Republican Party

By the mid-1850s there emerged an anti-slavery party to replace the disintegrating Whig
Party; this was the new Republican Party. When Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) ran for president
as a Republican in 1860, his party was not even on the ballot in North Carolina. Because the new
party was associated with abolition and later with a bloody Civil War, it was for a long time
referred to in the South as “the Black Republican Party” or even “the Radical Party.”
The early Republican Party of North Carolina was to ultimately consist of a combination
of black former-slaves, native whites (primarily former members of the defunct Whig Party)
disparagingly called “Scalawags,” and northern transplants called “Carpetbaggers.” It was,
despite the picture painted by Democrats at the time, a moderate party of nationalism, free
enterprise, and racial toleration, supporting political but not social equality for African
Americans. While blacks made up a significant proportion of the party, the organization was led
primarily by native white Southerners.
The North Carolina party was officially organized by the first interracial political
gathering in the history of the state on March 27, 1867, when 101 whites and 46 African
Americans gathered in the Capitol House Chamber in Raleigh. The leader of the party was the
former Andrew Johnson (1808-1875) appointee as interim governor in 1865, William W. Holden
(1818-1892), editor of the North Carolina Standard.
The party took immediate positions in support of Congressional Reconstruction, approval
of the thirteenth (abolition of slavery) and fourteenth amendments (protecting civil liberties), and
black enfranchisement. Among its early successes were the writing of the Constitution of 1868,
the election of Holden as the first Republican governor, and the first participation by freedmen in
the electoral process.