When the Republican Party supported 'wage-earners'

          The Republican Party has long been identified as the "party of big business'.  Their opposition to raising the minimum wage, their refusal to support legislation which protects the rights of workers and their attempts to break unions would certainly give one reason to believe that the GOP has always allied itself with big business.  However, that is not true.
          To say that the group of people classified as "wage-earners" was crucial to the development of the Republican Party would not be an understatement.  "Wage-earners" in a society that prided itself on "independent yeoman farmers" was seen by most Southerners and some Northerners as a form of "slavery" far worse than anything in the South.  However, the founders of the Republican party saw this group of laborers, who they believed had both the opportunity and motivation to improve their condition in life because they were free to earn wages, as a symbol of the free Northern society.  As Eric Froner noted, "Republicans consolidated the free labor ideology and gave it its deepest meaning."  A meaning that had been enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and forever protected and guaranteed by the Constitution: freedom.
          For the Republicans, a slave society was "the antitheis of free" and the key to the free society in the North was the idea that upward mobility existed.  Those who were born poor were not condemned to remain poor all their lives.  Nor, for that matter,  were they condemned to a life of labor.  Many "wage-earners" believed that their jobs were not the "end", but rather a "means to an end": ownership of land and independence.
          Republican political thought and ideology was based on the idea of "free labor", that is, a labor force whose members were free to choose the type of work they would do, the manner in which they would dispose of their earnings, how long they would work and at what rate of pay.  They were, as Abraham Lincoln would say, free to enjoy "the fruits of their labor".  Granted this utopian ideal never really exist, and the same "free labor" ideology was used to protect employers from government interference regarding regulation of the work place and prevent employees from a legal recourse to address their grievances. However, people in the North believed that this ideal society could exist, and the only obstacle in its way was the slave society of the South.
          When Salmon Chase wrote and spoke about the SlavePower of the South which dominated the Federal Government and threatened to dominate the country, the implications were clear.  The imposition of Southern society on the North would not only reintroduce slavey to a section of the country that had rid itself of that "peculiar institution", but would also destroy the upward mobility and lack of "class structure" that the North saw as one of its greatest assets.  The South, in the opinion of the Republicans and many Northerners, was ruled by a small slave-owning planter aristocracy that impoverished a large group of white people because there was no chance of upward mobility, refused to accept change because it threatened their status and power, and enslaved an even larger group to do the work that they refused to do.
          The most important contribution made by this new group of "wage-earners" was not that they comprised sixty percent of the Northern population and therefore, if they voted as a group, would give any national candidate a clear majority in the North.  Rather, the concept of "free labor", which they symbolized, became a unifying force, not only within the newly formed Republican party and throughout Northern society, but also offered the common ground upon which many Northern Democrats and former Whigs could agree.
          For Northern Democrats who now felt alienated from their party because of their anti-slavery stance but never would have joined forces with Whigs or embraced Whig ideology, the issue of  "free labor", which "lay at the heart of Republican ideology" allowed them to join the Republican party without necessarily compromising their beliefs.  These Democratic leaders who would exert considerable influence in the still developing party were from the Jacksonian era.  They saw the idea of "free labor" as not only compatible with Jacksonian democracy, but as a natural extension of it.  Just as universal male suffrage had opened the doors of government to the common man and put him on the path to independence but allowing him a political voice, so "free labor" would open the doors of land ownership to those born in poverty and ensure that the egalitarian society of independent landowners envisioned by the Founding Fathers and put forth by both Jeffereson and Jackson as the ideal would flourish.
          Much to the dismay of Abolitionists and Radical Republicans who called for the immediate destruction of the institution based  on moral precepts, Slavery was not seen, by a significant number in the North, in terms of how it degraded and/or abused the slaves.  Rather, it was seen in terns of how it degraded and/or abused the poorer whites in society.  Northern political leaders  and journalists wrote at great length about the degradation of the poor white Southerner who, because of the aristocratic nature of the South, had no chance for upward mobility, and who, because this same Southern aristocracy viewed menial labor by whites as demeaning, were forever doomed to a life of poverty.  Their Northern brothers, however, had, through "free labor" the chance to move up the social ladder.  The extension of this "free labor" into the South would offer the same freedom to poor whites.
          Given the fact that the majority of whites during this period, North as well as South, believed the white race was superior to the black, the promotion of "free labor" and the containment of slavery to one section of the country was yet another source of unity.  By keeping Slavery and blacks out of new territories and states, the homogeneity of the white race in those areas would be protected.  People may have believed Slavery that Slavery was morally wrong.  They may have viewed Slavery as a contradiction to the democracy.  They may have understood that no country can profess to be free when slavery exists.  But they did not believe in total and complete equality between the races.
          The "wage-earners" and the idea of a society built on "free labor", not slavery, was the glue that held the North together.  Whatever their political and philosophical differences, Northerners, as a society, believed that "free labor" was necessary to maintain their ideal of a country which offered its citizens a "national freedom" and the opportunity to achieve economic independence.

