First--The Democratic Party is a PLURISTS party that contains Conservatives members.
They were always a Plurists party. There is, and never existed, a liberal party in the United States. Something for a lefty to really chew hard on.(To keep this in perspective, the Republican Party is a Center-Right Party constantly dominated by Conservatives!)
Second--Republicans also fought for women's rights, civil rights, and against slavery. Democrats nor liberal dominate those issues. Remember, there exist "American Libertarians"--right wingers that argue for social liberal ideas.
Third--concerning gays in the military. That battle is basically over, now we are going through the political motions of removing DADT without the politicians losing their jobs. The opposition is so pathetically weak that the media refuse to cover them out of fear of losing creditability!
Yeah, Saddam Hussein's elite military force was called the Republican Guard. Does that make them Republicans with some sort of an association with current American Republicans?
Now, if you're answer is NO!! that's ridiculous! then MAYBE you can figure out that talking about 1850's conservatives in the South who called themselves Democrats having some sort of association with modern American Democrats is equally ridiculous.
So stop being ridiculous, all of you.
BTW, in case you haven't noticed, modern day conservative Republicans don't think much of REPUBLICAN president Abraham Lincoln and all his big government preserve-the-union secession-is-illegal nonsense...
...eh?