Republican Party the Contemporary Societies,

¶ … Republican Party

The contemporary societies, and the Americans are not different, have to face the challenge of the crisis of representation in terms of political life. The political parties tend to become indistinct and undifferentiated as far as the ideological aspects are concerned; once the civil society was born, the voice of the people is rather heard through this channels than through political ones, raising the question of the real need for the existence of political parties. The political participation is dropping drastically in the Western countries and the local problems are necessarily interconnected with the global ones, requiring a unitary and coherent political perspective that can comprise all the aspects of interest.

In a way, the eighteenth and nineteenth century American states were in a similar position - the society was just crossing the bridge between being a colony and independence, between mainly agrarian type of production and industrialization, between pre-modern values and modernity. The political life of the times was intense and some parties just passed as comets while others are still functioning - and this is the case of the Republican party.

The eighteenth century American political life started with the opportunity to contest seats in the colonial assembly, on the background formed by the general belief that this bodies are supposed to contribute to the well-fare of the community, in the general interest of the people. The local representatives of towns and counties started to participate into the legislative bodies and to use all possible political tools and means in order to best serve their constituents' interest. "Factions and parties thus arose within the assemblies as a response to the opportunity to govern."

After the country became independent from the British rule and the colonial government changed into a "local" one, the political parties started to gain more and more importance in the political life, as the civic and political culture of the American people was more and more divided by the problem of slavery. Hence, to approach them chronologically, the initial period after independence was dominated by the early Republican and Federalist parties, mainly formed as a consequence of the need for an organized political life. Centred around the birth and the formation of the young republic, they were spread nationwide and had a sound organizational structure for that time. They had a strong ideological core, because of the specific circumstances of their formation (the creation of a national political arena and of a national government) and thanks to the strong opinionated leaders, who were trying to use the power of governing to shape the character of the state.

The political participation was gradually intensifying and, as a consequence, the parties started to have a more popular orientation and, also, to become thoroughly organized at all levels. In the same time, if the core elements of the state have been defined already and, generally, there were no important contradictions about the national policy, the focus was switching towards moral and social issues. Here, we arrive in the "Jacksonian" era of modernization of the political system of parties, "a process characterized by an expanding market, the growing pluralism of interests and the triumph of egalitarian ideas in the political sphere"

Parties as Whigs and Democrats dominated the political culture of the mid-nineteenth century, accompanied and challenged by numerous third parties, appeared and flourishing exactly because of the controversial issue of slavery. The most successful from this array were the Liberty party, founded in 1839; the Free Soil party, formed in 1848; and the Republican party, established in 1854, all having mainly an abolitionist perspective. The party system which arose after the election of Andrew Jackson was a competitive system, each party finding its own solutions to the social issues under debate and attracting various loyalties from diverse groups. The orientation towards the mass-politics meant, in terms of ideological construction, a clear doctrine elaborated by each party and presented to the public opinion, in order to gain support.

In the 1850's, the Jacksocian party system went through radical changes, due to a multitude of factors - the immigration issue, the problem of slavery/abolitionism, the electoral participation rate drop and the ethnocultural voting preferences and so on. Ethnic and religious identifications are powerful determinants of political choice and the way a specific party was perceiving and describing a certain minority group would get that group closer or push it further and, on the other hand, would influence the choice of other groups, which might or might not agree with a particular political statement/position. There have been some attempts to disconnect the problem of slavery and the failure of the Whigs in the 1852 elections, switching the focus of explanation toward the issues of nativism and of temperance. It is unquestionable that the two issues mentioned above were of great importance in the voting decision and in the general political debate; nonetheless, they cannot be held responsible by themselves for the change that the Jacksonian party system went through, mainly because of the problem of slavery.

After 1854 and the crisis brought by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the newly-born Republican party had to face the successful ascension of the nativist American party (Know-Nothing). The initial form of the debate over the Act allowed the Know-Nothing party to attract antislavery northerners to its ranks, but their position was later shattered and their importance was decreasing as the slavery conflict was progressively unfolding. The Republican party took advantage the most of the decline of the Know-Nothings, also taking political elements from the liberal bourgeois republicanism of the Whig party's left wing. Before the Whig party disappeared from the political life, it was split in a liberal and a conservative faction, which were sharing some views such as strong belief in the superiority of free labor capitalism, the value of the federal union, and the importance of cultural homogeneity in a republican society. Whig liberals differed from Whig conservatives in two principal, pivotal, and related respects -- a determination to reconcile large-scale immigration with broad-based political democracy and an intention to accelerate slavery's extinction by means of sectionally divisive political action."

