<P> From its inception in 1854 to 1964, when Senate Republicans pushed hard for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 against a filibuster by Senate Democrats, the GOP had a reputation for supporting blacks and minorities . In 1869, the Republican - controlled legislature in Wyoming Territory and its Republican governor John Allen Campbell made it the first jurisdiction to grant voting rights to women . In 1875, California swore in the first Hispanic governor, Republican Romualdo Pacheco . In 1916 Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman in Congress--and indeed the first woman in any high level government position . In 1928, New Mexico elected the first Hispanic U.S. Senator, Republican Octaviano Larrazolo . In 1898, the first Jewish U.S. Senator elected from outside of the former Confederacy was Republican Joseph Simon of Oregon . In 1924, the first Jewish woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives was Republican Florence Kahn of California . In 1928, the Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader, Charles Curtis of Kansas, who grew up on the Kaw Indian reservation, became the first person of significant non-European ancestry to be elected to national office, as Vice President of the United States for Herbert Hoover . </P> <P> Blacks generally identified with the GOP until the 1930s . Every African American who served in the U.S. House of Representatives before 1935 and all of the African Americans who served in the U.S. Senate before 1979, were Republicans . Frederick Douglass after the Civil War and Booker T. Washington in the early 20th century were prominent Republican spokesmen . In 1966, Edward Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African American popularly elected to the United States Senate . </P> <P> Historian George H. Nash argues: </P> <P> Unlike the "moderate," internationalist, largely eastern bloc of Republicans who accepted (or at least acquiesced in) some of the "Roosevelt Revolution" and the essential premises of President Truman's foreign policy, the Republican Right at heart was counterrevolutionary . Anticollectivist, anti-Communist, anti-New Deal, passionately committed to limited government, free market economics, and congressional (as opposed to executive) prerogatives, the G.O.P. conservatives were obliged from the start to wage a constant two - front war: against liberal Democrats from without and "me - too" Republicans from within . </P>

The democratic split was so severe during the 1860 elections that ____