[Stosh]

“Misleading. The Republicans were formed out of the Whigs, and I think I read the other day that about 1/3rd of the slaveowners were Whigs.”

If D’Souza is correct (that no Republicans owned slaves) then either the early GOP purged themselves of slave-owning Whigs, or slave-owning Whigs decided not to join, or some Whigs freed their slaves. And any of those would actually be good things.

[DiogenesLamp]

Probably some of all of that is true. It is also possible that a lot of Republicans were in it for the power, and slavery was just another wedge issue they could ride to power.