Republicanism in The United States - Civil War and Reconstruction

Civil War and Reconstruction

Historian Frank Lawrence Owsley depicted antebellum Southern society as a broad class of yeoman farmers who stood and worked between the slaves and poor whites at one end and the large planters at the opposite end of the economic spectrum, Owsley asserted that the real South was liberal, American, and Jeffersonian, not radical or reactionary. It reflected the best of republican principles (though Owsley did not use the word "republicanism" but his followers did) Agrarianism in the 20th century was a response to the industrialism and modernism that had infiltrated the South. According to Owsley, the position of the South vis-à-vis the North was created not by slavery, cotton, or states' rights, but by the two regions' misunderstanding of each other. J. Mills Thornton argues that in the antebellum South the drive to preserve republican values was the most powerful force, and led Southerners to interpret Northern policies as a threat to their republican values.

In reaction to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, antislavery forces in the North formed a new party. The party officially designated itself "Republican" because the name resonated with the struggle of 1776. "In view of the necessity of battling for the first principles of republican government," resolved the Michigan state convention, "and against the schemes of aristocracy the most revolting and oppressive with which the earth was ever cursed, or man debased, we will co-operate and be known as Republicans."

After the war, the Republicans believed that an important aspect of securing citizenship for freedmen was to give them the franchise; that the true political education was to be gained in exercising the right to vote and organizing for political purposes. At the time, only men were allowed to vote. Constitutional amendments were passed granting citizenship to freedmen and the franchise to men.