Chapter 93: White Man’s Party

351     told four congresswomen of color Though Trump did not mention the congresswomen by name, his tweets were targeted at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Only Omar was born outside of the United States. Jonathan Lemire and Calvin Woodward, “Leave the US, Trump Tells Liberal Congresswomen of Color,” Associated Press (AP) News, July 14, 2019, apnews.com/article/728ada1e918a482c9e9b1f3e24937caa.

351     “go back” . . . ”came from”  Trump wrote, “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!” Donald J. Trump, Twitter, July 14, 2019, 8:27 a.m., x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381396994723841, archived at archive.today, September 9, 2020 capture, archive.ph/5mscZ.

351     denied that Trump’s tweets were racist  When asked by a reporter if Trump’s tweets were racist, McCarthy firmly answers, “No.” Washington Post, “McCarthy: Trump’s Tweets Were Not Racist,” YouTube, July 16, 2019, youtu.be/TjAASh7mKHU?si=38R1bcTurxjYpsu4, 0:00–0:05.

351     “We are the party of Lincoln” Washington Post, “McCarthy: Trump’s Tweets Were Not Racist,” youtu.be/TjAASh7mKHU?si=38R1bcTurxjYpsu4, 2:16–2:17.

351     “The Republican Party is the party of . . .”  Right Side Broadcasting Network, “Full Event: Donald Trump Rally in Everett, WA 8/30/16 (RSBN CAMERAS),” YouTube, August 30, 2016, www.youtube.com/live/gPfautohnMw?si=u9h9WtTAiP8NabZ7, 48:30–48:47.

351     “It is the Democratic Party that is the party of slavery, the party of Jim Crow”  Right Side Broadcasting Network, “Full Event: Donald Trump Rally in Everett, WA 8/30/16 (RSBN CAMERAS),” www.youtube.com/live/gPfautohnMw?si=u9h9WtTAiP8NabZ7, 48:50–48:57.

351     founding in 1828  “While there is no precise date for the beginning of the Democratic party, its origin can be traced to the late 1700s when Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party organized opposition to the Federalist Party . . . Most historians agree that the Democratic party as we know it today began with Andrew Jackson’s successful 1828 presidential campaign.” CNN, “Democratic Party History,” in “1996 Democratic National Convention: Chicago,” CNN.com, accessed March 28, 2025, edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/conventions/chicago/facts/history/index.shtml.

351     supported or accepted slavery and its expansion  On the “popular sovereignty” policy of the Democrats, which empowered White men in territories (rather than Congress) to decide on the slavery question, see Joshua A. Lynn, Preserving the White Man’s Republic: Jacksonian Democracy, Race, and the Transformation of American Conservatism (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2019), 11–33. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/1065821195.

351     enacted laws . . . from remaining in enslaving states  At least six Democrat-led enslaving states—Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Virginia, and Arkansas—prohibited emancipated people from remaining in the state. For legislative details, see Henry W. Farnam, Chapters in the History of Social Legislation in the United States to 1860, ed. Clive Day (Union, NJ: Lawbook Exchange, 2000), 199–200; and Judith Kelleher Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846–1862 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2003), 146–148. Find Chapters in the History of Social Legislation in the United States to 1860 (search.worldcat.org/title/42476722) and Becoming Free, Remaining Free (search.worldcat.org/title/51297235) at a local library.

351     from settling in Midwestern states  John A. Logan, then a Democrat, sponsored the Illinois Black Law of 1853, which banned Black migration into Illinois. In Indiana, 95 out of 150 delegates at the 1851 convention that drafted the constitution, which banned Black migration, were Democrats. See Illinois General Assembly, General Laws of the State of Illinois, Passed by the Eighteenth General Assembly, Convened January 3, 1853 (Springfield, IL: Lanphier & Walker, 1853), archive.org/details/lawsofstateofill1853illi/page/56/mode/2up, 57–60 (Illinois law text); “27. Illinois Black Law (1853),” 100 Most Valuable Documents at the Illinois State Archives, Illinois Secretary of State, accessed September 26, 2025, https://www.ilsos.gov/departments/archives/online-exhibits/100-documents/1853-black-law.html (law summary and information on Logan); David G. Vanderstel, “1851 Indiana Constitution,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed September 26, 2025, www.in.gov/history/about-indiana-history-and-trivia/explore-indiana-history-by-topic/state-constitutions/the-1851-indiana-constitution-by-david-g-vanderstel/ (composition of 1851 Indiana constitutional convention);“Constitution of 1851 as originally written: Article 13—Negroes and Mulattoes,” Indiana Historical Bureau, accessed September 26, 2025, www.in.gov/history/about-indiana-history-and-trivia/explore-indiana-history-by-topic/indiana-documents-leading-to-statehood/constitution-of-1851/article-13-negroes-and-mulattoes/(text of section 13 of 1851 Indiana Constitution).

351      “I want to have nothing to do either . . . the white man’s party”  The transcript of this speech notes that this line was met with “great applause.”   Speech of Hon. Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, at a Mass Meeting in Chicago, August 7, 1858 (Washington, D.C.: Buell & Blanchard, 1858), www.google.com/books/edition/Speech_of_Hon_Lyman_Trumball_of_Illinois/Nr0mDo_PGHQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP5&printsec=frontcover, 13.

351     “We are for free white men”  Speech of Hon. Lyman Trumbull, www.google.com/books/edition/Speech_of_Hon_Lyman_Trumball_of_Illinois/Nr0mDo_PGHQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP5&printsec=frontcover, 13.

352     helped found the Republican Party in 1854 Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 104–106. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/726734951.

352     advocates of “free soil” dominated  Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 58–65. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/726734951.

352     the North’s paper of record  Adam Tuchinsky, Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune: Civil-War Era Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 212. See also “New-York Tribune (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924,” Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, National Digital Newspaper Program, Library of Congress and National Endowment for the Humanities, accessed March 31, 2025, www.loc.gov/item/sn83030214/. To find Tuchinsky’s book at a library, visit search.worldcat.org/title/726824350.

352     “There are Republicans who are Abolitionists . . ."  New York Tribune, October 15, 1856, quoted in Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 61. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/726734951.

352     in pressing for the removal . . . from the United States James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865 (New York. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014), 279–280. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/783162639.

352     “The North does not want . . .” Lyman Trumbull in U.S. Congress, Congressional Globe, 36th Cong., 1st sess. (December 8, 1859), www.google.com/books/edition/The_Congressional_Globe/sw525nrZdcIC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA60&printsec=frontcover, 60.

352     appropriate money for remigration Abraham Lincoln, “Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Colored Men,” August 14, 1862, in Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-colonization-deputation-colored-men; and Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2011), 3–4. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/793207678.

352     failed to materialize See Sydney Trent, “Abraham Lincoln’s Disastrous Effort to Get Black People to Leave the U.S.,” Washington Post, February 19, 2023, www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/02/19/abraham-lincolns-disastrous-effort-get-black-people-leave-us/.

352     wanted to expand slavery . . . the policy of “popular sovereignty”  Lynn, Preserving the White Man’s Republic, 11–33; and Laura Schulte, “PolitiFact: Did Democrats Want to Expand Slavery Pre-Civil War, While Republicans Opposed It?” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, January 9, 2024, www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/politifactwisconsin/2024/01/09/did-democrats-want-to-expand-slavery-before-the-civil-war/72107569007/. Find White Man’s Republic at a library at search.worldcat.org/title/1065821195.

352     “where it exists”  During his first debate against Douglas, held in Ottawa, Illinois, in August 1858, Lincoln declared, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” Lincoln went on to directly quote this line in his first inaugural address in March 1861. Abraham Lincoln, “First Joint Debate, at Ottawa, August 21, 1858,” in Political Speeches and Debates of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, 1854–1861, ed. Alonzo T. Jones (Battle Creek, MI: International Tract Society, 1895), www.google.com/books/edition/Political_Speeches_and_Debates_of_Abraha/Gvc-AQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PR1&printsec=frontcover, 179; and Abraham Lincoln, “First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln,” March 4, 1861, The Avalon Project, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School, avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp.

352     seceded after Lincoln’s election  For a list of the eleven states that seceded, and their dates of secession, see “War Declared: States Secede from the Union,” Kennesaw Mountain, National Battlefield Park, National Park Service, September 19, 2023, www.nps.gov/kemo/learn/historyculture/wardeclared.htm.

352     attempted . . . only to save the Union In a letter to Horace Greeley in August 1862, Lincoln wrote, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about Slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union.” Abraham Lincoln, “Letter in Reply to Horace Greeley on Slavery and the Union—The Restoration of the Union the Paramount Object,” August 22, 1862, in Peters and Woolley, The American Presidency Project, www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/letter-reply-horace-greeley-slavery-and-the-union-the-restoration-the-union-the-paramount.

352     only way . . . was to end slavery “On July 13 Lincoln told Secretary of State William H. Seward and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles that he had nearly decided that an emancipation declaration was necessary in order to save the Union.” John B. Boles, Black Southerners, 1619–1869 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1984), 190. Find this book at a library at search.worldcat.org/title/900344791.

