It was the same group of people, they just called themselves "Republicans" in those days.
They were the wealthy elite of the Washington Boston power corridor and they thought they were more enlightened and morally superior to everyone else at the time. "
Wrong again.
Then as now, most Republicans had small town businesses & rural farms.
Big City businesses were mostly Democrat allies of the Southern slave-power with whom they were closely linked economically.
These Big City business people opposed abolition and supported any efforts to appease secessionists.
They did not control Lincoln because Lincoln was not one of them, far from it.
Indeed, Lincoln was far more removed from that Eastern Democrat "establishment" than is, in our own time, somebody like, say, Mr. Trump.
No offense intended to either.
DiogenesLamp: "Same people, Same economic and social status, and same general geographic location, though they have expanded to Los Angeles and San Fransisco during this last century."
Within the USA there are several such metropolitan "corridors" where wealth & populations concentrate.
Washington to Boston is only one, the entire west coast is another, the mid-west's "rust belt", the I-10 from Texas east, and others.
All are not only internally dynamic, but also strongly linked together with the others via truck, rail, water & air connections.
There interests and voting patterns are quite different from the 90% of US territory which is more rural & small towns.
Major US metropolitan regions:
2012 voting patterns: