That whole “Party of Lincoln” stuff is not true. Lincoln was an abolitionist and involved and got counsel from two more radical abolitionists: Senator Sumner and Fredrick Douglass. The radical MAGA conservative confederate wing was in the Democratic Party, and the Confederate President was Jefferson Davis, the DEMOCRATIC Secretary of War under Buchanan. So that is like saying the Modern Democratic Party is the Party of the Confederates, or the Party of Davis and Lee. That would just be nuts. But by that white man’s logic, we should call the Democratic Party today “The Party of Jefferson Davis.” People are willing to buy the first moniker, but would laugh you out for the room for the second one, despite the clear logical parallel.
This very idea today that Charles Sumner would be in the modern racist Republican Party would revolt him. He was labeled by the Democrats as a radical, a “Radical Republican” on his unwavering stance AGAINST slavery, not for it. He realized after the Civil that the fight for black American’s civil rights had just begun. He told Fredrick Douglas in 1874 his death bead that Douglas and other must not let his (Sumner’s) civil rights bill fail. When Sumner’s body lay in state in the Rotunda of the Congress Capital building, black Americans gathered around with Douglass to pay tribute. And yet historians and modern day MAGA confederates, who quite the Democratic Party in May 1964 in direct putrid objection to the Civil Rights Bill and took over the empty shell of the Republican Party in the South, want us to believe that a “Radical Republican” like Sumner would ever, ever wanted to be associated with today’s Republicans in the least?
These are not the same Parties at all, whatsoever. Lincoln stood alongside Sumner, and would none of the values today’s post-1964 party has. Stop believing in these white men’s fairy tales. The first black American who ran and won congressional office in 1928 was a Republican by tradition to that party’s adherence to civil rights, not by some radical departure from tradition.
It’s important you raised this profound debate. Labels mean nothing and everything all at once. Digging behind them through historical factual reasoning is where the real insight lies. Thanks.