes needed for nomination. The second ballot produced a big gain for Lincoln; Seward's lead was a scant 3 votes. When it became evident on the third ballot that Seward could not win, Lincoln moved steadily toward a majority as the other contenders fell away. When he reached 2311Ž2 votes, four Ohio delegates switched their votes, and Lincoln was then the nominee of the Republican Party. Another tumultuous celebration ensued, while back in Lincoln's hometown of Springfield the new Republican leader was flooded with congratulatory telegrams. The Republicans had become the party of Lincoln.
What made the moment surprising was the rapid rise of both the nominee and his party to political prominence. Six and a half years earlier, in January 1854, the Republican Party did not exist, and Abraham Lincoln was a successful but politically obscure attorney in Springfield. If anyone in Illinois that winter seemed likely to become president, it was the state's Democratic senator, Stephen A. Douglas. Yet with a speed that in retrospect seems incredible and almost preordained, the new party became one of the two major political organizations in the United States.
To Americans in the 1850s the chain of events that led to the rise of the Republicans and the Lincoln presidency was fueled by the crisis over human slavery that convulsed the nation. Twists and turns, unexpected episodes, and some plain historical luck enabled the Republicans to survive the turbulent circumstances of their early years and put Lincoln in the White House in 1860. Once in power, the party that had begun as an effort to restrict the further expansion of slavery found itself involved in a major war that required an unprecedented expansion of governmental power for victory. At the same time, the struggle with the South posed the problem of how to structure a multiracial society after the fighting ended. That dilemma would divide the country and shape the destiny of the Republicans for the next century and a half.
America in 1854
The dispersion of the old parties was one thing, but the organization of their fragments into a new one on a just basis was quite a different thing.
-George W. Julian
The Republican Party came into being in a United States that was still an agricultural and rural nation. Census takers counted 23 million people in 1850; the figure rose to 26 million four years later. There were thirty-one states, with California on the West Coast as the most recent addition. The bulk of the population lived east of the Mississippi River, and most Americans still made their living off the land through farming or raising livestock. Industrialization and urbanization had made beginnings in the North, and these forces accelerated during the 1850s. In Lincoln's Illinois, for example, the 110 miles of railroad track in the early 1850s expanded to nearly 2,900 miles by the end of the decade.
Economic times were good. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 and an influx of British investment into the United States fueled a robust economic expansion. Railroad building surged as money poured into the new industry. With immigration climbing as well, the country had a growing, hardworking labor force in the North. So dramatic was this rise in prosperity that some commentators predicted an end to the partisan issues that had shaped national politics for two decades: the wisdom of having a national bank, the merits of a protective tariff, and the constitutionality of internal improvements such as canals, wagon roads, and railroads. As a Maryland capitalist wrote about the Democrats and the Whigs that had battled since the 1830s, "The great dividing lines between the two old parties are fast melting away-and such changes are taking place in the world, that, issues formerly momentous are now of comparatively trifling importance."
Yet Americans knew that beneath the surface the United States was a troubled land. The tide of immigration in the 1850s exacerbated social tensions. In 1853, 369,000 people arrived from overseas. Almost half were newcomers from Ireland; another 141,000 were of German origin. Immigration peaked in 1854 with 427,000 individuals entering the country. The Irish, because of their Roman Catholic faith, and many of the Germans, also Catholics, aroused fears among native-born Protestants who remembered the Reformation, disapproved of the elaborate rituals, and worried about the fealty of devout Catholics to the papacy. These new Americans usually aligned themselves with the Democrats, who were seen as more culturally tolerant than their major rivals, the Whigs.
In the 1850s, religious beliefs and national origin often shaped voting decisions as much as economic class and social status. These ethnocultural pressures showed themselves in the reaction against the tide of immigrants. So large had been the arrival of newcomers and so powerful had been their impact on local and state politics in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, for example, that native voters reacted against the immigrant presence with laws to mandate the teaching of English in public schools, the closing of saloons on Sundays, and the prohibition of alcohol. The vehicle for these antiforeign impulses became a new political party that emphasized secrecy in its opposition to both immigrant and Catholic influence. When asked about their organization, members were told to say, "I know nothing," a phrase that gave the movement its name. Know-Nothings, or the Native Americans, as they were sometimes called, picked up followers during the first half of the 1850s at a rate that stunned politicians. "At the bottom of all this," remarked a Pennsylvania Democrat, "is a deep-seated religious question-prejudice if you please, which nothing can withstand." Many public figures hoped or feared that the Know-Nothings might replace the embattled Whigs as the primary alternative to the Democrats.
The Peculiar Institution
Commerce and political power, as well as military strength, can never permanently reside, on this continent, in a community where slavery exists.
-William H. Seward
Even more troubling to many people in the North was the presence of human slavery in the South. There were 3.2 million men, women, and children in bondage in the South in 1850, and the "peculiar institution," as the South referred to slavery, dominated every aspect of life in the fifteen slave states that stretched across the South from Maryland and Delaware to Texas. Law, custom, and the Constitution meant that slavery also wove its way through American government and daily life. Northerners understood that by law they must help return fugitive slaves to their owners in the South and that slavery could not be eliminated without changing the Constitution. Though the issue had quieted since the approval of the Compromise of 1850, feelings remained volatile. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, became an instant best-seller in 1852 in the North for its depiction of the cruelties of slavery and their impact on a mother and her family.
The South saw slavery not as a moral burden on the nation or an evil to be expunged, but more and more as a positive good for both master and slave. The southern states, said a Texas editor in 1861, "have for centuries fostered the institution of slavery, which has resulted in the Christianizing of that portion of the African race and in making them useful members of society, in restraining them in the only position that is congenial to their natures and for which they are fitted intellectually and morally." As a result, many leading southerners believed that they should have the right to take their human property wherever they wished. Efforts to restrict slavery or limit its expansion, said many southerners, would justify secession from the Union.
The North was more divided. Slavery had receded from the region by 1853, but northerners did not have a coherent view of the institution's future. Radical abolitionists, a definite minority, opposed slavery on moral grounds. Others disliked slavery because its spread might bring blacks into the North and West as competitive cheap labor. In 1848, northern opponents of slavery established a Free-Soil Party that sought to block the spread of slavery in the West. Still others, driven by racist impulses, wanted African Americans to stay in the South or be returned to Africa. Whatever their attitudes toward slavery, residents of the North often resented the South's political power and regarded the land below the Mason-Dixon line as backward, out of step with progressive currents of the nineteenth century. An uneasy sectional peace, based on the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850, existed as 1854 began.
These two historic sectional bargains defined the way in which Americans viewed the politics of slavery as the 1850s began. In 1820, Congress had decided, after heated debates, to ...
