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Republican Mascot & History of the Party
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Origin of the Republican Party
At the time of its founding, the Republican Party was organized as an answer to the divided politics, political turmoil, arguments and internal division, particularly over slavery, that plagued the many existing political parties in the United States in 1854. The Free Soil Party, asserting that all men had a natural right to the soil, demanded that the government re-evaluate homesteading legislation and grant land to settlers free of charge. The Conscience Whigs, the "radical" faction of the Whig Party in the North, alienated themselves from their Southern counterparts by adopting an anti-slavery position. And the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed territories to determine whether slavery would be legalized in accordance with "popular sovereignty" and thereby nullify the principles of the Missouri Compromise, created a schism within the Democratic Party.
A staunch Anti-Nebraska Democrat, Alvan E. Bovay, like his fellow Americans, was disillusioned by this atmosphere of confusion and division. Taking advantage of the political turmoil caused by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bovay united discouraged members from the Free Soil Party, the Conscience Whigs and the Anti-Nebraska Democrats. Meeting in a Congregational church in Ripon, Wis., he helped establish a party that represented the interests of the North and the abolitionists by merging two fundamental issues: free land and preventing the spread of slavery into the Western territories. Realizing the new party needed a name to help unify it, Bovay decided on the term Republican because it was simple, synonymous with equality and alluded to the earlier party of Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republicans.
On July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Mich., the Republican Party formally organized itself by holding its first convention, adopting a platform and nominating a full slate of candidates for state offices. Other states soon followed, and the first Republican candidate for president, John C. Frémont, ran in 1856 with the slogan "Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Frémont."
Even though he ran on a third-party ticket, Frémont managed to capture a third of the vote, and the Republican Party began to add members throughout the land. As tensions mounted over the slavery issue, more anti-slavery Republicans began to run for office and be elected, even with the risks involved with taking this stance.
Republican Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts experienced this danger firsthand. In May 1856, he delivered a passionate anti-slavery speech in which he made critical remarks about several pro-slavery senators, including Andrew F. Butler of South Carolina. Sumner infuriated Rep. Preston S. Brooks, the son of one of Butler's cousins, who felt his family honor had been insulted. Two days later, Brooks walked into the Senate and beat Sumner unconscious with a cane. This incident electrified the nation and helped to galvanize Northern opinion against the South; Southern opinion hailed Brooks as a hero. But Sumner stood by his principles, and after a three-year, painful convalescence, he returned to the Senate to continue his struggle against slavery.
With the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, the Republicans firmly established themselves as a major party capable of holding onto the White House for 60 of the next 100 years.
Origin of "GOP"
A favorite of headline writers, GOP dates back to the 1870s and '80s. The abbreviation was cited in a New York Herald story on October 15, 1884; "' The G.O.P. Doomed,' shouted the Boston Post.... The Grand Old Party is in condition to inquire...."
But what GOP stands for has changed with the times. In 1875 there was a citation in the Congressional Record referring to "this gallant old party," and , according to Harper's Weekly, in the Cincinnati Commercial in 1876 to "Grand Old Party."
Perhaps the use of "the G.O.M." for Britain's Prime Minister William E. Gladstone in 1882 as " the Grand Old Man" stimulated the use of GOP in the United States soon after.
In early motorcar days, GOP took on the term "get out and push." During the 1964 presidential campaign, "Go-Party" was used briefly, and during the Nixon Administration, frequent references to the "generation of peace" had happy overtones. In line with moves in the '70s to modernize the party, Republican leaders took to referring to the "grand old party," harkening back to a 1971 speech by President Nixon at the dedication of the Eisenhower Republican Center in Washington, D.C.
Indeed, the "grand old party" is an ironic term, since the Democrat Party was organized some 22 years earlier in 1832.
Republican Elephant -
The symbol of the elephant first appeared in Harper's Weekly on November 7, 1874 in a cartoon by Thomas Nast.
Two unconnected events led to the birth of the Republican Elephant. In the political arena of the time, Ulysses S. Grant was midway through his second term as President and considering a third term. The New York Herald and illustrated journalists were depicting Grant wearing a crown raising the cry of "Caesarism." The Democrats had taken up the issue during the mid-term elections in order to disaffect Republican voters.
At the same time, in a completely non-political arena, the Herald was involving itself in a delightful hoax known as the Central Park Menagerie Scare of 1874. They ran a story, totally untrue, claiming that the animals of the zoo had broken loose and were roaming New York's Central Park in search of prey.
Cartoonist Thomas Nast took the two events and put them together in a cartoon for Harper's Weekly. He showed an ass (symbolizing the Herald) wearing a lion's skin (the scary prospect of Caesarism) frightening away the animals in the forest (Central Park). The caption quoted a familiar fable:
"An ass having put on a lion's skin roamed about in the forest and amused himself by frightening all the foolish animals he met within his wanderings."
--From William Safire's New Language off Politics, Revised edition, Collier Books, New York, 1972.
One of the foolish animals in the cartoon was an elephant, representing the Republican vote - not the party. It showed the Republican vote being frightened away from its normal ties by the phony scare of Caesarism. In a subsequent cartoon, after the election in which the Republicans did badly, Nast showed the elephant in a trap, illustrating how the Republican vote had been decoyed from its normal allegiance. Other cartoonists picked up the symbol and it soon ceased to represent the voters, but came to represent the Party itself. The jackass, now referred to as the donkey, made a natural transition from representing the Herald to representing the Democrats who had frightened the elephant.
Information Obtained from -
National Republican Congressional Committee.
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