Twenty-four Years Of Republicanism
1860 to 1884

Abraham Lincoln, the Party’s first President, began his involvement by attending the May, 1856 convention in Bloomington, Illinois, which appointed delegates to the national convention in Philadelphia. He helped write the platform and emphasized the Republican Party’s strong opposition to slavery.

Lincoln was proposed for the Vice-Presidency at the national convention in June, but Senator William L. Dayton of New Jersey won the nomination. Senator John C. Fremont, a former Army officer and explorer, was the presidential nominee. The Republican Party ran for the Presidency with the slogan: “Free Speech, Free Press, Free Men, Free Labor, Free Territory, Fremont.”

The platform opposed the extension of slavery but not abolition where it was already established, advocated the admission of Kansas as a free state, and proposed federal aid for a railroad to the Pacific as well as appropriations for rivers and harbors. Fremont lost to James Buchanan but he did receive 114 electoral votes.

Lincoln continued to dominate the Republican scene. National attention was focused on him during his debates with Stephen A. Douglas, author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, during their campaign for U.S. Senator from Illinois. Lincoln lost the Senate seat but won his Party’s nomination for President in 1860 at the national convention in Chicago. He defeated his former adversary, Douglas, and became the Nation’s first Republican President.

As President, Lincoln was faced with the Civil War and his greatest achievement was the preservation of the Union. Peace time legislation was devoted to fulfilling the promises of the Party platform. The Department of Agriculture and Bureau of Internal Revenue were established along with a national banking system. Farming and Free Soil interests were served by the Homestead Act which made available public land for settlement and the Morrill Act which donated land for agricultural and mechanical arts colleges.

Lincoln ran for President again in 1864 under the auspices of the Republican-oriented Union National Convention, a coalition intending to attract northern Democrats. Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat and staunch supporter of the Union, was his running mate and they defeated regular Democrat George B. McClellan.

Before his assassination, Lincoln was able to submit to the States the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery. Lincoln’s death brought Andrew Johnson to the Presidency and began a period of discontent. Congressional Republicans were suspicious of Johnson’s Democrat background and he became associated with extremists and radicals who demanded harsher treatment of the South. A single vote in the Senate acquitted him from impeachment in 1868 after his removal of Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War.

Despite the political infighting, the Johnson Administration did manage to submit to the states the Fourteenth Amendment protecting Negro rights and the Fifteenth which stated the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” His Secretary of State, William H. Seward, purchased Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 in gold which at that time brought criticism and derisive epitaphs such as “Seward’s Folly” or “Seward’s Icebox.”

In 1868, The Republican Party began the precedent of nominating Civil War heroes for the Presidency. General Ulysses S. Grant was the first and was nominated unanimously on the first ballot.  His nomination was particularly dramatic. A full length picture of the General was lowered at the rear of the platform while a white dove flew around the hall. He responded by accepting with the famous “let us have peace” speech.

Grant and the Republicans who opposed “greenbackism,” paper money without gold backing, defeated Democrat Horatio Seymour.

Although the Grant Administration is remembered for its patronage and graft scandals, it was responsible for the Treaty of Washington, which settled disputes with Great Britain, with England paying a $15,000,000 indemnity to the United States, and for the establishment of the Department of Justice and the Weather Bureau.

In 1872, a group of liberal Republicans revolted and nominated newspaper editor Horace Greeley who campaigned on the slogan “Turn the rascals out,” referring to Grant’s business associates. The Democrats supported Greeley, but Grant was re-elected.

Grant’s second term was characterized by more scandals which reached into his cabinet, but despite the panic of 1873, he stuck to his sound money ideas vetoing a proposal to issue additional greenbacks.

Because of the controversies of the Grant Administration, the Republicans lost control of the House in 1874 for the first time since the outbreak of the Civil War.

Grant was eliminated for consideration as the Party’s nominee in 1876 not only because of the scandals but also because the Republicans had gone on record as opposing a third term. Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, a Civil War general and a sound money advocate, was nominated and ran against Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Although Tilden had a popular majority, the election was given to Hayes who was declared by a special vote-counting commission to have won by one electoral vote. Hayes won support by promising to end Reconstruction which was again dividing the Nation. Afterwards the Democrats controlled the House and the GOP had the Senate seats.

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