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In 1856, under the slogan “Free soil, free labor, free speech, free men, Fremont,” a group of anti-slavery activists and rugged individuals looking to settle the American West became a national party with the nomination of John C. Fremont as the first Republican to run for the White House.
Even though we were, at the time, considered a third party after the Democrats and the Whigs, Fremont earned a third of the vote and, four years later, our second presidential nominee, Abraham Lincoln, captured the presidency.
The Republican Party was conceived in the early 1850s by those opposed to the oppression of their fellow man. The first informal meeting of the party took place in Ripon, Wisconsin, a small town northwest of Milwaukee. The first official Republican meeting took place on July 6, 1854 in Jackson, Michigan.
The name “Republican” was chosen because it alluded to equality and reminded individuals of Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party. At the Jackson convention, the first party platform was adopted and the first Republican candidates—for offices in Michigan—were nominated.
In 1861, Republicans were tested as the Civil War erupted and lasted the next four years. President Lincoln kept the Union together and, during the war, against the advice of his cabinet, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Following the conclusion of the war, Republicans led the way to outlaw slavery with the passage of Thirteenth Amendment; guaranteed the equal protection of all Americans before the law with the Fourteenth Amendment; and secured the voting rights of African-Americans with the Fifteenth Amendment.
Republicans then set about to secure women the right to vote and, in 1896, became the first major party to favor women’s suffrage. However, it wasn’t until the Republican-controlled 66th Congress when the Nineteenth Amendment was sent to the states for ratification. When the Nineteenth Amendment finally was added to the Constitution, 26 of 36 state legislatures that had voted to ratify it were under Republican control. The first woman elected to Congress was a Republican, Jeanette Rankin from Montana in 1917.
Presidents during most of the late nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century were Republicans. While the Democrats and Franklin Roosevelt tended to dominate American politics in the 1930s and 1940s, for 36 of the last 60 years, the White House was in Republican hands—under Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. And it was under Republican presidents that the United States won the Cold War over the old Soviet Union, freeing millions of people from Communist oppression and emerging as the world’s lone superpower.
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Grand Old Party
According to author William Safire:
Republicans have a long and rich history grounded in basic principles: Individuals, not government, can make the best decisions; all people are entitled to equal rights; and decisions are best made close to home. The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant. During the midterm elections in 1874, Democrats tried to scare voters into thinking President Grant would seek to run for an unprecedented third term. Thomas Nast, a cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly, depicted a Democratic jackass trying to scare a Republican elephant – and both symbols stuck. For a long time Republicans have been known as the ‘G.O.P.’ And party faithful thought it meant the ‘Grand Old Party.’ But apparently the original meaning (in 1875) was ‘gallant old party.’ And when automobiles were invented it also came to mean, ‘get out and push.’ That’s still a pretty good slogan for Republicans who, every campaign, depend on the hard work of hundreds of thousands of volunteers to get the party’s message out and encourage Americans to support the causes and candidates of the Republican Party.
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