When the Party of Lincoln started stinkin'

One has to take history according to Gore Vidal, marvelous storyteller that he is, with enough salt to store it for the winter. Add a double dose for his jaded fictional narrators.  But this, from Vidal's 1876 diarist Charles Schuyler, a bastard son of Aaron Burr who's pinned his fortunes all but entirely selfish hope on the Democrats, does capture the by-now-all-but-eternal GOP:

...the noble new party that freed the slaves and preserved the Union is the very same party that is now in cahoots with the crooked railroad tycoons and with the Wall Street cornerers of this-and-that, thus making it hard for a noble creature like Bigelow -- like Stedman? -- to confess to the bankruptcy of what only ten years ago was the last or latest, best or better, hope or dream of an honourable system of government (p. 64, Vintage ed).