When and where did the Republican party start?

When and where did the Republican party start?

Ironically, the first US political party to call itself "Republican" is now the US Democratic Party. The name "Republican party" was first used by Thomas Jefferson's party, later called the Democratic Republican party or, simply, the Democratic party. The name reappeared in the 1850s, when a new party was founded by opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in Jackson, Michigan - now called the birthplace of the party, and Joseph Medill is credited with having suggested the name - however, these distinctions are also claimed for other places and other men.

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By 1855, the new Republican party was well established in the North. Anti-slavery Whigs such as William Seward and Thurlow Weed were dominant in the new grouping, but elements of the Know-Nothing movement, together with the Free-Soil party, abolitionists, and anti-Nebraska Democrats also gave support.

The early Republicans were considered somewhat antagonistic towards the South, particularly because of their anti-slavery stance. After the Civil War, the nomination of war hero Ulysses S. Grant assured Republican success over the Democrats (led by Horatio Seymour) in the presidential election of 1868. However, in the period that followed, the two parties differed little in their programs.

In 1896, when the Democratic party was taken by the radicals under William Jennings Bryan (its presidential candidate in 1896, 1900, and 1908), the Republican party became openly the champion of conservative economic doctrines. The conservatives won with William McKinley in 1896 and 1900, and the party prospered. Theodore Roosevelt, successor to the assassinated McKinley, easily defeated the conservative Democrat Alton B. Parker in 1904.

A change among Southern voters occurred in 1928, when the Republican victory with Herbert C. Hoover marked the first time since the end of Reconstruction that the party had carried old Confederacy states. This came about chiefly because the Democratic candidate, Alfred E. Smith, was a Roman Catholic and opposed prohibition. Hoover and the Republicans were blamed for the ensuing disastrous economic depression, and the Democrats, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, were swept into office in 1932.

The frustrated Republicans were never able to break the remarkable hold of Roosevelt and the New Deal on the electorate and regularly went down to defeat every four years, with Alfred M. Landon (1936), Wendell Willkie (1940), and Thomas E. Dewey (1944).

In 1952, the more liberal element among the Republicans was able to deny the conservatives' choice, Robert A. Taft, choosing instead the popular war hero, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower as their presidential nominee. The domestic program of the Eisenhower adminstration was moderately conservative, and in foreign policy the internationalist approach of the previous Democratic administration was continued. However, the Democrats retained control of Congress through the 1960 elections.

The most recent Republican presidents in the United States have been Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush.

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