Somewhere I once read a quotation from the latter-nineteenth century where the author was (rhetorically I hope) calling for a campaign of arson, rape and murder against anyone who dared to vote against the Republican party. Can someone give me the name or a link?
The newspaper was actually the Hartford, Connecticut Courant which ran an anti-Thomas-Jefferson screed along the lines of
But I’m having trouble coming up with the quote in full.
So, then, not calling for any such thing, and, of course, there was no Republican Party:
“there is scarcely a possibility that we shall escape a Civil War….
Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air rent with the cries of distress, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.”
No, it definitely mentioned the Republican party, I remember that much.
The Jeffersonian party was sometimes called “Republican”, hence the confusion.
Another story from the era is of an elderly Federalist lady who asked a neighbor to hide her family Bible, insisting that Jefferson’s new regime would seize and burn it. After futile attempts to explain that this was propaganda nonsense, the neighbor finally declared, “If this is so, what good would it do to give me the Bible? It would be burned in any case.”
“Ah, but no one would look for the Bible in the home of a Democrat.”
Well, Jefferson did make our sons the dragoons of Marat and our daughters the concubines of the Illuminati!
(A warning by Yale President Timothy Dwight.)
I believe Jefferson’s party was the Democratic Republican party; he was running against a Federalist, John Adams.
Correct, and in day-to-day parlance the Democratic-Republicans were almost always referred to as Republicans. Which is confusing, because the Democratic-Republican Party eventually evolved into the modern Democratic Party.
Hoover made similar dire predictions if FDR won in 1932, and we’re already hearing comparable pronouncements from the Religious Right if Obama were to move into the White House. The more things change…
Isn’t the OP asking for a diatribe where the author, presumably a Republican, wanted to visit atrocities upon people he disagreed with, rather than painting a picture of the horrors that would be perpetuated by the other side if they came into office?
Also, what’s this about Thomas Jefferson and there being no Republican party in the late nineteenth century?
**Nametag ** was referring to **Fish’s ** post and meant late eighteenth century.
A quick recap for those who have forgotten.
The Republican Party as we know it today was launched at a series of conventions in the mid-1850s. The one at Ripon, WI is usually credited with giving birth to a political party that later became called the Republicans.
There were no parties as such in the first days of the Republic. Indeed, the founding fathers hated the very idea of parties, which they called factions. Their ideal was that all right-minded gentlemen would work together to forge compromises that would give the best answers to all possible questions of government.
That lasted about as long as you think it would. Followers of Washington, led by Alexander Hamilton, soon became known as Federalists. Those opposing them took the natural name of Anti-Federalist. Since then as now you don’t get a real identity by being against something rather than being for something, they soon acquired the name Democrat-Republicans, with Thomas Jefferson as their head.
The Federalists didn’t get much support outside of New England and after their opposition to the War of 1812, the party pretty much collapsed and what essentially became one-party rule emerged during what is now called the Era of Good Feelings, under James Monroe.
This couldn’t last either. When Andrew Jackson and his followers seized power in the 1828 election they created a boisterous national party that was called the Democratic Party. This created huge, if poorly organized, opposition and a number of smaller parties formed, including the National Republican, the Know Nothings, the Anti-Masonic, and eventually the Whigs, who became the principal national second party.
With the Democratic Party consisting of two wings, one tied to immigrant voters under big city machines and the other comprising the slave states to the south, a huge hole opened for an ambitious alternative. The Republicans wanted to be this alternative. Because the Democratic party was broken in two over the slavery issue, Abraham Lincoln won office in a four-way election in 1860.
The Democratic Party was broken at the national level until Franklin D. Roosevelt, but thrived in the increasingly populous and important northern urban centers and so eventually made a comeback.
For the last 50 years the two parties have been about even nationally so we tend to think that the U.S. has always had two equally strong national parties. It’s not true. For almost the entire history of the country, one party was nationally dominant until it outlived its original purpose and base and got toppled.