History of the Republican Party
During the second half of the nineteenth century, the Republican Party established itself as one of the nation's two major political organizations. Advocating a strong national government as the means to promote economic growth, the Republicans became the driving force in American politics and set the agenda for several generations. By 1900 they had achieved a clear electoral supremacy over their Democratic rivals and were the majority party of the United States.
Although the Republican Party grew out of the agitation against slavery during the 1850s, its founders were not exclusively northern enemies of human bondage. The main component of the new Republican coalition consisted of former members of the Whig Party, who wanted to meld the economic doctrines of that organization with antislavery sentiment. Other elements included disaffected Democrats put off by the power of southerners in their party and exponents of moral reforms such as the prohibition of liquor.
The precipitating cause of the formation of the Republican Party was the debate over the Kansas- Nebraska Act in 1854. By reviving the slavery question, this act galvanized northerners to look for a party that could express their outrage and offer a means to pursue their antislavery agenda. Meetings were held to create a new political organization that embodied northern unhappiness. The first gathering of this kind took place in March 1854 at Ripon, Wisconsin; subsequent meetings led to the Republican Party's official formation.
Early Years of Republican Development
The Republican Party grew rapidly. In 1856 the Republicans fielded a presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, on an antislavery platform. Although Fré mont lost, he ran well in the North, where he carried a majority of the region's electoral votes. During the remainder of the decade, the Republicans eclipsed the Know-Nothing Party and its nativist support. By 1860 Republicans offered the most effective means for northerners to express their opposition to the expansion of slavery.
In that year Abraham Lincoln campaigned for the presidency on the theme that the nation should be placed on a course leading to the extinction of slavery. He won the election even though he received no electoral votes from the South. His substantial electoral majorities in the North enabled him to outdistance his three rivals. The Civil War that followed stamped the Republicans as the party that preserved the Union against treason and rebellion. In the aftermath of the war, Republicans regarded Democrats as a party that had flirted with secession and lost its political legitimacy.
In the course of the Civil War, the Republican Party became identified as well with the causes of emancipation and of giving former slaves a chance to participate in the political and economic life of the nation. The Emancipation Proclamation was the most notable example of this wartime policy.
In the economic sphere, the Republicans used their majorities in Congress to enact the Morrill Tariff (1861), federal assistance to state colleges through the Morrill Act (1862), and the National Banking Act of 1863. These accomplishments further strengthened the image of the Republicans as the party of energy and change.
The Challenge of Reconstruction
Following the war and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party sought to implement a Reconstruction policy for the defeated South that would assist the newly freed slaves and establish a Republican political base in the region. The major achievements of the Republicans in this regard were the three postwar amendments to the Constitution: the Thirteenth, which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth, which guaranteed blacks federal and state citizenship and equal protection under the law; and the Fifteenth, which ruled out race or color as a barrier to voting.
While successful in enacting these broad, general concepts into fundamental law, the Republicans encountered difficulty in transforming the South as they had envisioned. White resistance in the region seriously obstructed the Republican effort. In a blatantly partisan attempt to remove an obstacle to Reconstruction, the Republicans in Congress even went so far as to impeach President Andrew Johnson in 1868, but that effort proved unsuccessful. By the time Ulysses S. Grant was elected president in 1868, the momentum for Reconstruction had slowed.
The Grant presidency was a difficult time for the Republicans. Grant was not an effective executive, and the charges of corruption that swirled around his administration eroded the Party's moral standing. The president sought to maintain Republican regimes in southern states favorable to Reconstruction, but that proved increasingly difficult to do. By the mid-1870s the white South had returned to the Democratic fold. The Republicans had pockets of electoral strength in the region, but southern electoral votes were once again in the Democratic column.
Party divisions and economic problems plagued the Republicans in the 1870s. Grant faced a revolt from a dissident branch of the party, the Liberal Republicans, in 1872. This faction wanted easier treatment of the South, a lower tariff, and civil service reform. It joined the Democrats in support of the presidential candidate Horace Greeley in the 1872 election. Grant easily defeated Greeley in what would be the last decisive presidential election for a generation.
During Grant's second term, the Republican electoral position deteriorated. The economic depression that ensued from the panic of 1873 gave the Democrats a campaign issue that they used effectively in retaking the House of Representatives in 1874. Although the Republicans fought to repress the Ku Klux Klan in the South and achieved passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the party's commitment to justice in the South was waning. More and more Republicans urged the party to concentrate on economic issues as a way of becoming a majority party once again. The growing influence of business interests in Republican affairs accelerated this trend.
