Union Republican

Members of the Legislature:
Highest Office Won: Congress (1862)
Founded: ????

The Union Republican Party was created in opposition to the policies of President Johnson following the assassination of President Lincoln. The URP's 1868 Platform declared the party to be Pro-Immigration, Pro-Reconstruction, and deeply opposed to the policies of President Andrew Johnson, who is described treacherous, shamefull, and corrupt. It is worth quoting Section 8 of the 1868 Platform, which lists all the reasons that the party opposes the reelection of Johnson, who by this point had become the first US President to be impeached;

"We profoundly deplore the untimely and tragic death of Abraham Lincoln, and regret the accession of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency, who has acted treacherously to the people who elected him and the cause he was pledged to support; has usurped high legislative and judicial functions; has refused to execute the laws; has used his high office to induce other officers to ignore and violate the laws; has employed his executive powers to render insecure the property, the peace, the liberty, and life of the citizen; has abused the pardoning power; has denounced the National Legislature as unconstitutional; has persistently and corruptly resisted, by every means in his power, every proper attempt at the reconstruction of the States lately in rebellion; has perverted the public patronage into an engine of wholesale corruption; and has been justly impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and properly pronounced guilty thereof by the vote of thirty-five senators." [Source: National Union Republican Party of the United States Platform of 1868]

One Californian, Cornelius Cole, was elected to Congress as a Union Republican in 1862. Cole was elected to the US Senate as a Republican in 1866.

• See also Republican Party