re: #357 Buck

I am only a Canadian, but was Abraham Lincoln really the founder of the Republican Party?

I studied US history, and I don’t remember that.

the republican party was founded in the mid 1850s as the anti-slavery party. its first presidential candidate was john fremont, “the pathfinder”, and he ran on the slogan “free land, free men, fremont!”

the only other item on the republican party platform at that time was federal financing help for the expansion of the railroads - a big federal program, obviously, that would be opposed by republicans these days

immediately after the civil war, once slavery was abolished, the republican party became the party of the big business establishment

the democratic party remained the party of the south and of those in the north who wanted to run as outside reformers and friends of the urban working man, but the merger of populist and progressive movements with the democratic party didn’t take place until the election of 1896