On February 28, 1854, abolitionist Major Alvan E. Bovay called a meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin, northwest of Milwaukee, to discuss the direction of the country and indeed the restricting and elimination of the reprehensible institution of slavery. Slavery had long been an institution that never sat well with the principals of our Republic and should have been abolished at our inception. Armed with the rhetoric of abolition the meeting served as the conception of the Republican Party-taking the name from its connection to Thomas Jefferson‟s Democratic-Republican Party. The name was formally adopted when the Republican Party met for the first time on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan. There were so many in attendance that no facility in Jackson could support the function and spillover into the streets occurred as a result. Thus began the history of the Republican Party.

There have been many political parties in the United States but two parties remain dominant, the Republican and the Democratic Parties. The Republican Party is more conservative taking political stances favoring free enterprise, fiscal responsibility, and a strong military. The Party also believes in limited government and individual responsibility. The government should only intervene where the free markets are unable to perform or when the individuals are incapable of helping themselves.

Throughout its history, the Republican Party has had many major achievements. This section focuses on some of the civil rights achievements and desires of the Republican Party and presents some of the opposition by the Democratic Party. This handbook begins with the first of the Republicans voted into office and continues through the Civil War and its aftermath. The reconstruction era is mentioned through the Progressive Era and into the Great Depression, World War II, the Fifties, Sixties, with Barry Goldwater, Nixon, into the eighties with Ronald Reagan, and finally, Bush II and current times.

The Republican Party was successful from its beginning as 44 Republicans where elected to the House of Representatives and eleven in the House of the Senate in the 1854 congressional election. Throughout the 1850s, many Republicans were also elected to many state houses across the country. In 1856, Senator John C. Fremont became the first Republican nominated for President but was defeated by James Buchanan. Two days after Buchanan‟s inauguration, the US Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Dred Scott versus Sandford decision. This was soundly denounced by the newly formed Republican Party and in the mid-term election of 1858; the Republicans won control of the House of Representatives.

One of the more interesting incidents of the many legislative arguments by Republicans against slavery came from Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Senator Sumner was a staunch abolitionist who, on May 19-20, 1856, delivered a tirade in the well of the senate against the authors of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Democratic Senators Stephen Douglas of Illinois and Andrew Butler of South Carolina. Two days later, Representative Preston Brooks a Democrat from South Carolina, defending his kinsman of South Carolina, entered the Senate to challenge Sumner to a duel for his comments. Brooks, however, saw Sumner sitting in his seat, lost control, and began to beat Sumner with a metal cane until Sumner was unconscious. Following the attack Brooks resigned but was again elected later. Sumner underwent several years of physical therapy as a result of the attack but eventually became the leader of the Radical Republicans during the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era.