Being Clear about Slavery and the Parties in favor of it

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law. This created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, but allowed them to determine by popular sentiment of those area's settlers if they were to have slaves or not. The bill was crafted by a very prominent Democrat, Stephen Douglas, and was supported by the democratically-controlled congress.

The Republican Party was formed in opposition to the inclusion of slavery in the act. Republicans felt that slavery should be abolished at least in all new territories joining the Union, if not in its entirety for the whole of the union. Republicans believed that an economic system based on slavery was not only immoral, but also unable to compete with the modern industrial system emerging in the North.

This explains why the South has been historically Democratic - as far back as the Missouri Compromise, the Democratic party had been in support of slave holders and slavery as a viable economic system. Apparently, despite the Civil War and Reconstruction, the South's sentiments toward the Democratic party never changed. This is likely due to Lincoln's being a Republican, and the South atributing their loss of the war, their pride, and their previous way of life directly to the Republicans. Therefore, the Republican party never took hold there.

So the next time someone holds the Republicans up as anti-black, anti-minority, anti-liberal, show them this:

Kansas-Nebraska Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia