US History 101...The founding of the Democrat-Republican Party

[Thomas Jefferson...founder of the Democrat-Republican Party ]

The Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the United States and among the oldest political parties in the world. It traces its roots to 1792, when followers of Thomas Jefferson adopted the name Republican to emphasize their antimonarchical views. The Republican Party, also known as the Jeffersonian Republicans, advocated a decentralized government with limited powers. Another faction to emerge in the early years of the republic, the Federalist Party, led by Alexander Hamilton, favoured a strong central government. Jefferson’s faction developed from the group of Anti-Federalists who had agitated in favour of the addition of a Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States. The Federalists called Jefferson’s faction the Democratic-Republican Party in an attempt to identify it with the disorder spawned by the “radical democrats” of the French Revolution of 1789. After the Federalist John Adams was elected president in 1796, the Republican Party served as the country’s first opposition party, and in 1798 the Republicans adopted the derisive Democratic-Republican label as their official name.

The Democratic National Convention began the Democratic National Committee in 1848. It has become the longest running political organization in the world. The Convention gave the committee the job of promoting the party causes between the conventions and also preparing for each of the next conventions.
On the issue of slavery at the 1860 Democratic Convention, Democrats held that each State had the right to prohibit or recognize slavery. This position caused Northern Democrats to withdraw from the convention and become the Republican Party. The Southern Democrats and the Northern Democrats each nominated their own separate candidates for President that year. The election was ultimately lost to Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln.

• Grand Old Partisan
• Republican Basics
• Back to Basics for the Republican Party 

• Yes, the Ku Klux Klan was the Terrorist Wing of the Democratic Party

  As explained in Back to Basics for the Republican Party, the Ku Klux Klan was the Terrorist Wing of the Democratic Party.
  Now is the time to speak some Truth to Power.  The Ku Klux Klan was established by the Democratic Party.  Yes, the Ku Klux Klan murdered thousands of Republicans -- black and white -- in the years following the Civil War.  Yes, the Klan's body count included a congressman, Rep. James Hinds (R-AR).  Yes, the Republican Party and a Republican President, Ulysses Grant, destroyed the KKK with their Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
  How did the Ku Klux Klan re-emerge in the 20th century?  For that, the Democratic Party is to blame.
  It was a racist Democrat President, Woodrow Wilson, who premiered Birth of a Nation in the White House.  That racist movie was based on a racist book written by one of Wilson's racist friends from college.  In 1915, the movie spawned the modern-day Klan, with its burning crosses and white sheets. 
  
  
  Inspired by the movie, some Georgia Democrats revived the Klan.  Soon, the Ku Klux Klan again became a powerful force within the Democratic Party.  The KKK so dominated the 1924 Democratic Convention that Republicans, speaking truth to power, called it the Klanbake.  In the 1930s, a Democrat President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, appointed a Klansman, Senator Hugo Black (D-AL), to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  In the 1950s, the Klansmen against whom the civil rights movement struggled were Democrats.  The notorious police commissioner Bull Connor, who attacked African-Americans with dogs and clubs and fire hoses, was both a Klansman and the Democratic Party's National Committeeman for Alabama.  Starting in the 1980s, the Democratic Party elevated a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), to third-in-line for the presidency. 
  
  
  Speaking more Truth to Power, the Republican Party has been a resolute enemy of the Ku Klux Klan, terrorist wing of the Democratic Party.  To quote from my book, "The more we Republicans know about the history of our party, the more the Democrats will worry about the future of theirs."
  Michael Zak is a popular speaker to Republican organizations around the country.  Back to Basics for the Republican Party is his acclaimed history of the GOP, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision.  He is also the author of the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar.  His Grand Old Partisan website celebrates more than fifteen decades of Republican heroes and heroics.  See www.grandoldpartisan.com and @Michael_Zak for more information.