Yanno...................granted, it was Lincoln who freed the slaves, and he was a Republican. The Republicans like to bring up that little factoid as a way to say that they are the party of freedom.
However.......................they leave out the fact that Republicans didn't want blacks voting, which is why there were so many hoops for them to jump through, in the form of poll taxes and various questions to see if they were eligible to vote.
Want to know who finally got the right to vote for blacks, thereby making them full citizens? That's right, LBJ, a Democrat, who passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, right about the time he was running for election after taking over for Kennedy after he was killed.