"The black abolitionist Frederick Douglass once wrote that the founders permitted slavery as a "scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building is completed." In that sense the building was completed in 1865, when the Civil War ended and slavery was abolished nationwide. But how was it abolished? It was abolished because Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans took a firm stance against theft and against the Democratic principle of popular sovereignty. Had America gone with the Democrats, slavery would have endured and might still be around in some form today. History proves the Republicans to have been the antislavery, anti-theft party and the Democrats to have been the proslavery, pro-theft party."