Grand Old Partisan

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I salute Benjamin Bristow, born in Kentucky, May 20th 1832. He attended college in Pennsylvania, then practiced law back home along with his father, a former Whig congressman. Outbreak of civil war, the young Unionist recruited an infantry regiment and was commissioned its lieutenant colonel. Severely wounded at Shiloh, he later commanded a cavalry regiment. In 1863, Bristow was elected to the state senate. He campaigned for President Lincoln's re-election and voted to ratify the 13th Amendment. While serving as U.S. Attorney for Kentucky, he prosecuted Klansmen and other Democrat terrorists. In 1870, Republican legislation established the Justice Department, and President Grant named him the first Solicitor General, tasked with representing the federal government before the Supreme Court. In 1874, Bristow was appointed ...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I celebrate birthday of the DC Republican Party. June 19th 1855 – before all but a few state GOP organizations came into existence – anti-slavery activists established the "Republican Association of Washington DC." These friends of freedom, under leadership of Lewis Clephane, denounced Democrats for supporting slavery. Clephane managed The National Era . This abolitionist newspaper was first to publish, in serial form, the classic novel Uncle Tom's Cabin . President Abraham Lincoln appointed him postmaster of Washington and later to a position at the Treasury Department. He was also first Republican on the city council. The DCGOP played an integral role in formation of the Republican Party nationwide. It called for "immediate and thorough organization of clubs or associations, somewhat similar to our own, in every city, town, and village...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I celebrate Juneteenth. This holiday marks the end of slavery in the United States. Though the Civil War was over, Democrats in control of Texas neglected to inform their slaves that they had been declared free two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln. June 19th 1865, General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston and proclaimed an end to slavery in the Lone Star State: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor." African-Americans rejoiced, while Democrats raged. General Granger then traveled around Texas to inform African-Americans, still being held in bondage by t...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I spotlight an important technological advance. June 18th 1861, Thaddeus Lowe ascended with a tethered balloon five hundred feet above the National Mall. He intended to demonstrate, amid the Civil War, practicality of observing enemy troop movements from the air. His audience was the Commander-in-Chief. A telegraph wire connected the basket with the White House. The scientist sent a message to President Lincoln: "This point of observation commands an area nearly fifty miles in diameter. The city, with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene. I take great pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station, and in acknowledging my indebtedness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics in the military service of this country." Linc...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I highlight the U.S. Sanitary Commission. During the Civil War, it fostered clean and healthy conditions within Union army camps. The concept began at a meeting of Republican women in New York. Passed by the GOP-controlled 37th Congress, legislation establishing this civilian agency was signed by President Abraham Lincoln on June 18th 1861. Its board was headed by clergyman Henry Whitney Bellows. Staffers enacted "the principles and practice connected with the inspection of recruits and enlisted men, the sanitary condition of volunteers, the means of preserving and restoring the health and of securing the general comfort and efficiency of the troops, the proper provision of cooks, nurses, and hospitals, and other subjects of a like nature." The commission received donations – including some from England and France and Argentina – ...