The Republicans, the present day Tea Party and the colonists of the 1700s

          Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, wrote that "when a long train of abuses and usurpations . . . evinces a design" intended to force a group of people to live "under absolute despotism", then "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government . . . ."
          The present day Tea Party members and supporters, as well as other conservative Republicans, like to think of themselves as carrying on in the tradition of the leaders of the American Revolution and fighting for the same freedoms against an equally tyrannical government.  Are they really continuing the good fight to protect the freedoms gained in the American Revolution and guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights?  Or are they misleading the public by wrapping themselves in the hallowed past but having little understanding as to the "abuses and usurpations" the people living in the colonies objected to in the 1700s?
          To answer that question, it is necessary to understand what some of the "abuses and usurpations" to which Jefferson referred in the Declaration of Independence.  Perhaps the best way to answer that question is to begin at the beginning with a brief explanation of how the colonies were chartered and how the first colonists viewed themselves and their relation to Britain.
          David Ramsay, in his HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION VOLUME ONE, which was originally published in Philadelphia by R.Aitken in 1789 and reprinted in 1990 by Liberty Fund, Inc. in 1990, discussed the initial grants of land to "Thomas Gates and his associates . . . adventurers  . . . empowered to transport thither as many English subjects as should willingly accompany them; and it was declared 'that the colonists and their children should enjoy the same liberties as if they had remained, or were born, within the realm'"(Ramsay HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, VOLUME ONE, 6).  That declaration specifically guaranteed to all British citizens in the North American continent the same rights as citizens still living in Britain.  The importance of this guarantee cannot be understated.  For it was this promise of retained citizenship which formed the basis for the colonists' belief that initially Parliament, then King George III, had abused their powers and denied the colonists their rights as British citizens.
  One of the most fundamental rights of British citizens was that they could not be taxed without having given their consent through their representatives in Parliament.  If the colonists in remained British citizens and retained their rights, did Parliament have the right to impose taxes on them if they were not represented in Parliament?  The question remained unresolved until 1767.
In that year, Parliament attempted to both answer that question and assert its complete authority over the North American colonies by passing the Townshend Acts.  Many colonists believed the Acts were intended to impose a tax, not a duty.  John Dickinson, in the second in his series of "Letters from a Farmer", wrote that the acts appeared "to me to be unconstitutional, and . . . destructive to the liberty of these colonies . . . ."(Dickinson, in Greene, Colonies to Nation).  He also noted that "never did the British Parliament" until those Acts, "think of imposing duties in America, FOR THE PURPOSE OF RAISING REVENUE"(Dickinson).
Although Parliament had not previously tried a direct tax, the issue of whether Parliament had the authority to do so had been discussed in the early colonial period.  David Ramsay wrote that "Massachusetts had . . .questioned the authority of Parliament to tax them and legislate for them"(Ramsay, 14) before the charter for Pennsylvania had been granted in 1781.
James Otis had addressed the subject of taxation in his "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved".  Otis believed that "taxation without representation" was a deprivation of a fundamental basic right and would ultimately lead to the loss of all civil rights.  He further stated "that no parts of His Majesty's dominion can be taxed without their consent; every part had a right to be represented"(Otis, in Greene, Colonies to Nation) and Parliament's denial of representation to every area of the empire "would seem to be a contradiction in practice of the theory of the constitution" (Otis).
Jonathan Mayew, who died before the passage of the Townshend Acts, also commented on the need for British citizens in North America to protect their rights.  Bernard Baiylin, in his book Face of the Revolution, wrote that Mayew, a Congregationalist minister in Boston, clearly believed that "No claim to a natural obedience" to any ruler or ruling body "can or should override a people's 'just concern for their own rights, or legal, constitutional privileges'"(Bailyn, Faces of the Revolution,135).  Like Otis and Dickinson, Mayew urged his listeners to remember their rights as Englishmen and defend those rights whenever the government appeared to be violating them.
"Taxation without representation" was a major issue and a dominant one in the minds of the colonists, but it certainly was not the only reason colonists were angered by the actions of Britain's rulers and their royal agents in the colonies.  John Adams and Harbottle Dorr led very different lives.  Adams would become President of the yet to be created United States.  Dorr would die leaving barely enough assets to cover his accumulated debts.  However, these two men had three things in common.  Both were born in Massachusetts.  Both came from families that were not wealthy.  Both men detested Thomas Hutchinson, the Royal Governor of Massachusetts.
Adams believed that "Royal authority in Massachusetts in the 1760s was coming to rest increasingly . . . in the hands of a single family, the Hutchinsons"(Bailyn, 17) along with their relatives and friends who "were becoming absolute monopolists of public office"(Bailyn, 17).  Adams saw the Hutchinson group as a social elite forming a ruling aristocracy based on birth not ability.  A group who would do whatever would be most beneficial to them and increase their wealth.  A group who would manipulate the facts in reports to the government in London for their own advantage.  That such a group emerged in a country that was, for the most part, devoid of a hierarchical class structure must have infuriated many colonists, particularly those men who believed themselves better able to govern their colonies.
Dorr abhorred Hutchinson.  While preserving an extensive collection of Boston newspapers, Dorr also made made countless numbers of notes on the margins of the various pages.  His "index and commentaries catalogue Hutchinson's errors, correct his misstatements, and warn at every turn of his evil intentions. . . . explodes in the margins when the hated name appears"(Bailyn, 98-9).  Dorr considered the Royal Governor to be villainous.
From the point of view of many of the colonists, chief among the "abuses" was Parliament's attempt, in the opinion of the colonists, to impose a tax without providing for colonial representation in the House of Commons or, at the very least, allowing the colonial legislatures to levy the necessary taxes.  Having long identified themselves not merely as subjects of King George III, but as British citizens, the colonists could never allow even one of their fundamental rights to be taken from them.
Royal governors, like Thomas Hutchinson, who succeeded in creating a ruling aristocracy were guilty, in the eyes of may colonists, of usurping their power.  They were not only interested in pleasing the Crown and Parliament, they were equally concerned with increasing their own wealth and power.  What have President Obama and the Democrats done that is in any way similar to what happened in the colonies?  The Tea Party and the conservative Republicans have more in common with the royal governors.