INTRODUCTION
This is a History. It is not a political treatise or special plea. It is, in brief form, a review of the history of the Republican party of the United States from its origin to the present time. It aims to present a concise, coherent narrative of events and achievements, with only such explanation and comment as may be necessary to make the relation of cause and effect clear to the reader's mind and thus to indicate what the Republican party has stood for in the life of the American nation, what it stands for to-day and what it promises for the future. If, as the authors frankly desire and expect, the net effect of this presentation shall be to incline a greater number of the voters of this country, and particularly of the millions of new and newly-enfranchised citizens, to the support of the Republican party, this result will be accomplished, not by persuasiveness of rhetoric or passion of partisan appeal, but rather by the irresistible logic of facts which are matters of record.
It is also the hope of the authors that these pages will convince a vast number of those who are about to exercise for the first time the full privileges of American citizenship that it is their duty to affiliate themselves sincerely and loyally with one or the other of the two great parties which have so long existed in American politics. Politics is the science of government. Nicholas Murray Butler has well said: "Politics is not office-seeking; politics is not the use of devious arts of
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