User:LaurentianShield/sandbox/Black Republican (Historical term)

"Black Republican" was a historical term that was used in antebellum United States politics, and thus preceded its modern definition of members of the Republican Party who identify as African-Americans. The historical term was used by opponents of the newly-formed Republican Party, those opponents being chiefly politicians belonging to the Democratic Party, to appeal to racist sentiments in the population at large and pejoratively label the Republicans. "Black Republican" in this sense was rarely if ever used to describe members of the Republican Party who were in fact African American. Stephen Douglass was a major popularizer of this term during the Lincoln-Douglass debates. After the Civil War, the term was sometimes applied to radical re-constructionists. However it eventually became obsolete.