- [Voiceover] Hey, Kim!
- [Voiceover] Hi, David!
- [Voiceover] So, with the Republican National Convention
coming up in just a couple of weeks as we're recording this,
you thought it would be like a really good idea
to sit down and examine the history of the Republican Party.
So what's, what's going on in the country in 1854
that leads to this party forming?
- [Voiceover] Well, there're growing discussions
over slavery,
and why the slavery should expand to the West.
Now, all throughout the 19th century
the citizens of the United States had been
kind of compromising on the issue of slavery.
First, they had a line between North and South,
said only slave states could be below this line.
Now the Kansas-Nebraska Act overturns that compromise.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which says that the citizens
of a territory when applying for statehood
can themselves decide whether or not that state
should have slavery.
- [Voiceover] So, even though Kansas and Nebraska
are north of this parallel in Missouri
above which slavery couldn't exist,
this new law kind of overturns that, that agreement?
- [Voiceover] Exactly.
So a number of US citizens, who are anti-slavery,
which means that they don't want slavery
to spread into western territories,
mainly because they want those territories
free from white farmers
to not have to compete with wealthy slaveholders
who have free labor to farm and ship their goods
and sell their crops.
- [Voiceover] What about people that hate slavery
and think it's immoral and want to abolish it?
- [Voiceover] Those people are called abolitionists.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, that's a convenient name.
- [Voiceover] Yes.
And the abolitionists, really before the 1850s
they were kind of considered the lunatic fringe,
only those sorts of people would imagine
that you would want to end slavery right now everywhere
that exists in the United States.
So, they don't want to just not have slavery
out in the West,
they want slavery to be ended where it exists
already in the South. - [Voiceover] Right.
- [Voiceover] So, those who believed in abolition,
those who believed in anti-slavery
went to a new party, the Republican Party.
- [Voiceover] So even within the Republican Party
abolitionism was still on the fringe
of the party plank?
- [Voiceover] Yeah, I would say so.
So, the new Republican Party which really comes out
to an extremely strong start,
they run their first candidate in 1856,
he gets second place in national election,
which is amazing. - [Voiceover] Not bad.
- [Voiceover] But their second candidate for President
is Abraham Lincoln.
And Lincoln himself is actually kind of considered
a moderate, because he is anti-slavery,
he is not an abolitionist.
But nonetheless, the South perceives Lincoln
to be an abolitionist and white Southerners revolt
and start the Civil War.
- [Voiceover] So, because he is perceived
as an abolitionist, because he is a Republican,
that's why South Carolina secedes?
- [Voiceover] Exactly.
So, the Civil War ensues.
This is a four year long battle.
620,000 Americans die.
And at the end of the day, the North,
the United States of America led by the Republican Party
is victorious.
- [Voiceover] So the victory of the United States
in the Civil War kind of assures
dominion of the Republican Party for a generation.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, I would say even more than that.
So, for the rest of the 19th century
and really into the early 20th century
the Republican Party is the stronger political party
in the United States.
- [Voiceover] So, from the end of the Civil War,
from 1865, until about when would you say?
- [Voiceover] I would say the Great Depression.
- [Voiceover] So, it's an almost unbroken string
of republican presidencies.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, there are only three
Democratic presidents in this time period.
So it's 72 years of pretty much uninterrupted
Republican rule.
And the Republican Party is the party of anti-slavery.
During the Civil War they were the party
of the emancipation proclamation under Lincoln.
So, it's during their rule that the 13th Amendment,
abolishing slavery, is passed.
The 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal citizenship
to African Americans, is passed.
And the 15th Amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote
for African Americans, is passed.
- [Voiceover] So in the period
immediately following the Civil War called Reconstruction,
when we see the election of some of the first
African American senators and representatives
to the Congress.
- [Voiceover] Exactly.
So, during this time period quite a few African American men
were elected to US Congress, and many more served
in appointed roles, like postmaster.
- [Voiceover] So this is when we get the election
of Senator Hiram Revels from Mississippi.
- [Voiceover] Exactly.
So Hiram Revels was one of the first two
African American senators.
So after the Civil War the Republican Party was really
kind of this party of the Gilded Age.
They believed in modernizing the infrastructure
of the United States.
They built lots of railroads.
They enacted policies
that would protect American business.
And it's really in this early period
of the turn of the century that the Republican Party
becomes associated with protections of business there.
- [Voiceover] Is that what the elephant's about?
- [Voiceover] Kind of, yes.
So, the elephant was popularized
in an 1870 cartoon by Thomas Nast.
- [Voiceover] Oh, the same guy that gave us
Santa Claus, right?
- [Voiceover] Yes.
And Nast depicted the Republican Party as an elephant
because it was a party of strength,
a really big consequential party.
