The Republican Party
American people. Its very name is auspicious of that fact. There were others before it, two of them, which bore the same name; applied to them without special significance, as has been the case with many other party designations. Jefferson called his party the Republican, in contradistinction to the Federalist, though indeed the names would have been far more logically and fittingly applied if they had been exchanged. Again the name was used for a few years by the party opposed to Jacksonian Democracy, until it was merged with the Whigs. Neither of those short-lived organizations had in its purpose or in its achievements anything particularly to justify its use of the name. That was reserved for the present party which has now endured through a triumphant career twice as long as the united ages of its two predecessors.
Republican: The Party of the Republic. Republic: The Res Publica, the Common Wealth. The derivation of the name denotes its purport. It is the party not of a class or of a section or of a period, but of the general and lasting good of the whole people. It means the party which knows no sectional divisions on geographical lines, but has regard for North and South, for East and West, alike. It is the party which recognizes no distinctions of caste or class or social rank, but serves equally the interests of rich and poor, of employer and employe, of capital and labor, of domestic industry and external commerce; acting always upon the impregnable principle that the whole is greater than any of its parts, and that to promote the welfare of the whole nation is the best possible means of promoting the welfare of all the parts. It is the party which aims at once at progress in the arts of
6
