History of the Republican Party

In 1854, the Republican Party, founded in Ripon, WI, emerged to combat the expansion of slavery into American territories after the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The early Republican Party consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and after the Civil War, former black slaves. The party had very little support from white Southerners at the time, who predominantly backed the Democratic Party in the Solid South, and from Catholics, who made up a major Democratic voting block. While both parties adopted pro-business policies in the 19th century, the early GOP was distinguished by its support for the national banking system, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs. The party opposed the expansion of slavery before 1861 and led the fight to destroy the Confederate States of America (1861-1865). While the Republican Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States at its inception, it was very successful in the Northern United States, where by 1858 it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats to form majorities in nearly every Northern state. 

With the election of its first president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, the Party’s success in guiding the Union to victory in the American Civil War, and the Party’s role in the abolition of slavery, the Republican Party largely dominated the national political scene until 1932.

The Republicans were the party that gave us the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and teh Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Republican Party won five of the six presidential elections from 1968 to 1988. Two-term President Ronald Reagan, who held office from 1981 to 1989, was a transformative party leader. Since then the GOP has reverted back to the status it held nationally in the first part of the 1900s. In 2016, Donald Trump became the party’s nominee for president, won the presidency, but again the party is in disarray. 

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(Source: Wikipedia)