What major contributions to American society have Conservatives made?

[Wanda Bagram]

The American Revolution - By the 1750s and 1760s some colonial institutions had conservative aspects. Although the colonists lived under the freest government in the European world, they were fiercely determined to protect and preserve their historic rights.

The Federalist Party- dominated by Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton used the presidency of George Washington to promote a strong nation capable of holding its own in world affairs, with a strong army and navy, capable of suppressing internal revolts (such as the Whiskey Rebellion) and founding the national finances on a sound basis while winning the broad support of the financial and business community. Intellectually, Federalists, while devoted to liberty held profoundly conservative views atuned to the American character.

Southern conservatism - By the late 1930s conservative Southern Democrats in Congress joined with most Northern Republicans in an informal Conservative Coalition that usually proved decisive in stopping liberal domestic legislation until 1964. However the Southerners generally were much more internationalist than the mostly isolationist Republicans in the Coalition.

The Gilded Age - Conservatives in the 20th Century, looking back at the Gilded Age, retroactively applied the word "conservative" to those who supported unrestrained capitalism. For example, Oswald Garrison Villard, writing in 1939, characterized his former mentor Horace White (1834–1916) as "a great economic conservative; had he lived to see the days of the New Deal financing he would probably have cried out loud and promptly demised."

Empire- The election of 1900 ratified McKinley's policies and the U.S. possession of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and (temporarily) Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt promoted the military and naval advantages of the U.S., and echoed McKinley's theme that America had a duty to civilize and modernize the heathen. The supposed business, religious, and military advantages of having an empire proved illusory; by 1908 or so the most ardent imperialists, including Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and Elihu Root turned their attention to building up an army and navy at home and to building the Panama Canal.