The first
article examined the transforming Republican Party Platform
from 1860 to 1944.
The second
article considered three crucial components of Lincoln's
political philosophy, only hinted at in the 1860 party platform.
This third article will briefly
consider the true inheritors of Lincoln's ideas, with a focus on
Theodore Roosevelt.
After Lincoln's assassination, the
Republican party muddled through a series of uninspiring candidates.
In spite of this they won nine of the next eleven presidential
elections, mostly on their background as the champions of Union.
Only the Democrat Grover Cleveland was able to claim the presidency,
and remains the only person to win two non-consecutive terms.
Of these Republican Presidents, only
two are of consequence: Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt.
However Grant isn't impressive as a president, but for his success as
commander of all Union forces during the Civil War. Bypassing him,
we are at Roosevelt.
If asked to choose the two most
significant Presidents before him, Theodore Roosevelt would have
chosen George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In his speech at
Osawatomie, Kansas (commonly called the New
Nationalism Speech) Roosevelt laid out his belief that the
United States had overcome two serious crisis under the leadership of
these two great Presidents. Yet, he believed the nation now found
itself upon the precipice of a third crisis: economic polarization.
In the years since the presidency of Lincoln, the economy of the
country had altered in a way that was unimaginable to those of 1860.
Gone were the issues of homesteading or small individual businessmen.
Thrusting into the sphere of American politics were the monopolies
and trusts of industry, railroad, and energy.
Republican presidents between Lincoln
and Roosevelt had accepted the influence of industry, and allowed it
to exist with minimal regulation. What is good for business, they
assumed, is good for the country. But the rise of radical laissez
faire economics on one side, and the appearance of strong socialist
leaders such as Eugene Debs, Edward Bellamy, and Upton Sinclair on
the other led Roosevelt to look for a middle way. This middle way,
New Nationalism, expounded that “the object of government is the
welfare of the people”. Like Lincoln, who he quoted extensively,
this meant that the government must be active in its pursuit of
economic opportunity for all. It could not stand idly by as the
powerful gathered the wealth of millions into their few hands.
Roosevelt, as Lincoln, valued the right
to property, but more than the right to hold massive quantities of
property, he valued the right of
every person to have a fair opportunity to earn a living wage. He
said, “I believe in property rights, but … not as substitutes for
human rights. … I believe in shaping the ends of government to
protect property; but wherever the alternative must be faced, I am
for man and not for property.” Mainly, his critique of property
centered on the enormously rich few who operated the trusts and
monopolies. These corporations threatened the general welfare, the
government “for the people”. They conspired to drag every hard
earned cent from the pockets of the consumer and stash it, away and
unused.
Mirroring
Lincoln's first address to Congress, President Roosevelt's declared
in his first
address his interest
in regulating corporations, trusts, and monopolies saying, “the
government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings
of great corporations,” and “the nation should … also assume
power of supervision and regulation over all corporations doing
interstate business.” Roosevelt was not anti-business, but he was
concerned about what large interstate businesses were doing to the
fabric of American life. He meant to have a look, to see if they
were working for the public good or destroying it in their greed.
He
followed through on his beliefs. He had the federal government
arbitrate between striking miners and the owners. The government
found in favor of the minors for a ten percent pay increase and a
reduction in hours. He prosecuted a number of trusts, breaking up
Standard Oil of New Jersey and the American Tobacco Company. His
most famous trust busting was of the Northern Securities Company.
The NSC was created out of the Northern Pacific Railway, the Great
Northern Railway, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad,
and featured such noted names as J.P. Morgan and J.D. Rockefeller.
With the merger, it became the second most valuable corporation,
after U.S. Steel. The NSC was created in 1901, the year Roosevelt
became president, and he immediately recognized the danger of this
monopoly. The federal government sued it using the Sherman Anti
Trust Act in 1902 and the NSC dissolved in 1904, after having
suffering defeat at the Supreme Court.
While
Theodore Roosevelt was worried that monopolies could be disastrous
for the economic prosperity of the people, he also recognized their
danger to politicians. In 2010, the Citizens
United vs FEC
decision opened the opportunity for well funded businessmen to insert
their wealth into politics. But Theodore Roosevelt had said more
than a century earlier, “The Constitution … does not give the
right of suffrage to any corporation.” The Constitution does not
enfranchise the elite and wealthy above everyone else. It does not
afford them special privileges denied to others. Roosevelt feared
that if not regulated, corporations would seduce government officials
and construct a legal framework to protect both the companies and
those that profited from them.
