Pardee Butler - Politics

Politics

The Republican Party was begun in the early 1850s by anti-slavery activists. Pardee Butler was one of the organizers of the Republican Party in Kansas in May and June 1856. In 1856 the Republicans became a national party when John C. Fremont was nominated for President. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican president.

There is a family story about Pardee Butler and Abraham Lincoln that is related by Heywood Broun in one of his It Seems to Me columns that appeared in the New York Graphic in March 1936.

The Rev. Pardee Butler was a mighty man in debate and a most skillful propagandist. He wrote the free soil constitution for the State of Kansas, and in the eyes of some historians he is identified as the actual founder of the Republican party.... His family treasures an anecdote of his return home after an oratorical foray. “Were there any other speakers?" asked his wife. “Other speakers!" snorted the Rev. Pardee Butler, who was accustomed to open and close meetings himself. But then he was reminded of an incident. "Oh, yes," he said, "when I got done we heard a few words from a young Springfield lawyer named Lincoln."

Butler was active in the presidential campaign of 1872 speaking at the Republican State Congressional Convention at Lawrence and serving as an elector.

Though often urged by his friends to run for office, Butler invariably refused telling them “...he considered the office of a Christian preacher the highest office on earth.”