352     his offer . . . before 1900  In his Second Annual Message to Congress in December 1862, Lincoln proclaimed, “Our national strife springs not from our permanent part; not from the land we inhabit: not from our national homestead. There is no possible severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us.” He insisted that his scheme for “compensated emancipation” “would shorten the war, perpetuate peace, insure this increase of population, and proportionately the wealth of the country.” Abraham Lincoln, “December 1, 1862: Second Annual Message,” Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-1-1862-second-annual-message. Less than two months earlier, Lincoln had issued his Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, in which he warned Confederate enslaving states that if they did not surrender by January 1, 1863, “all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Abraham Lincoln, “Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation,” September 22, 1862, National Archives, www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/transcript_preliminary_emancipation.html.

352     signed . . . to join the Union Army and Navy “By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10% of the Union Army) served as soldiers in the U.S. Army and another 19,000 served in the Navy. Nearly 40,000 black soldiers died over the course of the war—30,000 of infection or disease . . . Black women, who could not formally join the Army, nonetheless served as nurses, spies, and scouts, the most famous being Harriet Tubman, who scouted for the 2d South Carolina Volunteers.” For a transcript of the proclamation, see Abraham Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation,” January 1, 1863, Milestone Documents, National Archives, www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/emancipation-proclamation. For more information on the service of Black men and women in Union forces, see “Black Soldiers in the U.S. Military During the Civil War,” National Archives, October 4, 2023, www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war.  

353     pursued his remigration plans “Though the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1862 did not include reference to colonization, one hour before Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation he signed an agreement with business man Bernard Kock to settle 5,000 contrabands in Haiti. In January 1863 Lincoln instructed that negotiations be held with foreign governments holding possessions in the Caribbean and Central America and these negotiations were continued into 1864. In early January 1865 Reverend James Mitchell, who worked with Lincoln throughout his Presidency on the issue of colonization, reported that Lincoln chose to close the policy of colonization ‘for the time being’ as it risked diverting manpower from the U.S. Colored Troop recruitment. Although there is a great deal of skepticism about the accuracy of the story because of his character, Benjamin Butler did meet Lincoln on April 11, 1865 and recounted that Lincoln expressed concerns about impending racial violence against freedmen and asked Butler to investigate using Central America as a prospective refuge. Whether his emerging vision for reconstruction would have included colonization as a policy cannot be known because of his untimely death.” Phillip W. Magness, “Lincoln and Colonization,” Essential Civil War Curriculum, Virginia Center for Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech, accessed April 1, 2025, www.essentialcivilwarcurriculum.com/lincoln-and-colonization.html.

353     more than 90 percent  “In 1861 there were about 4 million blacks in the United States. Almost 90 percent of African Americans, about 3.5 million, were slaves living in fifteen southern states. Slightly more than half of the remaining 10 percent were free blacks living in the South, and the rest were free blacks living in the North.” “Civil Rights: Slavery, Emancipation, and the Civil War,” in Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass, Vol. 1, ed. Paul Finkelman (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 277. Find the library book at search.worldcat.org/title/1081065259.

353     providing . . . civil and voting rights See “Reconstruction and Black Political Activism,” Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007, History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Historian, 2008, history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Essays/Fifteenth-Amendment/Reconstruction/.

353     largely looked the other way . . .  For details on the relationship between the Republicans’ abandonment of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow and lynchings, see “Back to Brutality: Restoring Racial Hierarchy Through Terror and Violence” and “Lynching in America: From ‘Popular Justice’ to Racial Terror,” in Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, 3^rd ed., accessed April 1, 2025, lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/.

353     welcomed segregationist Democrats. . . with Harry Truman  Southern segregationists resisted the civil rights movement and largely switched to the Republican Party in time for Ronald Reagan’s presidential election in 1980. Segregationist Southern Democrats walked out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention in protest of the party’s support for civil rights. They formed the States Rights Democratic (or Dixiecrat) Party and nominated Strom Thurmond of South Carolina—who later became a Republican over his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964—as their presidential candidate in the 1948 election. The official Dixiecrat platform declared, “We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by Federal fiat, regulations of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.” By contrast, the Dixiecrats “oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.” States Rights Democratic Party, “Platform of the States Rights Democratic Party,” August 14, 1948, Teaching American History, teachingamericanhistory.org/document/platform-of-the-states-rights-democratic-party/. On other key events that led to the Southern political migration to the Republican party by 1980, see Ron Elving, “Dixie’s Long Journey from Democratic Stronghold to Republican Redoubt,” It’s All Politics, NPR, June 25, 2015, www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/06/25/417154906/dixies-long-journey-from-democratic-stronghold-to-republican-redoubt.