"The Republican Party itself began as a coalition that came together to stand against an oligarchy whose leaders were explicit about their determination to overthrow democracy. As wealth had accumulated in the hands of a small group of elite southern enslavers, those men had turned against American democracy. 'I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are created equal,’ South Carolina senator James Henry Hammond said.
"Enslaver George Fitzhugh of Virginia rejected the other key principle of the Declaration of Independence: that everyone has a right to a say in the government under which they live. 'We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments ‘derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,’' he wrote in 1857. 'All governments must originate in force, and be continued by force.' There were 18,000 people in his county and only 1,200 could vote, he said, '[b]ut we twelve hundred…never asked and never intend to ask the consent of the sixteen thousand eight hundred whom we govern.'
"Enslavers like Hammond and Fitzhugh believed that some people were better than others and had the right—and the duty—to impose their will on everyone else. If they did not, men like Fitzhugh believed, poor men and marginalized people would insist on being equal, receiving the value of their work and living as they wished."
Click on this link to see how only the name has changed.
