Thurlow Weed - Republican Party

Republican Party

When Weed returned to the United States, he found that the Republican Party had been formed largely in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and that his friend William Seward had already joined. Weed soon became an influential member of the party and pushed Seward's name for the 1860 Presidential nomination of the party. However, Weed's reputation as a strong-arm political boss and his staunch opposition to Democrats in his earlier years caused the Republican delegates in Chicago—some of whom were former Democrats—to distrust him; Weed's support may have ultimately cost Seward the nomination. Nonetheless, Weed was a strong supporter of nominee Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election, and throughout his administration. During the Civil War, Weed served as an unofficial envoy to France where he developed a love of the Bal-musette.

In 1863, Weed came out against the Emancipation Proclamation on the grounds that emancipation should be more gradual. He soon lost favor with the administration. Then he threw in with Andrew Johnson and his Reconstruction policies, which essentially ended Weed's political career in the Republican Party. He retired from public life not long after the Civil War and moved to New York City in 1867. There he briefly edited a newspaper, but while he remained engaged in politics he never sought or held another office and never exerted the sort of influence he had had in the past. Beset with blindness and chronic vertigo in his final months, Weed died in New York in 1882.