The 175-year record on legislative achievements for civil rights in the US passed by the Republican Party versus the Democratic Party should dispel the myth that 'compassionate conservatism' is an oxymoron.

Consider these fascinating historical facts.

To stop the Democrats' pro-slavery agenda, anti-slavery activists founded the Republican Party in 1854. The Republicans won the 1860 federal election, and by that date the governors of every northern state were Republicans, just six years after the party was established.

Despite fierce Democratic opposition, Republicans passed constitutional amendments banning slavery, extending the Bill of Rights to the states, guaranteeing equal protection of the laws and due process to all citizens, and extending the right to vote to persons of all races and backgrounds.

Republicans in Congress also enacted the nation's first-ever Civil Rights Act, which extended citizenship and equal rights to people of all races, all colors, and all creeds. In 1875 the Republicans expanded on these protections.

Struck down by the Supreme Court eight years later, this legislation would be reborn as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Where were the Democrats during these historic changes?

Republicans led the fight for women's rights, and most suffragists were Republicans. Republican Senator Aaron Sargent wrote the women's suffrage amendment in 1878, though it would not be passed by Congress until Republicans again won control of both houses 40 years later. In 1916 the first woman was elected to the US House of Representatives, Republican Jeannette Rankin.

The Democrats were indeed the status quo party, reactionary, hostile to the principle of America as a nation of liberty and dedicated to equality. They blocked Republican efforts to protect the civil rights of all Americans, not only during post-Civil War "reconstruction," but also into the 20th century. In the South, those Democrats who most bitterly opposed equality for blacks founded the Ku Klux Klan, which in effect operated as the Democratic Party's terrorist wing. Every single African-American in Congress until 1935 was a Republican.

California was the first state to have a Hispanic governor, Republican Romualdo Pacheco, in 1875. The first Hispanic US Senator, Octaviano Larrazolo, came to Washington from New Mexico as a Republican in 1928.

The first Jewish US Senator outside the former Confederacy was a Republican from Oregon, Joseph Simon, and the first Jewish woman to serve in the US House of Representatives was a California Republican, Florence Kahn.

The belief that the Democrats were and are the party with a social conscience, the party that most clearly expresses American values, is simply not true.

Two years ago, America marked the 50th anniversary of the modern civil rights movement, which began with the Supreme Court decision (Brown v. the Board of Education) written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, a three-term Republican Governor of California. Republican President Eisenhower won the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957; moreover, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen authored and introduced the 1960 Civil Rights Act.

The first Asian-American US Senator was a Republican, Hiram Fong from Hawaii; the first African-American Senator after Reconstruction was a Republican, Ed Brooke from Massachusetts. The list goes on and on.

It should come as no surprise that Republicans have led in the struggle for civil rights for all. It is no accident that Republican President George W. Bush has proposed that this principle of human liberty is in fact a right to which all people are entitled.