Abraham Lincoln's personal assistant, John Hay, commemorated the Republican Party's fiftieth anniversary

Grand Old Partisan celebrates more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. Today, I appreciate the Republican Party's glorious heritage of achievement. July 6th 1904 – at Jackson, Michigan – John Hay delivered a classic address on the GOP fiftieth anniversary. Hay was Theodore Roosevelt's Secretary of State and had been Abraham Lincoln's personal assistant.

"A party was brought into being and baptized, which ever since has answered the purposes of its existence with fewer follies and failures and more magnificent achievements than ordinarily fall to the lot of any institution of mortal origin. And even the beginning of the end is not yet. This historic party is only now in the full maturity of its power and its capacity for good.

We look back upon a past of unparalleled usefulness and glory with emotions of thankfulness and pride; we confront the future and its exacting problems with a confidence born of the experience of difficulties surmounted and triumphs achieved in paths more thorny and ways more arduous than any that are likely to challenge the courage and the conscience of the generation which is to follow us. It is meet that at this stage of our journey we should review the past and read its lessons, and in its light take heart for what lies beyond.

The Republican Party had a noble origin. It sprang directly from an aroused and indignant national conscience. Questions of finance, of political economy, of orderly administration, passed out of sight for the moment, to be taken up and dealt with later on.

But in 1854 the question that brought the thinking men together was whether there should be a limit to the aggressions of slavery; and in 1861 that solemn inquiry turned to one still more portentous, Should the nation live or die?

The humblest old Republican in America has a right to be proud that in the days of his youth, in the presence of these momentous questions, he judged right; and if he is sleeping in his honored grave his children may justly be glad of his decision.

A system which degraded men, dishonored women, deprived little children of the sacred solace of home, was doomed from the hour it passed into the arena of free debate. And even if we shut our eyes to the moral aspects of that heartless system, and confined ourselves to the examination of its economic merits, it was found to be wasteful and inefficient. The Americans are at once the most sentimental and the most practical of peoples and when they see that an institution is morally revolting, and, besides, does not pay, its fate is sealed.

If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong — and Abraham Lincoln came upon the field not to leave it until he was triumphant in death.

If there is one thing more than another in which we Republicans are entitled to a legitimate pride, it is that Lincoln was our first President; that we believed in him, loyally supported him while he lived, and that we have never lost the right to call ourselves his followers. There is not a principle avowed by the Republican Party today which is out of harmony with his teachings or inconsistent with his character.

What young man would not rather belong to the party that does things, instead of one that opposes them; to the party that looks up, rather than down; to the party of the dawn, rather than of the sunset?

For fifty years the Republican Party has believed in the country and labored for it in hope and joy; it has reverenced the flag and followed it; it has carried it under strange skies and planted it on far-receding horizons. It has seen the nation grow greater every year and more respected; by just dealing, by intelligent labor, by a genius for enterprise.

We have fought a good fight, but also we have kept the faith. The Constitution of our fathers has been the light to our feet; our path is, and will ever remain, that of ordered progress, of liberty under the law. The country has vastly increased, but the great-brained statesmen who preceded us provided for infinite growth. The discoveries of science have made miraculous additions to our knowledge.

But we are not daunted by progress; we are not afraid of the light. The fabric our fathers built on such sure foundations will stand all shocks of fate or fortune. There will always be a proud pleasure in looking back on the history they made; but, guided by their example, the coming generation has the right to anticipate work not less important, days equally memorable to mankind.

We who are passing off the stage bid you, as the children of Israel encamping by the sea were bidden, to Go Forward; we whose hands can no longer hold the flaming torch pass it on to you that its clear light may show the truth to the ages that are to come."

Back to Basics for the Republican Party is my civil rights history of the GOP. To quote the book: "The more we Republicans know about the history of our party, the more Democrats will worry about the future of theirs. For more information, see www.grandoldpartisan.com. 

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Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.

Each day, his YouTube videos and TikTok videos and Rumble videos and Grand Old Partisan blog celebrate more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states.

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