The Republicans carried on this political heritage and they managed to win the electoral challenge after 1856, when the results of the elections were a great success for them, in spite of the fact that the elections were lost (but, given these results, the Republican party was now becoming the true, and long-lasting one might add, competitor of the Democrats). Several elements can be held responsible for this evolution, among which one can include the shrewd leadership of the Republican Party, and, more important, the ideological position taken by the party about the issue of slavery. Given that the issue of nativism and of slavery are not necessarily connected, one not implying the other, the Know-Nothings left some unsatisfied voters - those having a strong nativist position, but being, in the same time, against slavery. Embracing the anti-slavery position and principles brought a lot of nativist voters into the Republican yard, and moved them away from the Know-Nothings, insuring, in the end, the electoral victory from 1860.

It is worth to be pointed out that, after Republicans' first electoral success, he country entered into a troubled period of its history, namely the Civil War. In a way, one can say that the ideology of free soil and free labor scared the Southern states and made them become secessionist, on one hand, while, on the other, gathered the Northern states into an alliance against "the slave power." Here, an important role was also played by the level of industrialization, which was one of the gaps between the North and the South, gap deepened by the perspective over labor and over the economic development path.

The North and South division, focused on and generated by the different approaches to slavery, economic differences in terms of labour system and the usage of free labour as well as the industrialization level, constituted an important issue for the entire political life of the Americans (not to mention that the position towards abolitionism and the status of slaves meant not only and exercise of idealism, but also counting some extra votes, for some parties). Although some historians try to argue that the support of the Republicans for the former slaves was built on an idealistic commitment, their inability to reach the Southern branches of their own party, which led to a concentration of the party in the Northern states - "the Republican Southern strategy turned out to be virtually no strategy at all" - also shows the little importance that Republicans were giving to the votes of the freedmen in the south. If, initially, they granted some help to the Southern offices in order to gain more votes and to gain a certain influence among the white Whigs and the conditional Unionists, the post-Civil war strategy "moderate" development, shaped in such a manner so not to alienate Northern white voters, clearly shows the focus on the Northern states.

So far, I have tried to made a short historical review of the first years of the existence of the Republican party, identifying a few ideological main trends that defined the activity and the platform of the party. Namely, I have talked about the anti-slavery position (proved, among others, by the importance given to the Northern branches), somehow moderate in order to keep the votes of the nativist Americans, who used to sympathize with Know-Nothings factions but were rather liberal in terms of usage of slave work. The previous supporters of the Know-Nothings moved in a large amount towards the Republicans rather then to the Democrats, because the former managed to emphasize both sectionalism and nativism.

Generally, the political debate seemed to be focused rather on social problems than on major political controversies. Of course, any social issue is a bearer of potential political decision, and the threats the local population was facing had to be solved through political means. Therefore, the ideological component of a political organization had to cover all levels, maintaining in the same time a unitary approach, thing that was quite challenging in certain moments. The Republican party managed to combine the protection of the interests of locals faced with massive immigration waves with a liberal approach. All in all, in this political web of definitions and positions, the Republican party was trying to keep the core of moral protestant values; all the measures suggested and promoted, all the political ideals were built around the ideal of a moral republic - and this conceptual frame shaped the attitude towards slave owners, towards the working class problems and its protection, towards the economic development suggested path etc.

The Republicans also found a source of inspiration (as well as a certain number of votes) in the Whigs party, taking the liberal bourgeois principles from this party. Once the Whigs' organization disintegrated, the liberal voters switched to the Republicans, given the ideological similarities. Maintaining the support for nativism and an Anti-Catholic approach, borrowed from the Know-Nothings, the Republicans incorporated doctrinaire elements from the Whigs, mainly by shaping and keeping a liberal and abolitionist conceptual frame.

The connection between the Republicans and the Whigs can be seen also from the "average voter/supporter" portrait - and there are studies showing that evangelical denominations, such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Baptists were supporting the Whig and the republican parties, while anti-evangelical groups - Catholic Irish, Lutheran Germans and Methodists were oriented towards the Democrats. The Whig electorate from the first pool of voters went to the Republicans, once the Whigs disappeared, following the entrepreneurial and moral values promoted by the "Puritan" Republicans. Given the specificities of the times and the massive changes that the American society was going through, all the parties had to come up with personalized solutions to the inherent developmental problems. The process of industrialization and the general economic development of a society requires a set of solutions and decisions meant to facilitate the process. But let us not forget that it also causes social earthquakes and a redefinition of the social structure, felt at all levels of the society and generating issues that also require political solutions.