Grand Old Partisan

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I spotlight an impressive memorial in our nation’s capital. October 28th 1925, Calvin Coolidge dedicated a statue of José de San Martín. The bronze sculpture is a copy of an original in Buenos Aires. It was donated by the Argentine government and accepted by the GOP-controlled 68th Congress. President Coolidge said: "To the people of the United States it has been a matter of pride and gratification that their ancestors were providentially chosen to initiate the movement for independence in the New World." "The North American revolutionists chose the great Washington, citizen of a southern colony, to lead a revolutionary movement that had been begun, and in its early stages was chiefly sustained by the people of the north. Likewise, when San Martin was made the supreme military leader of Argentina, he saw that the success of Argentina depended upon s...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I salute Jacob Cox, born October 27th 1828. Law studies followed graduation from Oberlin College. He began his career as a Whig, voting for presidential nominee Winfield Scott. Abolitionist sentiments led him to co-found the Ohio Republican Party. Allied politically with Salmon Chase and James Garfield, he won election to the state senate in 1859. He spent much of his term reading military texts after the Republican Governor appointed him a state militia brigadier general. This father of six enlisted at outbreak of civil war. President Abraham Lincoln commissioned him brigadier general. His soldiers swept rebels from West Virginia. He later battled through Virginia and Maryland and Tennessee and Georgia and North Carolina. October 1865, a grateful citizenry elected him Governor. Cox declined to be Commissioner of Internal Revenue for Democrat President...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I honor Benjamin Franklin Wade, born October 27th 1800. He started out as a laborer on the Eire Canal before moving to Ohio at age twenty-one. The young Whig studied medicine before switching to law. He was county prosecutor, state senator and district judge. In 1851, the legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate.  Wade co-founded the Ohio GOP. Re-elected twice as a Republican, he opposed the Fugitive Slave Act, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and other Democrat depravities. In addition to supporting African-Americans, he backed trade unions and women's suffrage. During the Civil War, irascible Ben expressed impatience with President Lincoln's measured approach. Wade proved instrumental in passage of the early GOP agenda, including the Homestead Act, the Land-Grant College Act, the Freedmen's Bureau and the 1866 Civil Rights Act. As the Senate Pr...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I highlight Republican reverence for civil rights. October 26th 1921, Warren Harding addressed a large crowd in Democrat-controlled Birmingham, Alabama. As noted by observers, the courageous President "declared that the Negro is entitled to full economic and political rights as an American citizen" and "vigorously championed the black race" and "made a braver, clearer utterance than Theodore Roosevelt ever dared to make or than William Taft or William McKinley ever dreamed of." Seeking to improve race relations, Harding declared: "We have come here to pay tribute to the marvelous achievement of a brief half century to which this city and its industries stand as a monument. They testify to us how far the South has progressed in a single generation: the generation since slavery was abolished and the rule of free labor and unfettere...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I spotlight the role of technology in the 1864 presidential election. Abraham Lincoln seeking another term, Republicans welcomed an opportunity to receive three more electoral votes. The GOP-controlled 38th Congress decided to approve statehood for Nevada, though its population numbered a mere forty thousand. Hurriedly, local delegates wrote a proposed constitution. October 26th , less than two weeks before Election Day, the text was sent by telegraph from Carson City to Washington. Tapping out 16,543 words took seven hours. There being no direct link, the message went to Salt Lake City then Chicago then Philadelphia then Washington. The longest telegram to date enabled statehood five day later. As things turned out, Nevada’s votes were not needed for Lincoln to win, but the Silver State did help the GOP achieve ratification of its 13t...

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I highlight Republican opposition to the Democratic Party's slave system. October 25th 1858, Senator William Seward warned of an inevitable clash between freedom and tyranny:  "Our country is a theater which exhibits in full operation two radically different political systems—the one resting on the basis of servile or slave labor, the other on the basis of voluntary labor of freemen. The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion and watchfulness. It debases those whose toil alone can produce wealth and resources for defense to the lowest degree of which human nature is capable—to guard against mutiny and insurrection; and thus wastes energies which otherwise might be employed in national development and aggrandizement. Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think that it is accidental, unnecessary, t...