In 1852 an Anti-Slavery Party was created in Ripon, Wisconsin.
Breaking Trusts and Monopolies
This political cartoon shows La Follette holding a big club with the words “For Any Old Trust.” La Follette rallied against big business and trusts by bringing his message to the people. The message he delivered was the need to restore democracy and allow the average citizen an active say in the government’s actions. It depicts La Follette as a short, stout man with a large head; the club he wields is larger than he is. This implied that La Follette’s strength of mind and his power to manipulate all tools available to encourage reform and put trusts in their proper place were far greater than his body’s physical strength. A verse is written below the cartoon and refers to the period when he first became a senator. The verse is entitled "From the Railroads to La Follette" and reads--From the Badger wilds comes an "ornery cuss" With a lot of noise and a lot of fuss To make in the senate an awful muss And mix up a horrible dose for us. He will not be fixed and he spurns our bait Nor would he be governor of his state He's whetted his knife for the special rate And swears that he'll slaughter our dear rebate.
Women Had a Home in the G.O.P.
True to its antislavery foundation, the Republican party established itself as the national party of reform. Its antislavery stance attracted activist women to the party before the Civil War. Moreover, the party supported woman suffrage, endearing itself to reformers like Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone, who self-identified as Republicans.
Acknowledgment of women in the party’s platforms in the 1870s and the creation of a Republican women’s auxiliary in the late 1880s kept women in the Republican fold after slavery ceased to be a political issue. Judith Ellen Foster founded the Woman’s National Republican Association in 1888, declaring that “woman is politics.” She challenged women to engage in partisan politics in order to reform society, which was a woman’s role. She built the WNRA into a substantial unit of the Republican party, and its members advocated for Republican candidates each election cycle.
The first woman elected to federal office represented the Republican party. Montana voters elected Jeanette Rankin in 1916 as one of their first two members of the U.S. House of Representatives. They sent her four years before the 19th Amendment granted voting rights to U.S. women.
“I may be the first woman member of Congress,” she observed upon her election in 1916. “But I won’t be the last.” Rankin shepherded the woman suffrage amendment through Congress and rejoiced at its passage.
(Judith Ellen Foster pictured above.)
Source; https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/history-women-republican-party
- Trust Buster: A term used to describe Theodore Roosevelt because of his aggressive use of U.S. antitrust laws to break up large business monopolies.
- Square Deal: President Theodore Roosevelt’s domestic program that focused on conservation of natural resources, control of corporations, and consumer protection.
- Interstate Commerce Commission: A regulatory body in the United States created by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 with the purpose of regulating railroads (and later trucking) to ensure fair rates, to eliminate rate discrimination, and to regulate other aspects of common carriers, including interstate bus lines and telephone companies.