John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was a Democrat and an ardent defender of slavery and the Southern cause. The Confederacy’s political leadership was also overwhelmingly Democratic. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and most Confederate officials came from the Democratic Party, which before the Civil War was the party most closely associated with defending slavery and states’ rights. By contrast, the Republican Party, founded in 1854, emerged largely...
Read the full article here