The presidential election of 1876 proved to be a turning point in Republican history. The leading candidate for the nomination was James G. Blaine of Maine, a former Speaker of the House. Charismatic and eloquent, Blaine had legions of admirers across the country. Ethical problems involving assistance he had rendered an Arkansas railroad, however, cast a shadow over his candidacy, and the party turned to a safer choice, Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden of New York.
The disputed election resulted in a settlement brokered by the Electoral Commission, in which a sectional compromise was achieved. Hayes was elected in return for a tacit promise by the Republicans to end Reconstruction in the South. Although many elements in the party remained loyal to the ideals of the Civil War, the focus of Republicanism was shifting to the promotion of economic growth through a sound currency and, most notably, the protective tariff. As a result, party leaders made rhetorical bows toward the issue of black rights, but their hearts were in the economic issues that attracted larger numbers of voters in the North.
Republicans in the Gilded Age
The two decades that followed the election of Hayes were difficult for the Republican Party. Factionalism, the legacy of corruption under Grant, and a revived Democratic Party meant that the Republicans had to fight hard to maintain their electoral place. The resulting struggle proved to be an unexpected asset as Republicans strove to maintain internal cohesion. A tradition emerged within the party that no individual was more important than the larger institution.
The Republicans also had the benefit of strong national leadership in these years. In addition to Blaine, the Republicans counted among them James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas B. Reed, and William McKinley. Such men found the positive programs of the Republicans attractive and profitable. They saw Republicanism as a springboard to national office. As a result, the party enabled younger politicians to build a following across the country.
The process of building a new national majority for the Republicans started slowly in the Hayes administration. The president maintained the prerogatives of his office against more patronage-minded party members such as Roscoe Conkling of New York. Hayes had less success strengthening the party in the South, where Democratic resistance to Republican inroads persisted. Democrats made gains in the congressional elections of 1878, as Republican infighting lingered and the effects of the depression of the 1870s continued. While Hayes was not a great president, he did recapture the moral authority that had been lost during the Grant years.
In the 1880 election the Republicans played down the southern question and turned their emphasis to the protective tariff under the leadership of Blaine and presidential candidate James A. Garfield. Garfield won the presidency by a close margin, and protectionism became a central tenet of Republican ideology for the next two decades.
The protective tariff enabled the Republicans to blend economic and emotional issues into an ideology that appealed to many in the North during the Gilded Age. Business leaders who faced competition from foreign economic interests responded to the protection that the tariff offered. The Republicans championed the tariff as beneficial to American workers, associating protectionism with prosperity and nationalism and accusing the Democrats of selling out to foreign interests. All Republicans, whatever their position on other issues, could rally behind the tariff as the embodiment of the Grand Old Party.
Garfield's assassination in 1881 once again disrupted the party's electoral momentum. The interim presidency of Chester Alan Arthur saw the unity of 1880 ebb away as the Republicans debated the civil service issue and tariff rates. The party suffered losses in the congressional elections of 1882, and economic conditions indicated that a Democratic victory was likely in the next presidential race.
The 1884 nomination went to Blaine, who campaigned against Democrat Grover Cleveland with energy and determination. In a year when the Democrats had the advantage, Blaine proved to be a formidable contender. A celebrated reference to the Democrats as the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" made by the Reverend S. D. Burchard supposedly cost him the crucial state of New York. The presidency went to Cleveland in a close race, but Blaine was recognized as having retarded the electoral slide of the Republicans and helping put the party in a position to regain the White House in 1888.
During the first Cleveland administration, the Republicans worked on their party organization and waited for their adversaries to falter. Their chance came when Cleveland made lowering the protective tariff the sole theme of his annual message in 1887, in effect challenging the Republicans to base their presidential campaign on that issue. It was an opportunity that Blaine and others were glad to exploit. The Republicans happily rallied to the cause of the tariff.
To lead their campaign, the party selected Benjamin Harrison, an Indiana protectionist. Harrison was an adroit campaigner who captivated crowds with his speeches endorsing the tariff. The Republicans were well funded, purposeful, and organized. The Democrats were divided about the tariff and poorly managed. Although Cleveland won the popular vote, thanks to Democratic dominance of the South, Harrison had a clear majority in the electorate vote. The Republicans also won control of both houses of Congress.
