Half-Breed Republicans

Half-Breeds were the more liberal wing of the Republican Party during the Gilded Age that pushed for a civil service system. Civil service reform in the South effectively barred Blacks from government jobs. Conservatives called them Half-Breeds because they advocated allowing former Confederate Rebels into the civil service and refused to deal with the Ku Klux Klan's voter suppression of African American civil rights. They were considered only "half Republican", or Republican in Name Only. They helped facilitate the Jim Crow Democrats take over of the South at the end of Reconstruction.

They were led by corrupt Senator James G. Blaine of Maine. After the American Civil War they succeeded the moderate Republicans who had been more interested in maintaining the spoils system than the Radical Republicans commitment to civil rights. The Half-Breeds main achievement was the passage of the Pendleton Act, which helped to expand the powers of the Deep State. Under the Pendleton Act, racist civil servants were no longer dependent up the patronage of an elected Democrat official, and were protected from firing when Democrats were voted out of office.

See also

• Stalwart