The United States, from day one, was a project about principles and ideals. The superpower that emerged and grew from the original handful of colonists was not the product of where those colonists happened to land, but of the ideals and principles in their heads and hearts, applied in how they lived their lives.

The Republican Party was founded in 1854 to address one great blot on the nation’s founding legacy — the existence of slavery in a nation founded under the ideal of freedom under God.