The Limits of Republican Activism
In the Fifty-first Congress, the Republicans endeavored to enact their program of economic nationalism behind the leadership of Speaker Thomas B. Reed of Maine. The record of the Republicans was impressive. In 1890 they passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and the protectionist McKinley Tariff. Only in the case of the unsuccessful federal elections bill to preserve voting rights in the South did the Republicans falter.
To their dismay, the Republicans found that the voters were not pleased with this record of legislative productivity. In the fall election of 1890 the party suffered serious reverses, and the Democrats took control of the House. Republican losses in the Midwest stemmed from opposition at the state and local levels to party activism on ethnocultural issues such as prohibition and Sunday closing laws. Republicans also experienced losses in usually friendly states in the Great Plains, where the new People's Party made inroads.
The party faced a difficult task in the 1892 presidential race. Harrison had not proved to be a popular president. He alienated various segments of the party and inspired little loyalty. But despite a brief boomlet for Blaine, Harrison was nominated once again. He lost decisively to Grover Cleveland in the fall, and the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. Some commentators suggested that the Republican Party was coming apart.
The onset of the panic of 1893 changed the political landscape. President Cleveland became identified with the economic hard times that characterized his four years in office. The Republicans' insistence on a protective tariff as the key to restoring prosperity resonated with northern and midwestern voters. In the congressional elections of 1894, the Republicans were on the offensive. Led by the governor of Ohio, William McKinley, they assailed the faltering Democrats and presented themselves as a more viable agent of change than the Populists.
Republicanism Triumphant
The outcome of the election was a decisive triumph for the Republicans. They gained 117 House seats and established a dominance in that body that lasted for sixteen years. The Republican platform of protectionism and cultural pluralism impressed the voters outside the South and Far West. The significance of the election went beyond its immediate results. The political balance that had existed since the 1870s gave way to a generation of Republican dominance. For the next thirty years, with the exception of Woodrow Wilson's two terms, the Republicans were the nation's majority party.
The presidential election of 1896 confirmed the results of the midterm election two years earlier. The contest brought to national prominence a political leader who would take the Republican Party into the twentieth century. William McKinley won the nomination on the first ballot. As the governor of Ohio, he had shown that he could carry a key midwestern state during economic hard times. His years in the House of Representatives gave him a strong base within the party. Known as the champion of the protective tariff, he was an inclusive figure who had the diplomatic abilities necessary to maintain party harmony. While McKinley gained from the financial and organizational skills of his friend Mark Hanna, an industrialist from Cleveland, the Republican success in 1896 can largely be attributed to his own political acumen.
In the general election, McKinley faced William Jennings Bryan, the candidate of the Democrats and the Populists. Bryan ran on a program of inflation to bolster the flagging economy. Although Bryan started strongly, the Republicans used their abundant campaign funds, drawn from corporate contributions, to distribute several hundred million pamphlets outlining McKinley's message of tariff protection and sound money. McKinley delivered speeches from his front porch in Canton to lead the Republican campaign. The result was the most decisive victory for a presidential candidate since 1872. McKinley won soundly in the electoral vote and had a 600,000-vote popular margin.
During his first administration, McKinley revived the authority and influence of the presidential office through adroit management of the press, frequent trips around the country, and effective courting of Congress. During the Spanish-American War of 1898, McKinley wielded the war power to govern the colonial empire acquired from Spain. He used the techniques of a strong presidency to secure ratification of the treaty with Spain and to fight the Philippine insurrection that followed American acquisition of those islands.
In 1900 McKinley ran against Bryan once again, with similar results. The president was reelected with wide margins in both the popular and electoral votes. With prosperity returned and an empire gained, the Republicans seemed to have their ascendancy in American politics well in hand. In the five decades of their existence they had achieved dominance in national affairs and had set the agenda for several generations of politicians.
Yet beneath the surface there were signs of trouble. At the end of the nineteenth century, the party's links to big business made it vulnerable as Americans debated the extent to which government should regulate an industrial society. Could a party that depended on corporate donors identify with the needs of ordinary Americans? The main ideological principle of the party, the protective tariff, came under fire from an increasingly consumer-conscious nation worried about inflation. In many midwestern states, factionalism stirred as talk of political and economic reform spread. An assassination attempt on 6 September 1901 led to the death of McKinley a week later and brought Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency. The transition from a Civil War veteran and traditional politician to the younger, charismatic, and more dynamic Roosevelt symbolized an important shift in focus for the Republicans. As they looked back on the nineteenth century, however, they had ample reason for pride in what they had accomplished in reshaping American politics and creating one of the two organizations that have defined the nation's politics since 1900.
