Misleading. The Republicans were formed out of the Whigs, and I think I read the other day that about 1/3rd of the slaveowners were Whigs.
“Misleading. The Republicans were formed out of the Whigs, and I think I read the other day that about 1/3rd of the slaveowners were Whigs.”
If D’Souza is correct (that no Republicans owned slaves) then either the early GOP purged themselves of slave-owning Whigs, or slave-owning Whigs decided not to join, or some Whigs freed their slaves. And any of those would actually be good things.
He’s referring to people when they were Republican, not before their conversion. There probably were former slave owners who became abolitionists and joined but it likely wasn’t common.
It’s an easy call since the reason the Republican Party was founded was opposition to slavery [it was founded in 1854] was to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act and eventually to abolish slavery altogether. There would be no reason for a slave owner, even if a Whig, to join the Republican Party, which at its beginning included free blacks.
It might be possible that a free black Republican or abolitionist might have bought slaves in order to keep families together since it was not uncommon for slaves on different plantations to be married and not uncommon for freemen to be married to slaves. But it would not be for labor, rather, to try to save earnings in the hope of buying the freedom of a spouse or child. Abolitionists might try to reunite people too. But while legally the buyers ‘owned’ the purchased, having paid fair and square, or being in the process of paying, obviously in practice they were not holding slaves.
Oh, that was "the Whigs". They were defeated too.
The Abolitionists became the Repubicans.
Focus.
What I was saying is the Republicans owned no slaves.
You are correct. Just as it is entirely untrue that there were only Republicans leading the Union Army. Several major names decry that claim:
George B.McClellan, Winfield Scott Hancock, Dan Sickles, Benjamin “Beast”Butler,John Alexander McClernand, John Logan,William Rosecrans, Benjamin Franklin Loan, Robert C. Schenk (Whig Republican), John C. Fremont (initially asked to be Democrat Presidential candidate), Nathaniel Banks(Democrat up until 1854). Lot of fence jumpers, for the opportunities afforded them in the winning side.
And notably the Union Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton (only changed to republican in 1862).