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GUEST EDITORIAL
SHEDDING LINCOLN’S MANTLE
American politicians are not noted for
their historical self-consciousness. But the
Republican delegates now gathering in
Philadelphia would do well to devote some
thought to their party’s history. The first
Republican nominating convention, in 1856,
also took place in the City of Brotherly Love.
But that party was a far different institution
from its counterpart today.
A coalition of Democrats. Whigs and abo
litionists who had united to oppose the
expansion of slavery,
the Republican Party
was defeated in 1856,
but four years later
elected Abraham
Lincoln to the White
House. “Free labor"
was the new party’s
rallying cry, by
which Republicans
meant labor
unshackled by
slavery or aristo
cratic privilege and
able to achieve eco
nomic independence
through owning a
small farm or artisan
shop. The opportuni
ties enjoyed by ordi
nary workers,
Republicans insisted, distinguished the “free
society” of the North from the slave South.
There were blind spots in the party’s out
look, most notably concerning Catholic
immigrants. In the 1850s and for many years
thereafter, part of the Republican base lay
among nativists hostile to immigration. But
into the 20th Century, most advocates of
social change, including blacks, feminists
and Progressive-era reformers, moved in the
party’s orbit.
The early Republican Party was a strictly
Northern institution. It established a
Southern presence only in the wake of Unior
victory in the Civil War. That war, and the
Reconstruction era that follow'ed, witnessed
the party’s greatest accomplishments: eman
cipation of the slaves, passage of the first
national civil rights
legislation, adoption
of the Fourteenth
Amendment—which
became the main
constitutional safe
guard of individual
rights—and granting
black men the right
to vote in an effort to
create a functioning
interracial democ
racy in the South.
The war that
destroyed slavery
elevated equality
before the law for all
Americans, secured by a newly-empowered
national government, to a central place in
Republican ideology.
Over time, as Republican leaders increas
ingly came under the sway of Northern rail
road men and industrialists, the Republican
Party would abandon its commitment to the
rights of African-Americans, acquiescing in
the overthrow of Reconstruction and the
impcsition of segregation. When the South
disfranchised its black voters around the
turn of the century, Republicans once again
found themselves a Northern party, while
the South remained solidly Democratic for
more than half a century. As Republicans
became more and more associated with the
interests of Northern business, free labor
metamorphosed into “freedom of con
tract”—the belief that what defined a
worker’s liberty was the ability to sell one’s
labor in the economic marketplace without
interference or regulation by government.
Today’s Republicans are far diiferent from
their forebears. The party of free labor is
deeply hostile to unions and devoted to cor
porate interests. The party that secured the
Union and viewed the federal government, in
the words of Massachusetts Senator Charles
Sumnei, as “the custodian of freedom,” has
adopted the Old
South’s belief in state
sovereignty. The
party on which gen
erations of feminists
pinned their hopes
now harbors the
most virulent oppo
nents of a woman’s
right to control her
own person. The
party that in its 1856
platform condemned
as international brig
andage the Ostend
Manifesto, which
called for the United
States to “wrest”
Cuba from Spain,
now appears to view
Cuba as by rights a
wholly-owned subsidiary of the United
States.
Most striking, the party of emancipation
and Reconstruction has become deeply hos
tile to civil rights enforcement, affirmative
action and indeed, any measures that seek
to redress the enduring consequences of
slav ery and segregation. Republicans.
George W. Bush acknowledged in his recent
speech before the NAACP. have “not always
carried the mantle of Lincoln.” This was
quite an understatement. Ever since Barry
Goldwater carried five states of the Deep
South, proving that Republicans could
rebuild their Southern wing by appealing to
white resentment over civil rights gains.
Republicans have adhered to a Southern
strategy that has turned most of the levers
of oow r er w'ithin the
party over to the
white South and the
conservative
extended South,
which stretches into
the Southwest and
Southern California.
In 1996,
Republicans even
advocated the repeal
of one of the party’s
crowning achieve
ments, the section of
the Fourteenth
Amendment that
bestows citizenship
on all persons born in the United States.
Their platform called for denying citizenship
to the children of persons who entered the
United States illegally or “are not long-term
residents.” At this writing, it is not clear
whether this example of uncompassionate
conservatism w'ill be retained in this year’s
platfoim. Here Republicans were true to
their history or at least to its nativist ele
ment. Unfortunately, today’s Republicans
have abandoned the best parts of their her
itage while retaining the worst.
Eric Foner
Eric Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor
of History at Columbia University. This column
is reprinted from The Nation with permission
The party on which
generations of femi
nists pinned their
hopes now harbors the
most virulent oppo- .
nents of a woman's
right to control her
own person.
Unfortunately, today's
Republicans have
abandoned the best
parts of their heritage
while retaining the
---worst.
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AUGUST 2, 2000 FLAGPOLE