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Joseph Abbott, from New Hampshire Soldier to North Carolina Senator

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Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I salute Joseph Abbott, born in New Hampshire, July 15th 1825. He edited a newspaper after studying law. An anti-slavery governor commissioned him to reorganize the state militia. During the Civil War, Abbott commanded the state’s 7th Infantry. His regiment battled through Virginia and the Carolinas. Stationed at Wilmington when peace restored, he decided to remain. Abbott empathized with African-Americans and defended their rights at the 1868 constitutional convention. That year, the legislature elected him a U.S. Senator. Receiving his vote were the 15th Amendment, the [anti-] Ku Klux Klan Act and other GOP achievements. He also served on the Republican National Committee. Later years, Abbott worked in the lumber industry and founded a newspaper. President Ulysses Grant and President Rutherford Hayes named him to Treasury Department posit...
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Maggie Walker, the first Female Bank President

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Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I honor Maggie Walker, born in Richmond, July 15th 1864. Her mother was a slave. Walker started out teaching school, then established a laundry business. Age fourteen, the social activist joined the Independent Order of St. Luke, a fraternal society that cared for the sick and aged while encouraging self-reliance and integrity. She eventually rose to be its national leader. In 1903, Walker chartered the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank. She stayed on as chairman when, during the Depression, it merged with two other institutions to become the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company. This savvy entrepreneur also established a department store and a newspaper. Walker served on the NAACP board. In 1921, she was Republican nominee for superintendent of public instruction. There stands in downtown Richmond a statue of Maggie Walker, recogniz...
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the Lincoln Penny

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Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I revere the greatest Republican of them all. Abraham Lincoln was the first actual person depicted on a U.S. coin. President Theodore Roosevelt instructed the Treasury Department to develop coinage with more artistic designs. This undertaking included a replacement for the Indian Head penny. In the centenary year of his birth, the Lincoln Penny was crafted. The portrait was based on a Matthew Brady photograph. July 14th 1909, President William Howard Taft’s Treasury Secretary, Franklin MacVeagh, approved the new coin. Demand was intense, with people lining up for it at banks. February 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the Treasury Department to end production of the coin, which by then cost much more than one cent each. Back to Basics for the Republican Party is my civil rights history of the GOP. To quote the book: "The more we Republicans kn...
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Arthur Capper, first Governor of Kansas born in the Sunflower State

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Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I honor Arthur Capper, born in Kansas, July 14th 1865. Having learned printing, he started as newspaper reporter and worked his way up to publish the Topeka Daily Capital . His business holdings expanded to a radio station and several magazines. Capper chaired the board of regents for Kansas Agricultural College, now Kansas State University. In 1912, he ran for governor but lost to the Democrat incumbent by a mere twenty-nine votes. He was elected two years later, then re-elected. This conservative Republican chaired the National Governors Association. In 1918, Capper won first of five U.S. Senate terms. Promoting agriculture was his top priority. He voted for relief measures but resolutely opposed New Deal socialism. Capper merited renown as benefactor of children and the disabled, and for promoting the 4-H movement. He is buried n...
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the first Nominating Convention of the Ohio Republican Party

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Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I highlight origin of the Ohio Republican Party. July 13th 1855, anti-slavery activists gathered at the Methodist Episcopal Church in the state capital. They were outraged by the Democrats' scheme to expand slavery into the western territories. Their purpose was to unite all friends of freedom.  "There is one question made by Southern slave-holders at this momentous crisis, as common to all as the free air of heaven. It is whether this Republic and its free institutions shall be ruled by, and its great mission of freedom be sunk into an oligarchy of slave-holders and the extension of slavery and the slave power." Chairing the convention was John Sherman, who went on to be U.S. Senator and Secretary of State. Chairing the platform committee was Rufus Spalding. He became an influential Congressman during the Civil War and Recons...
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Founding of the Vermont Republican Party

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Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I commemorate founding of the Vermont Republican Party. Outraged by pro-slavery Democrats, friends of freedom in the Green Mountain State called for a convention to replace the Whig Party with a broad coalition of anti-slavery activists. Invited were "all persons who are in favor of resisting by all constitutional means the usurpations of the propagandists of Slavery." July 13th 1854, six hundred people assembled at a church in Montpelier. Presiding was Lawrence Brainerd, soon to be elected U.S. Senator. He went on to be instrumental in formation of a nationwide Republican organization. The platform resolved: "to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity, and also a wise, just and economical administration of the government; and as the principles for which we are contending lie at the foundation of Republicanism, as proclaime...
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