Anyone ever taught this in school or on the history ch anywhere.. I dont think so. The Negro Wing of the Republican Party In order to remain President in a war-weary nation, in the 1864 contest the Republicans had combined with pro-union, pro-war Democrats into the Union Party. Lincoln had taken Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, as his Vice-Presidential running mate. When Lincoln was assassinated the country suddenly had a Democrat for president and a Republican Congress led by the Radical Republicans. They denied the now-defeated southern former-slavers the right to sit in Congress; set up the Committee on Reconstruction to rule the southern states; and fought with President Johnson to the point of attempting to impeach him. In 1866 and 1868 Negro voters helped elect Republican congresses and a new Republican President, Ulysses S. Grant. Radical Republican control of Congress resulted in all male Americans, regardless of their origins or skin color, receiving the right to vote upon passage of the 15th Amendment in 1870. The former slave states also remained under military occupation until new state constitutions, written to the liking of Radical Republicans, were in place. White southerners, with few exceptions, became even more solidly identified with the Democratic Party. Many could not run for office or vote because of their records as traitors. Freed slaves, with few exceptions, joined the Republican Party, giving it a presence in the south for the first time. Many Negroes were elected to local and state offices. For the ex-slavers the situation was intolerable, and the solution was terrorism. The Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist wing of the southern Democratic Party. In locality after locality, then state after state, former slaves were scared away from voting, and then from even being registered to vote. Until the Great Depression most black Americans would be Republicans; in the South they would constitute most of the Republican Party. However, after 1876 few black Americans were able to vote in the southern states. As a result black politicians could not be elected to office; in the South no Republicans could be elected to office at all; and the influence of blacks within the national party was minimal.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 03:26:01 +0000
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