And
like Lincoln's Civil War, all of these difficulties required a strong
national government to oversee his programs. His goal was the same
as Lincoln's. A chance for every citizen to rise from low beginnings
to a comfortable life. He believed government should create laws to
ensure “practical equality of opportunity.” Every man would have
the same chance of success. Every person could have the opportunity
to reach their potential. To do this he; created more government
agencies, implemented a graduated income tax, regulated wages and
hours, and regulated the operation of businesses. Roosevelt signed
into being the National Forest Service and the Food and Drug
Administration. The second he created after reading Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle, which included horrifying descriptions of the condition
of the production of meat. Notably he didn't create either the
National Park Service, or the first National Park. The first was
done by Woodrow Wilson, and the second by Grant.
In
all his time as President Theodore Roosevelt was dedicated to a
strong active government for the benefit of people over property.
And
he was the last Republican President to truly hold this view. He
chose not to run for a second term in 1908, allowing his hand picked
successor William Howard Taft to replace him. Yet Taft as president
displeased Roosevelt, and he ran as an independent candidate in 1912.
Impressively he received a higher percentage of the popular vote
than Taft, but lost to the Democratic Candidate, Woodrow Wilson.
Roosevelt had chosen the title Progressive for his campaign, because
he believed that Taft had abandoned the principles of Lincoln. But
with the Republican vote split, the Democrats gained the White House,
and at the same time aquired the mantle of active government.
Woodrow
Wilson, like many presidents, had flaws, the most crucial of which
was highlighted at Yale this year, but he embraced the expanded role
of government for the benefit of the people. He was the only
Democrat since the Civil War to win two consecutive terms. When the
Republican's returned to the White House for the next three elections
they did not appreciate the Lincoln and Roosevelt concept of active
government. Wilson had taken it from them. They did little of note
except lead the United States through the roaring twenties and into
the great depression. The idea of an expanded national government to
aid the people was championed by FDR, and the Republican party has
never made a serious attempt at recovering it since.
But
there is one last person of importance to discuss, because in spite
of their reluctance to embrace Lincoln's principles, the Republicans
still resembled the original outline.
Reagan.
Sure there are a number of people of importance before Reagan, such
as Barry Goldwater, and Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford.
Goldwater is the most important thinker in changing the party, but
since Reagan actually won and made the changes he receives the
credit. Maybe someday there will be an article about Goldwater's The
Conscience of a Conservative,
but not today.
Reagan
is critical, because during 2015 nomination process all the
Republican candidates expressed how Reagan dictated their political
philosophy. And he is nothing like Lincoln or Roosevelt. His most
famous statement
is, “Government is the problem.” He also said, do we “abandon
our American revolution, and confess that a little intellectual elite
in a far distant capital can plan out our lives better for us than we
can plan them ourselves.” Both Lincoln and Roosevelt would have
been horrified to hear the first quote. For them, a strong national
government was the answer to difficult problems of race, equality,
and economic polarization. And to do this Roosevelt collected
intellectual advisers to oversee a vast economic enterprise. In
fact, if there were no one overseeing the powerful machine of
industry, than it would deny the people their just society. In the
quest for equality and liberty government must check the corrupting
power of monopolies and money. This is the belief of the Republican
party of Lincoln and Roosevelt, its two greatest presidents.
And
I leave you with a final note about Reagan. At the 1992 Republican
National Convention he stated his four favorite quotes from Lincoln:
You cannot strengthen the weak by
weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.
Only these were not
statements of Lincoln.
They were written in 1916 in a pamphlet
called Lincoln on Private Property, which included some quotes
of Lincoln's mixed with statements he had never made.
Next week is the forth article on the
Republicans where we return to the Radical Republicans of the Lincoln
and Grant presidencies.
The Republicans
Series:
Sources (where not included as links):
All quotes are from Theodore Roosevelt
or Ronald Reagan
A Just and Generous Nation by
Harold Holzer
The Great Courses: Cycles of
American Political Thought by Joseph Kobylka
Theodore Rex by
Edmund Morris
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