- [Voiceover] That's so fascinating to have gone
from this, like, insurgency party to this,
like, to being perceived as the elephant
of electoral politics in 30 years.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, it's amazing.
Unfortunately, it kinda all comes crashing down
with the Great Depression.
- [Voiceover] Sure.
- [Voiceover] So, the pro-business policies,
the lack of regulation in the 1920s
leads to the stock market crash of 1929.
And it was a Republican president, Herbert Hoover,
who was in the presidency at the time of the crash.
And so, in 1932, Democrat Franklin Roosevelt
is elected president.
And the following 40 years, more or less,
are going to be the time of Democratic ascendancy.
But, in the meantime, there is one notable
Republican president.
- [Voiceover] Ike for President, Ike for President.
- [Voiceover] I like Ike, you like Ike,
Everybody likes Ike.
- [Voiceover] For President.
- [Voiceover] (laughs) So, we were quoting
one of Ike's campaign commercials.
- [Voiceover] Who is Ike, Kim?
- [Voiceover] Ike was General Dwight Eisenhower
who was a World War II hero.
He was so popular he would have been elected
had his...
- [Voiceover] Could have been from the Martian party, right?
- [Voiceover] Yes (laughs).
- [Voiceover] Like any party expect the Communist Party
would have propelled Eisenhower to the presidency.
- [Voiceover] Yes. Exactly.
And you're right that one of the, you know, key themes
of this time period was anti-Communism,
and both Republicans and Democrats
had an anti-Communist bent.
But Eisenhower was elected in 1952,
and he was really the first president
to use commercial spots to get elected.
He had these cute little jingles
that were very memorable.
- [Voiceover] So catchy.
- [Voiceover] And he really used the medium
of television well.
So he's kind of the father of TV ads.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, it's interesting,
because I think we think of Kennedy
as being the first television president.
But I would, I think we could both make the claim
that it's, it's really Eisenhower.
- [Voiceover] That is a great point.
So, Eisenhower is kind of a Republican moment
in a much larger Democratic era.
- [Voiceover] Okay.
- [Voiceover] And this is the era
when the Civil Rights Movement happens.
This is the era of the Great Society programs,
which were Lyndon Johnson's programs
to try to attack poverty, and New Deal programs.
So this is really the birth of the welfare state.
So in this time period the Republicans begin
to experience a demographic shift.
So first, they had been the party that was most known
for representing African Americans,
because they were the party of Lincoln.
But during the New Deal,
when most people really needed economic help,
the African American constituency
moved over to the Democrats.
They actually had a campaign saying to African Americans
"turn your picture of Abraham Lincoln to the wall"
so that he can't see you changed parties.
But this is really the time period
when the Democratic Party
begins to pick up the votes of African Americans.
And so, over the course of the 1930s through the 1960s,
as the Democratic Party begins to advocate
bigger and bigger government, a larger welfare state,
and more and more social progress,
the Republicans develop a conservative response to that.
And in the 1970s and 1980s,
in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement,
many whites in the South felt that the social chaos
of the Civil Rights Movement had gone too far.
And so, they left the Democratic Party,
which had been traditionally a party in the South,
and joined the Republican Party,
which was presenting a more conservative face
towards social change.
And so, in the 1980s this new conservative movement
really came together in the person of Ronald Reagan.
And Ronald Reagan brought together
a number of constituencies.
He brought together business interests,
who wanted less government regulation of business.
He also brought together Christian evangelicals,
who wanted a more conservative
social value program in government.
And he also brought together anti-Communists,
who felt that the Democratic presidents
had been too soft on Communism during their tenure.
- [Voiceover] So this is interesting to me,
because it seems to be around the era of Reagan
that we started to see the beginnings
of ideological polarization within the parties.
- [Voiceover] I would say that's kind of been around
since the beginning, more or less.
You know, the two original political parties
in the United States,
the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists,
or the Democratic-Republicans.
This is the party led by Thomas Jefferson
versus the party led by Alexander Hamilton.
You know, they had the same idea of the sort
of large central government
versus the small central government.
In many ways we're still debating the same issues
that Hamilton and Jefferson were debating in 1800.
- [Voiceover] So, okay, so we're seeing
this conservative coalition
coalesce around the election of Reagan,
and his election was like a sweep, right?
- [Voiceover] Yes.
Yeah, he deregulates a lot of industries.
He defends conservative social family values,
like prayer in school, for example.
And he takes a very hard line against Communism.
And George W. Bush,
who was the most recent Republican president,
had a fairly similar agenda,
although less emphasis on anti-Communism
and instead an emphasis on anti-terrorism.
- [Voiceover] So we're seeing this shift over last 150 years
of party priorities for the Republicans
as the country changes and as its demographics change.
- [Voiceover] And we'll find out
how the story of the Republican Party continues
in this election.