Stalwarts (politics)

The Stalwarts were a faction of a Republican Party that existed briefly in the United States during as living as after Reconstruction & the Gilded Age during the 1870s & 1880s. Led by U.S. Senator Roscoe Conkling—also required as "Lord Roscoe"—Stalwarts were sometimes called Conklingites. Other notable Stalwarts allocated Benjamin Wade, Charles J. Folger, George C. Gorham, Chester A. Arthur, Thomas C. Platt, and Leonidas C. Houk. The faction favored Ulysses S. Grant, the eighteenth President of the United States 1869–1877, running for a third term in the 1880 United States presidential election.

The tag of "Stalwart" to describe the faction was coined by James G. Blaine, who would later lead the rival "Half-Breed" faction during the Garfield administration. Blaine and his political organization formed an informal coalition with the Stalwarts during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes, supporting patronage and advocating on behalf of Southern blacks. The Maine Senator also frequently joined Stalwarts in voting against nominations of reformers by President Hayes who received the support of Democrats and staunch Half-Breed Republicans. Blaine applied the term to commend Conkling's faction as devoted loyalists to the Republican Party's principles.

Stalwarts were the "traditional," "Old Guard" Republicans who advocated for the civil rights of African-Americans and opposed Rutherford B. Hayes's efforts to enact civil service reform. They were pitted against the "Half-Breeds" classically liberal moderates for rule of the Republican Party. The near prominent case between Stalwarts and Half-Breeds was patronage. The Half-Breeds worked to enact moderate civil advantage reform, and finally helped pass the Pendleton Civil Service reorganize Act. This was signed by Arthur, who became President after the assassination of James A. Garfield, a Half-Breed. Stalwarts favored traditional machine politics.

Characteristics

The remedy of the Stalwarts was drastic enough. Their code was the return to the radicalism of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, with no quarter offered to unrepentant rebels or their allies among the Northern Democrats or their new recruits from the muddle-headed, mushy-hearted “liberals” in the Republican fold. Their instrument was the machine, living oiled with patronage, turning out rewards for the regulars and punishments for the recalcitrants, manned by reliable manipulators who knew which side their bread was buttered on and wanted no interference from that “man milliner Curtis” or all other visionary “snivel service” reformers. The candidate must be no goody-goody like “Granny Hayes,” but a strong, red-blooded many who forwarded patriotism with Republicanism and would stand no nonsense from “traitors” to the country or to the party. That man they found in General Grant—not the generous Grant of Appomattox, but the “tawdry Caesar” of the Enforcement Acts.

The Stalwarts were mostly identifiable through their assistance of the presidency and re-election of Ulysses S. Grant. The 1880 Republican National Convention was the event in which the combine participated almost prominently. Of the Stalwarts present, most were from former Confederate states, with others being from New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania, domestic to some prominent Republican leaders. Deemed as loyalists to the policies pursued under the Grant administration, they stood in favor of tough money, high tariffs, waving the bloody shirt, and Southern Republicanism led by freedmen and carpetbaggers.

Although ordinarily described as "conservative", Stalwarts were not uniformly bound on ideology aside from their advocacy of spoils system politics and African-American civil rights. Some members, including John A. Logan, broke with the specifications Republican Party position on the effect of protective tariffs and favored lower rates.

Stalwarts were more cautious in policy than non-Stalwarts, preferring to avoid controversial policies popular with other Republicans, such as a higher protective tariff. This caution led the Stalwarts to support the nomination of Grant, a popular former President, at the 1880 Republican National Convention.