Although the Republican Party grew out of the agitation against slavery during the 1850s, its founders were not exclusively northern enemies of human bondage. The main component of the new Republican coalition consisted of former members of the Whig Party, who wanted to meld the economic doctrines of that organization with antislavery sentiment. Other elements included disaffected Democrats put off by the power of southerners in their party and exponents of moral reforms such as the prohibition of liquor.
The precipitating cause of the formation of the Republican Party was the debate over the Kansas- Nebraska Act in 1854. By reviving the slavery question, this act galvanized northerners to look for a party that could express their outrage and offer a means to pursue their antislavery agenda. Meetings were held to create a new political organization that embodied northern unhappiness. The first gathering of this kind took place in March 1854 at Ripon, Wisconsin; subsequent meetings led to the Republican Party's official formation.
Early Years of Republican Development
The Republican Party grew rapidly. In 1856 the Republicans fielded a presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, on an antislavery platform. Although Fré mont lost, he ran well in the North, where he carried a majority of the region's electoral votes. During the remainder of the decade, the Republicans eclipsed the Know-Nothing Party and its nativist support. By 1860 Republicans offered the most effective means for northerners to express their opposition to the expansion of slavery.
In that year Abraham Lincoln campaigned for the presidency on the theme that the nation should be placed on a course leading to the extinction of slavery. He won the election even though he received no electoral votes from the South. His substantial electoral majorities in the North enabled him to outdistance his three rivals. The Civil War that followed stamped the Republicans as the party that preserved the Union against treason and rebellion. In the aftermath of the war, Republicans regarded Democrats as a party that had flirted with secession and lost its political legitimacy.
In the course of the Civil War, the Republican Party became identified as well with the causes of emancipation and of giving former slaves a chance to participate in the political and economic life of the nation. The Emancipation Proclamation was the most notable example of this wartime policy.
In the economic sphere, the Republicans used their majorities in Congress to enact the Morrill Tariff (1861), federal assistance to state colleges through the Morrill Act (1862), and the National Banking Act of 1863. These accomplishments further strengthened the image of the Republicans as the party of energy and change.
The Challenge of Reconstruction
Following the war and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican Party sought to implement a Reconstruction policy for the defeated South that would assist the newly freed slaves and establish a Republican political base in the region. The major achievements of the Republicans in this regard were the three postwar amendments to the Constitution: the Thirteenth, which abolished slavery; the Fourteenth, which guaranteed blacks federal and state citizenship and equal protection under the law; and the Fifteenth, which ruled out race or color as a barrier to voting.
While successful in enacting these broad, general concepts into fundamental law, the Republicans encountered difficulty in transforming the South as they had envisioned. White resistance in the region seriously obstructed the Republican effort. In a blatantly partisan attempt to remove an obstacle to Reconstruction, the Republicans in Congress even went so far as to impeach President Andrew Johnson in 1868, but that effort proved unsuccessful. By the time Ulysses S. Grant was elected president in 1868, the momentum for Reconstruction had slowed.
The Grant presidency was a difficult time for the Republicans. Grant was not an effective executive, and the charges of corruption that swirled around his administration eroded the Party's moral standing. The president sought to maintain Republican regimes in southern states favorable to Reconstruction, but that proved increasingly difficult to do. By the mid-1870s the white South had returned to the Democratic fold. The Republicans had pockets of electoral strength in the region, but southern electoral votes were once again in the Democratic column.
Party divisions and economic problems plagued the Republicans in the 1870s. Grant faced a revolt from a dissident branch of the party, the Liberal Republicans, in 1872. This faction wanted easier treatment of the South, a lower tariff, and civil service reform. It joined the Democrats in support of the presidential candidate Horace Greeley in the 1872 election. Grant easily defeated Greeley in what would be the last decisive presidential election for a generation.
During Grant's second term, the Republican electoral position deteriorated. The economic depression that ensued from the panic of 1873 gave the Democrats a campaign issue that they used effectively in retaking the House of Representatives in 1874. Although the Republicans fought to repress the Ku Klux Klan in the South and achieved passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, the party's commitment to justice in the South was waning. More and more Republicans urged the party to concentrate on economic issues as a way of becoming a majority party once again. The growing influence of business interests in Republican affairs accelerated this trend.
