Digital History: Republicanism

Before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln was already making plans for Reconstruction in the South. Read about his plan and the plan of the Radical Republicans. See the reasoning behind each plan.

Perhaps the most important election in United States history, the election of 1800 pitted John Adams against Thomas Jefferson. Read about their differences and the differences in the political parties that supported them. [pdf]

Senator Joseph McCarthy did not create the national obsession with communist subversion. It had arisen in the late 1930s, years before McCarthy had come to public notice. Angry that they had been barred from the corridors of power for 20...

Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman elected to both houses of Congress. She was the first woman to enter the Senate without being appointed to the position. During World War II, she was the only civilian woman to go to sea in a Navy...

There were many reasons for splits in the first Republican party, now usually referred to as the Democratic-Republican Party. See how that changed the party itself and the ways those changes affected the election of 1824.

As the Whig Party collapsed and the new Republican Party was forming, there was a flash-in-the pan party, the Know Nothing Party, that filled the void for a few years. Read about the success of the party in electing legislation, and find...

Read about the many problems encountered by John Quincy Adams during his presidency, most not of his making, but a reflection of the split in the philosophies of the National Republicans and the up-and-coming Jacksonian Democrats.

Thomas Jefferson believed in simple government and simple behavior. Read about his first inaugural address where he reinterated his Republican principles and see how he conducted himself as president.

The Judiciary Act of 1801 was a final attempt by the Federalists to control the judicial system before the Democratic Republicans took over. Read about the repeal of the act, which resulted in a landmark Supreme Court decision, Marybury...

A description of the changing ideas of the young Democratic Republicans and the three men who, in the 1820s, supported those values. These three men would be important players in the national government for the next 40 years.