“Grand Old Partisan” blogger Michael Zak has been tilting at windmills for some time now promoting the Republicans abolished slavery meme. He’s right, of course. Today he marks the liberation of slaves in Washington, DC, under Republican sponsored Congressional legislation in a post named “Republicans passed the DC Emancipation Act.”

Technically it was Republicans … but they were also the progressives and liberals of their day (in addition to a healthy streak of libertarianism). The Republicans of the mid-1800s wanted America to progress past slavery by liberating the slaves. Mr. Zak apparently prefers to use the Windows Help Function for political definitions — it’s technically accurate, but doesn’t actually help clarify much.

The same labels of “Republican” and “Democratic” do not apply today because the parties’ roles have flipped so using them gives voters of today a false impression (or, at least, a lengthy, sleep-inducing history lesson to clarify). I’m not suggesting Republicans of today would want to enslave anyone, of course not. But I am saying there’s a reason the holdout segregationist conservative Democrats of the mid-20th century became Dixiecrats and then, later, Republicans — they may have changed parties, but they remained conservative.

More appropriate labels would be “progressives” and “conservatives” though, to an extent, even those are inexact (as any demographic term usually is). Progressives, from Abraham Lincoln on, abolished slavery, worked for greater civil rights, and more liberal social policies which helped more and more Americans throw off policy chains throughout the 20th century just as they helped the slaves throw off physical chains in the 1800s. It was the conservatives, no matter the party, who wanted to maintain the status quo of slavery and who, even today, argue there is no compelling reason to continue to enforce equal rights among citizens.

We can also see this effect in vote patterns among the states as Republicans have nearly swept their way through the old Democratic “slave-holding” south and Dems are on their way to reallignment in the old Republican “industrial” north. This isn’t so much an indication of party preference (”R vs. D”) as it is an indication of political philosophy (”conservative vs. liberal”).

I give credit to Mr. Zak for knowing his 19th C. history. Unfortunately, he ought to take those partisan-colored glasses off before he starts typing his lessons.

Sidenote: Interestingly, Mr. Zak includes a quip of the times:

In December 1861, Senator Wilson [R-MA] introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District. The measure met with parliamentary obstacles from the adamantly pro-slavery Democratic Party, whom Republicans in those days referred to as the “Slave-ocrats.”

Wasn’t it just last year that a certain prominent Republican operative tried labeling Democrats as “Defeat-ocrats”? My how times change in the kindergarten play yard. (Though of course the “defeat” label did come true; just not in the manner for which the Republicans were hoping.)