Republican Party

The 26th president of the USA, Theodore Roosevelt, at the age of 43. A Republican, he was said by some to have pushed the powers of the presidency to unprecedented limits, shocking the nation by filing an anti-trust suit against J P Morgan's Northern Securities Corporation in his drive to regulate big business and offer Americans a ‘Square Deal.’

Younger of the two main political parties of the USA, formed in 1854. It is more right-wing than the Democratic Party, favouring capital and big business and opposing state financial assistance and federal controls. In the late 20th century most presidents have come from the Republican Party, but in Congress Republicans have generally been outnumbered. In 1992 Republican George Bush lost the presidency to Democrat Bill Clinton, who in 1996 was re-elected for a second term, although the Republicans retained control of Congress and had governors in 32 of the country's 50 states. The Republicans took the presidency in 2000, with George W Bush slimly beating the Democrat Al Gore in a conflict-ridden election.

The party was founded by a coalition of slavery opponents, who elected their first president, Abraham Lincoln in 1860. The early Republican Party supported protective tariffs and homestead legislation for Western settlers, as well as abolitionism. Towards the end of the 19th century the Republican Party was identified with US imperialism and industrial expansion. With few intermissions, the Republican Party controlled Congress from the 1860s until defeated by the New Deal Democrats in 1932.

Conservative tendencies and an antagonism of the legislature to the executive came to the fore after Lincoln's assassination, when Andrew Johnson, his Democratic and Southern successor, was impeached (although not convicted), and General Ulysses S Grant was elected to the presidency 1868 and 1872. In the bitter period following the Civil War, the party was divided into those who considered the South a beaten nation and those who wished to reintegrate the South into the country as a whole, but Grant carried through a liberal Reconstruction policy in the South.

The party became divided during Theodore Roosevelt's attempts at regulation and control of big business, and in forming the short-lived Progressive Party 1912, Roosevelt effectively removed the liberal influence from the Republican Party.

The Republican Party remained in eclipse until the election of Dwight D Eisenhower 1952, more his personal triumph than that of the party, whose control of Congress was soon lost and not regained by the next Republican president, Richard Nixon, 1968. Both Nixon and his successor, Gerald Ford, pursued active foreign policies; the latter was defeated by Jimmy Carter in the presidential election of 1976.

The party, attracting increasing support from the Christian right and in the formerly Democrat-dominated southern states, enjoyed landslide presidential victories for Ronald Reagan and also carried the Senate 1980–86. George Bush won the 1988 presidential election but faced a Democratic Senate and House of Representatives, and in 1992 lost the presidency to the Democrat Bill Clinton. In the 1994 midterm elections Republicans regained control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but showed stresses between the more moderate wing and the rising far-right wing of the party, which, led by Newt Gingrich, relied increasingly on support from fundamentalist Christians, the Christian Coalition, and the pro-gun and anti-abortion lobbies. They retained control of Congress in the November 1996 election, and had governors in 32 of the country's 50 states, but their candidate Bob Dole failed to win the presidency.

Republican George W Bush Jr, son of former president George Bush, won the presidency in 2000, in one of the most controversial elections in US history. The election was submerged in debate because Al Gore won the majority of popular votes, but fell three short of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win. Claims that media reports interfered with the electoral process and controversial ballots in the state of Florida resulted in a recount for Florida and a Supreme Court hearing.

Early history and abolitionism After 1840 antislavery activists began to focus on opposing the extension of slavery into US territories, and their campaigning led to the formation of the Free Soil party. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act enraged abolitionists by declaring that Kansas and Nebraska would be left free to decide on the question of slavery. A series of conventions held in protest led to the formation of the Republican Party in 1854. The Republicans managed to build on a base of former Free Soilers, anti-Nebraska Democrats, and antislavery Whigs, and captured 33% of the popular vote in the 1856 election with their candidate John C Frémont.

As the Whig Party and the conservative, anti-immigrant Know Nothings faded, and the Democratic Party remained divided over slavery, the Republicans gained and won the White House in 1860 with Abraham Lincoln as their leader. His victory sparked secession by slave-holding southern states and their withdrawal left Republicans with increased control of federal government.

During the Civil War (1861–65) the Republican Party was instrumental in ratifying the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, which outlawed slavery and secured equal rights for African Americans (see Amendment, Thirteenth, Amendment, Fourteenth, and Amendment, Fifteenth). Their far-reaching economic programme included the Homestead Act (1862), which satisfied former Free Soil members by offering public land grants, higher tariff duties, and a national banking system.

In the 1864 election the party attempted to broaden its appeal and Lincoln ran under the banner of the Union party with the southern War Democrat Andrew Johnson, as his running mate. Although expedient, it created uproar when, after Lincoln's assassination in 1865, Johnson became president.