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Saturday 29 July 2017

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party was founded on March 20, 1854 in a little white schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. About 50 slavery opponents began the new political group to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska act, which would permit each territory to allow slavery if they wanted to.

Republican Party Birthplace Museum, Little White Schoolhouse, Ripon

The name was partly chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party.

The first official party convention was held on July 6, 1854, in Jackson, Michigan.

The first Republican candidate for president was John C. Frémont in 1856. His strong run in the election demonstrated that the Republican party dominated most northern states.

As the Whig Party collapsed, the Republicans became the second major party (the Democratic Party being the other one). It first came to power in the elections of 1860 when it won control of both houses of Congress and the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was elected president.

The elephant. has been the traditional mascot of the Republican party since November 6, 1874, when Thomas Nast first used it in a political cartoon published in Harper's Weekly. The cartoon, titled "The Third-Term Panic," depicted the Republican vote as an elephant standing at the edge of a cliff. Nast used the elephant to represent the Republican Party because it was seen as a strong and stable animal, just as the Republicans were seen as the party of stability and order.

1874 Nast cartoon featuring the first appearance of the Republican elephant

Following Lincoln, the USA had mostly Republican presidents until 1912. The party lost the presidential election just twice over that period (non-consecutively to Democrat Grover Cleveland in 1884 and 1892).

Ronald Reagan was the first Republican president who was a former member of the Democratic Party.

Neither of George W. Bush's daughters are Republican.

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