July 2021

Abraham Lincoln was the first president elected from the newly-formed, fiercely-liberal, abolitionist Republican party in 1860. Although candidate-Lincoln downplayed abolition of slavery while campaigning, coming out against the spread of slavery to ‘free states’, he was at heart, an ardent abolitionist. “The GOP, pro-economic reform-party, was founded in 1854 by opponents of the KS-NE Act, which allowed the expansion of chattel-slavery into the Western-territories”. Lincoln, reelected in 1864, banned slavery in America, and was assassinated in 1865. “During the 1860s & 70s, Republicans dominated the Northern states, expanded federal power, helped fund the transcontinental- railroad, the state university system, settlement of the West by homesteaders, established a national currency, and a protective tariff. Those events had turned out very favorably to big business based in the Northeast, such as banks, railroads & manufacturers, while small-time farmers, who had gone West, felt they had received very little.” Democrats, who dominated the South, opposed those measures, as well as social justice laws & protections passed after the Civil War.

In 1896, William Jennings Bryan, Democrat & former Representative of Kansas, ran a presidential-campaign, seeking to win the West, by proposing an expansion of federal powers to ensure social justice to indebted farmers, and by opposing the gold-standard. Bryan lost the election to William McKinley, Republican, former U.S. Representative & Governor of Ohio, who ran on a platform of promoting American prosperity. “McKinley entered into a brief & decisive war with Spain over the Cuban-independence issue in 1898; the U.S. gained possession of Puerto Rico, Philippines & Guam.”

McKinley’s VP, Garret Hobart, died in 1899; McKinley agreed to accept Theodore Roosevelt as his running-mate in 1900, and was reelected. McKinley was assassinated in 1901, and Teddy Roosevelt unexpectedly became our 26th president, winning a second term in 1904. “He was confronted with a bitter struggle between management & labor, and became known as the great ‘trust-buster’; he advocated a ‘Square-Deal’ between capital & labor. A conservationist, he also set aside some 200-million acres for national forests, reserves & wildlife refuges; he spearheaded the beginning construction of the Panama Canal, and won a Nobel Peace Prize for his negotiations to end the Russo-Japanese War. He kept his promise not to run a 3rd term, but in 1912 tried to return to politics, heading a new Progressive Bull-Moose Party”, losing that presidential race; being one among four impressive candidates. ‘T-R’, a social-reformer, was one of our most important, significant presidents.

Hopefully Part 2 of: “A Tale of Two Parties” will follow next week. (Quotes from Wikipedia.org & www.history.com)

Trish Forsyth Voss

Critical Race Theory or “CRT is a graduate-level framework examining how the legacy of slavery & segregation in America is embedded in its legal systems & policies; it has become the source of a political flashpoint across the country. The debate over its potential role in school-curricula has roiled school districts & state legislatures nationwide”, reported Amna Nawaz from PBS, “Why Americans are so divided over teaching CRT”. It’s a legal-construct, taught in law school, NOT high school! Diversity-training is NOT teaching CRT! That said, progressives want to learn & explore our nation’s real history, and desire that factual history be taught to our offspring, which has me pondering history lessons I learned: Christopher Columbus, the daring Italian explorer, who discovered the Americas, (funded by Spain’s royalty to find new lands to plunder & colonize) was NOT was the first to discover the Americas. Then we were taught feel-good stories of how the Native Americans helped pilgrims survive starving during their first few winters; we were mainly spared the harsh realities of learning the full-truth about the Indian-holocaust (even in high school). ‘How the West was Won’, the varnished-version was excused by the ‘necessity’ of Manifest Destiny. “Remember the Alamo”, those ‘brave-fighters’ were presented as heroes, Jim Bowie, Davy Crockett, etc, when in reality they were essentially duped into fighting/dying for monied-interests, pushing the expansion of slavery into the ‘free’ Texas territory, which belonged to Mexico.

We were taught in the North who the real heroes of the Civil War were, but decades after that war, the South erected statues of Confederate icons & even slavers, and enacted laws, structures, systems to keep Blacks oppressed, poor & at the mercy of Whites’ legislation & ‘compassion’. Fast-forward to 2021. None are alive today that were responsible for the horrors of slavery. Let’s face it, everyone had to be somewhere, and our ancestors were influenced by the people & events that surrounded them. Washington & Jefferson were born into wealthy, slave-owning families; that’s the realities they were raised in, yet they sought to create a better America. They evolved, for the good, in their lifetime. How much are we willing to evolve on racial-issues?

Progressive proponents seek justice, equity & truth in America & want our youth taught these values; opponents say, “Don’t teach our kids guilt” over their ancestors’ actions! Our children learn about the Jewish-Holocaust in middle-school, and some of those children are of German-descent. We must face many hard truths on our life-journeys.

Trish Forsyth Voss