The Republicans were the liberals of the 19th century, and much of the 20th century.
So did Democrats, for Southern Democrat produced products like cotton, sugar and rice.
And, naturally, Southerners didn't like paying tariffs on their luxury imports, or the high prices tariffs protected on the $200 million Southerners "imported" from the North.
DiogenesLamp: "They believed in liberal causes of the day.
When they finished with the abolition of slavery, they picked up enfranchisement of women, then abortion, and on and on to all the other liberal causes of the era."
Certainly in 1860 few Republicans, if any, believed in such causes.
But there was no time when Northern Democrats did not also participate, and by the era of Franklin Roosevelt, Dems led many of them.
The 16th Amendment was typical, as we discussed before, ratification lead by former Confederate states.
1973's Roe v Wade was also typical: one Dem (White) and one Rep (Rehnquist) opposed, four Dems and two Reps in favor.
DiogenesLamp: "The Republicans were the liberals of the 19th century, and much of the 20th century."
Only in the classical sense of that word, "liberal".
The explosion of Big Government did not seriously begin until FDR's New Deal and was almost always lead by Democrats.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Protectionism isn't the same thing as a command economy. Not every divergence from laissez-faire is a command economy.
If that were true, we could easily say that the Confederacy was a command economy par excellence.
Nor was 19th century protectionism the same as 16th century mercantilism. Only in the world of propaganda and sloganeering is that the case.
They believed in liberal causes of the day. When they finished with the abolition of slavery, they picked up enfranchisement of women, then abortion, and on and on to all the other liberal causes of the era.
No major national party picked up the cause of women's suffrage until fifty years after the Civil War. And what if they did? Are we to assume that it was wrong because it was "liberal" in it's day?
Taking up abortion as a cause in the 19th century meant banning abortion, not legalizing it. No major national party took up the pro-abortion cause until about a century after the Civil War. But what if one party did take up the "progressive" (i.e. anti-abortion) cause of the day? Would that have been a bad thing?
The Republicans were the liberals of the 19th century, and much of the 20th century.
Not so much. Party politics in the 19th and early 20th century didn't fit into the narrow molds of 21st century ideologies. Race, ethnicity, regionalism, and economic interest were more important in determining party loyalties in the 19th century than the kind of ideologies that predominate today.
There were individuals in a narrow layer of the population that you might call progressive in today's terms, but they didn't have a party or a movement or even a program of their own. Were they necessarily wrong if they did believe in abolition and civil rights?