More proof that Republicans were not more pro-civil rights than the Democrats pre-1964

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Constantly bringing up how progressive Western Republicans were when the Western states were less than 16% of Harrison's national pv result in 1888 is a very weak point: the fact is that progressive Republicans were a minority in the party slowly that slowly bled to death after 1876.

Also, yeah, you should really cite some academic sources (not pop history and certainly not Wikipedia) if you want to be taken seriously.

the GOP from its outset was benefiting business and over time this came at the expense of laboring interest as I illustrated with Banks defection.

I've been working through Jean Attie's Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War, and it includes a fascinating analysis of the strategy by conservative nationalists to use the activities of the U.S. Sanitary Commission as a pretext to enact their capitalist economic agenda under the guise of war relief efforts told from the female perspective.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Also, yeah, you should really cite some academic sources (not pop history and certainly not Wikipedia) if you want to be taken seriously.

This isn't the 2000s, Wikipedia has its issues but I have a great confidence that Henry Charles Carey was an economic nationalist and the Nathanial P. Banks did in fact leave the GOP in 1872, in part because the increasing prioritization of business interests harmed his working class constituents.

But sure let's up the sourcing standards randomly here, so that obvious facts like Lincoln's economic agenda (as implemented) and Bank's political views are dropped from the conversation and we can pine for the days of that great Socialist President Ulysses S. Grant when business was reigned in, wealth was redistributed, corruption was stopped and tycoons didn't make out like literal bandits while the rest of the economy tanked....

I'm getting a defensive vibe here, but that part of my post wasn't a response to you? Henry cited Wikipedia and several articles published by a left-wing news outlet as evidence for his theory, and I suggested that he look to more scholarly sources for qualitative historical analysis. Wikipedia does a fairly good job collecting and organizing facts; it does a generally worse job of interpreting those facts. I am alike confident that they got the details of Banks' party affiliation right; I'm less confident they're in a position to state the GOP was a "Classical Liberal" party in the 1850s (as the article apparently does). I've been right there with you arguing that Grant was anything but a socialist, so I don't know why you're implying that's my position.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Re: Fitzhugh, it's worth noting that while yes, he is indicative of the reactionary paternalism of the Southern planter class in many respects, he is also a serious outlier: someone like Jefferson Davis would never agree with Fitzhugh's ultimate contention that race is unimportant and 19/20 white people should be slaves as well. Interestingly, he does address (actual) socialism in Cannibals All!, arguing essentially that the socialists were right about the diagnosis, but not the prescription: capitalism is a failure, but it is slavery, and not communism, that is the natural state of man and the "end" of history.