The Republican Party

This is another piece on how we got here.

As some people joke, we have two wings in this bird. So we also need to explore the Grand Old Party, the GOP for short. The name betrays its origins in the mid-19th century. It came to be from former Whig politicians who realized the know-nothing party could not hack it any longer against Democrats, known initially as Democrat-Republicans. They were the dream, the nightmare, of Thomas Jefferson. However, that iteration only survived until the 1820s when Martin Van Buren founded the current entity

This history matters because until the rise of the GOP under Abraham Lincoln, American parties were more fluid. And parties came and went. Republicans were formed as a true opposition party to Democrats and slavery. The latter was on moral grounds. Abraham Lincoln was not a fan of keeping former slaves in the United States after the war. The Liberia project was part of this plan. And yes, Liberia was supposed to be an American colony in Africa for freed slaves. As they say, the man who freed the slaves had a complicated history. Andrew Johnson did not continue this project. He believed reconstruction might not be necessary, and the occupation of the South was brutal.

This was also when the Klan first emerged in the South. It was also a time when blacks were elected to offices ranging from city hall to Congress. All this…