Since when did R lost media and intellectuals?

[Samof94]

No one in their right mind is going to claim that the Democrats were faithful adherents to the "founders" will in the 1850s and afterwards. That is the whole point and why Republicans sought so hard to claim to be fighting to preserve the legacy of Jefferson, in the face of the corrupting influence of the slave power, these things are well established.

Slavery consumed all aspects of the political sphere and defined many of the arguments in the 1850s and 1860s, but the problem comes when there is a presumption that this extends back prior to this period and extends long after this decade as well even as the issues shift extensively beginning in the 1870s.

So you’re willing to admit then that the Republican Party was founded in liberalism, whereas the Democrats of the same time were conservatives?

Henry, I will never condone any simplistic endorsement of a party flip its just too superficial and frankly insulting the complexities of the time to try and reduce everything down to what are essentially two very charged buzz words.

America was founded on the basis of a doctrine of liberalism, but even within that underlying framework there existed a right-left divide that extended from 1792 until about 1850. Just as a two party system redeveloped after the Glorious Revolution and again after the Hanoverian Succession/Jacobite Risings/Proscription (though it took most of the century). Slavery scrambled the deck chairs and to the extent that Republicans were fighting to preserve traditions of the founding while Democrats let themselves be corrupted of slave power, if you want to assign labels situationally based on that, fine.

However, nobody flipped a switch here and Northern Democrats (Lewis Cass and Stephen Douglas) bumbled their way into this still claiming to adhere to their "liberal principles" ie Popular Sovereignty. Very fitting that a Democratic party would condone the ability of localities to vote away the rights of a minority, very literal interpretation of majoritarian fiat.

The Republican Party was founded by radicals, egalitarians and yes liberals who were sick of this situation from both parties but notably skewing more from the Democrats at first (Van, Van he's a used up man. Then of course the situation of the Whigs is way too complex to reduce to a single sentence here), but it is worth noting that it was not this Republican Party that won and led the Civil War. Its defeat let to a broadening of the platform (Clay's economic policies) and welcoming in a number of more conservative minded people "halting the spread as opposed to outright abolition" and thus created a broad based big tent anti-slavery party that Northerners right to left could embrace for the sake of the country.

I have been saying the same thing here that I have for years Henry.

You mentioned the New York Tribune, the same paper that repeatedly attacked Lincoln, pushed for his replacement and whose editor led the Liberal Republican revolt against Grant. Prominent yes, but certainly not the only voice in town obviously. Clearly over the period of the 1860s into the 1870s, the people in the driver's seat were in flux and we know who won out.

In a party system in which slavery is the great dividing line, I think it is completely fair to say that the Republicans were on the left while the Democrats were on the right, even if the Republicans included conservatives amongst their ranks. I agree that the sort of conservatives Southern planters were was very different from the antebellum Northern Whigs or the McKinley Republicans, but that's because they were so much further right than either. In a sense, they were like the old Federalists, if you're inclined to view the Federalists as monarchists or noble types, which I might disagree with but was how a lot of people thought. When Southerners changed their defense of slavery from "necessary evil" to "positive good", and therefore either implicitly or explicitly repudiated Jeffersonian equality, it became evident that only the most ardent reactionaries could support such a system, which as you said drew Northern conservatives to the Republicans, who, while conservatives in the liberal climate of the North, were liberals relative to the Southern slave power. Even if the deck was scrambled, there was still a clear left and right in the fight. I find this quote from Wendell Phillips illuminating:

Virginia slaveholders, making theoretical democracy their passion, conquered the Federal Government, and emancipated the working classes of New England. Bitter was the cup to honest Federalism and the Essex Junto. Today, Massachusetts only holds to the lips of Carolina a beaker of the same beverage.

According to Phillips, the war against the slave power is the same fight that Jefferson fought, only the Democrats have taken the place of the Federalists. To the extent that they were both fights which pitted individual liberty men against wealth and privilege, I think he is objectively correct, and evidently so did liberal opinion.

I would contend that Stephen Douglas was a very conservative man, one who put "the dollar before the man", but regardless, for every pro-slavery Northern Democrat claiming to care about "popular sovereignty", you had a James Henry Hammond clamoring against the "mudsills of society". Those Southern newspaper excerpts I quoted earlier are indicative of this commonly-held latter attitude.

As for the Republicans, it is true that the radical wing of the party lost control after the defeat in 1856, so that the party which nominated Lincoln was much more of a big tent than that of four years earlier. Accordingly they became less radical on abolition, but I would disagree that their economic positions saw a change. It is important to remember that for many Americans, slavery was as much an economic issue as it was a moral one. The monopolization of western lands by wealthy slave owners prevented small farmers from moving west and having a piece of their own land to work on. This was the main anti-slavery argument of the Free Soilers, and it was wholly adopted by the Republicans, who believed in equal economic opportunity for all Americans. They also believed in the economic harmony of all classes, distinguishing them from class warriors on both sides. While on the one hand Southern planters envisaged a society in which the rich would hold down a permanent underclass, and on the other socialists imagined a dictatorship of the proletariat, Republicans held that the prosperity of each class depended on the others' well-being. Accordingly, they put into effect economic policies designed to benefit all segments of the population. I know you like to focus on how their tariffs benefited businessmen, but that's only one part of the picture. During the war the government experimented with printing greenbacks and implemented a progressive income tax, both of which helped the poor and hit wealthy men. They passed the Morrill Acts, drastically expanding the system of free schools which Southerners so hated, in order that any American could get an education and rise in the world according to his or her own talent. Perhaps most important of all was the Homestead Act, which allowed vast numbers of small farmers to obtain pieces of western land that previously had been monopolized by rich slavers. It was the ultimate expression of Republican and Free Soil principles.

It should be no surprise, then, that the economically left-wing New York Tribune stood solidly behind all of these policies. It may not have been the only voice in town, but surely it says something about the ideological leanings of the Republican Party that this radical paper run by a quasi-socialist was by far the main organ of that party. When Greeley went after Lincoln it was because he did not go far enough and was too moderate for the man. But yes, I would agree that the driver's seat of the party certainly changed under Grant, as men like Charles Sumner were pushed aside to make room for the Roscoe Conklings of the world. The Republicans abandoned their original emphasis on equality to become the party of big business, and it would not be until Theodore Roosevelt that the original liberal spirit of the party would see a revival. So with that, perhaps it would be best to end here with a quote from Roosevelt, describing Lincoln:

To-day many well-meaning men who have permitted themselves to fossilize, to become ultra-conservative reactionaries, to reject and oppose all progress, but who still pay a conventional and perfunctory homage to Lincoln's memory, will do well to remember exactly what it was for which this great conservative leader of radicalism actually stood.

In some states, being an abolitionist was something you could be literally killed for as if you drew Mohammed in a Muslim theocracy.