The presidential election of 1876 proved to be a turning point in Republican history. The leading candidate for the nomination was James G. Blaine of Maine, a former Speaker of the House. Charismatic and eloquent, Blaine had legions of admirers across the country. Ethical problems involving assistance he had rendered an Arkansas railroad, however, cast a shadow over his candidacy, and the party turned to a safer choice, Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio. The Democrats nominated Samuel J. Tilden of New York.
The disputed election resulted in a settlement brokered by the Electoral Commission, in which a sectional compromise was achieved. Hayes was elected in return for a tacit promise by the Republicans to end Reconstruction in the South. Although many elements in the party remained loyal to the ideals of the Civil War, the focus of Republicanism was shifting to the promotion of economic growth through a sound currency and, most notably, the protective tariff. As a result, party leaders made rhetorical bows toward the issue of black rights, but their hearts were in the economic issues that attracted larger numbers of voters in the North.
Republicans in the Gilded Age
The two decades that followed the election of Hayes were difficult for the Republican Party. Factionalism, the legacy of corruption under Grant, and a revived Democratic Party meant that the Republicans had to fight hard to maintain their electoral place. The resulting struggle proved to be an unexpected asset as Republicans strove to maintain internal cohesion. A tradition emerged within the party that no individual was more important than the larger institution.
The Republicans also had the benefit of strong national leadership in these years. In addition to Blaine, the Republicans counted among them James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas B. Reed, and William McKinley. Such men found the positive programs of the Republicans attractive and profitable. They saw Republicanism as a springboard to national office. As a result, the party enabled younger politicians to build a following across the country.
The process of building a new national majority for the Republicans started slowly in the Hayes administration. The president maintained the prerogatives of his office against more patronage-minded party members such as Roscoe Conkling of New York. Hayes had less success strengthening the party in the South, where Democratic resistance to Republican inroads persisted. Democrats made gains in the congressional elections of 1878, as Republican infighting lingered and the effects of the depression of the 1870s continued. While Hayes was not a great president, he did recapture the moral authority that had been lost during the Grant years.
In the 1880 election the Republicans played down the southern question and turned their emphasis to the protective tariff under the leadership of Blaine and presidential candidate James A. Garfield. Garfield won the presidency by a close margin, and protectionism became a central tenet of Republican ideology for the next two decades.
The protective tariff enabled the Republicans to blend economic and emotional issues into an ideology that appealed to many in the North during the Gilded Age. Business leaders who faced competition from foreign economic interests responded to the protection that the tariff offered. The Republicans championed the tariff as beneficial to American workers, associating protectionism with prosperity and nationalism and accusing the Democrats of selling out to foreign interests. All Republicans, whatever their position on other issues, could rally behind the tariff as the embodiment of the Grand Old Party.
Garfield's assassination in 1881 once again disrupted the party's electoral momentum. The interim presidency of Chester Alan Arthur saw the unity of 1880 ebb away as the Republicans debated the civil service issue and tariff rates. The party suffered losses in the congressional elections of 1882, and economic conditions indicated that a Democratic victory was likely in the next presidential race.
The 1884 nomination went to Blaine, who campaigned against Democrat Grover Cleveland with energy and determination. In a year when the Democrats had the advantage, Blaine proved to be a formidable contender. A celebrated reference to the Democrats as the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" made by the Reverend S. D. Burchard supposedly cost him the crucial state of New York. The presidency went to Cleveland in a close race, but Blaine was recognized as having retarded the electoral slide of the Republicans and helping put the party in a position to regain the White House in 1888.
During the first Cleveland administration, the Republicans worked on their party organization and waited for their adversaries to falter. Their chance came when Cleveland made lowering the protective tariff the sole theme of his annual message in 1887, in effect challenging the Republicans to base their presidential campaign on that issue. It was an opportunity that Blaine and others were glad to exploit. The Republicans happily rallied to the cause of the tariff.
To lead their campaign, the party selected Benjamin Harrison, an Indiana protectionist. Harrison was an adroit campaigner who captivated crowds with his speeches endorsing the tariff. The Republicans were well funded, purposeful, and organized. The Democrats were divided about the tariff and poorly managed. Although Cleveland won the popular vote, thanks to Democratic dominance of the South, Harrison had a clear majority in the electorate vote. The Republicans also won control of both houses of Congress.
The Limits of Republican Activism
In the Fifty-first Congress, the Republicans endeavored to enact their program of economic nationalism behind the leadership of Speaker Thomas B. Reed of Maine. The record of the Republicans was impressive. In 1890 they passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, and the protectionist McKinley Tariff. Only in the case of the unsuccessful federal elections bill to preserve voting rights in the South did the Republicans falter.
