The modern day Republican Party consistently aligns itself with the Republican Party as it existed in the 1860s and led by Abraham Lincoln, trying to make the specious argument that the Democratic Party has its roots in the anti-abolitionist movement of the mid-1800s and that it is they, the Republicans to whom descendants of slaves, should now be aligned. Putting aside the absurdity of the argument, particularly from a historical perspective, the argument ignores the fact that the modern day Republican Party does not simply owe its origins to the Republican Party of the 1780s but is virtually the same party, unchanged at its core and in its mission over the past 240 years. That Party…the party of Jefferson and the southern aristocracy, fought against the efforts of the Federalist Party, led by Hamilton, Madison and Washington (though the latter did so for expedience rather than allegiance), to establish a strong central government with the power of the purse. The issue for Jefferson and the other Republicans then and now was that a centralized government and, more importantly, a centralized banking system, posed a direct threat to an economy, agrarian in nature, that had brought the southern aristocracy its wealth, built on the backs of millions of slaves. By pushing the idea of a loose confederation of states, each with its own government that would best represent the interests and rights of the property owners in that state, would the southern aristocracy be able to maintain its power and wealth. While the Federalists won out with the writing of the Constitution which laid out the machinery of a central government, it was that loss which festered for decades ultimately leading to the civil war.
There should be no mistake that today’s Republican Party exists for the sole purpose of ensuring that the economic elite…the former southern aristocracy…be put in the best position to maintain the power and wealth which has driven the nation’s economic elite since before the inception of the nation. The modern rally cry for “state’s rights” is nothing more than a reiteration of the Jeffersonian vision of a government designed and intended to perpetuate wealth of a few at the expense of the many.