To their dismay, the Republicans found that the voters were not pleased with this record of legislative productivity. In the fall election of 1890 the party suffered serious reverses, and the Democrats took control of the House. Republican losses in the Midwest stemmed from opposition at the state and local levels to party activism on ethnocultural issues such as prohibition and Sunday closing laws. Republicans also experienced losses in usually friendly states in the Great Plains, where the new People's Party made inroads.
The party faced a difficult task in the 1892 presidential race. Harrison had not proved to be a popular president. He alienated various segments of the party and inspired little loyalty. But despite a brief boomlet for Blaine, Harrison was nominated once again. He lost decisively to Grover Cleveland in the fall, and the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. Some commentators suggested that the Republican Party was coming apart.
The onset of the panic of 1893 changed the political landscape. President Cleveland became identified with the economic hard times that characterized his four years in office. The Republicans' insistence on a protective tariff as the key to restoring prosperity resonated with northern and midwestern voters. In the congressional elections of 1894, the Republicans were on the offensive. Led by the governor of Ohio, William McKinley, they assailed the faltering Democrats and presented themselves as a more viable agent of change than the Populists.
Republicanism Triumphant
The outcome of the election was a decisive triumph for the Republicans. They gained 117 House seats and established a dominance in that body that lasted for sixteen years. The Republican platform of protectionism and cultural pluralism impressed the voters outside the South and Far West. The significance of the election went beyond its immediate results. The political balance that had existed since the 1870s gave way to a generation of Republican dominance. For the next thirty years, with the exception of Woodrow Wilson's two terms, the Republicans were the nation's majority party.
The presidential election of 1896 confirmed the results of the midterm election two years earlier. The contest brought to national prominence a political leader who would take the Republican Party into the twentieth century. William McKinley won the nomination on the first ballot. As the governor of Ohio, he had shown that he could carry a key midwestern state during economic hard times. His years in the House of Representatives gave him a strong base within the party. Known as the champion of the protective tariff, he was an inclusive figure who had the diplomatic abilities necessary to maintain party harmony. While McKinley gained from the financial and organizational skills of his friend Mark Hanna, an industrialist from Cleveland, the Republican success in 1896 can largely be attributed to his own political acumen.
In the general election, McKinley faced William Jennings Bryan, the candidate of the Democrats and the Populists. Bryan ran on a program of inflation to bolster the flagging economy. Although Bryan started strongly, the Republicans used their abundant campaign funds, drawn from corporate contributions, to distribute several hundred million pamphlets outlining McKinley's message of tariff protection and sound money. McKinley delivered speeches from his front porch in Canton to lead the Republican campaign. The result was the most decisive victory for a presidential candidate since 1872. McKinley won soundly in the electoral vote and had a 600,000-vote popular margin.
During his first administration, McKinley revived the authority and influence of the presidential office through adroit management of the press, frequent trips around the country, and effective courting of Congress. During the Spanish-American War of 1898, McKinley wielded the war power to govern the colonial empire acquired from Spain. He used the techniques of a strong presidency to secure ratification of the treaty with Spain and to fight the Philippine insurrection that followed American acquisition of those islands.
In 1900 McKinley ran against Bryan once again, with similar results. The president was reelected with wide margins in both the popular and electoral votes. With prosperity returned and an empire gained, the Republicans seemed to have their ascendancy in American politics well in hand. In the five decades of their existence they had achieved dominance in national affairs and had set the agenda for several generations of politicians.
Yet beneath the surface there were signs of trouble. At the end of the nineteenth century, the party's links to big business made it vulnerable as Americans debated the extent to which government should regulate an industrial society. Could a party that depended on corporate donors identify with the needs of ordinary Americans? The main ideological principle of the party, the protective tariff, came under fire from an increasingly consumer-conscious nation worried about inflation. In many midwestern states, factionalism stirred as talk of political and economic reform spread. An assassination attempt on 6 September 1901 led to the death of McKinley a week later and brought Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency. The transition from a Civil War veteran and traditional politician to the younger, charismatic, and more dynamic Roosevelt symbolized an important shift in focus for the Republicans. As they looked back on the nineteenth century, however, they had ample reason for pride in what they had accomplished in reshaping American politics and creating one of the two organizations that have defined the nation's politics since 1900.
"Republican Party." Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century. Ed. Paul Finkelman. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. U.S. History in Context. Web. 10 June 2015.