The Cordova daily times., 1920-06-03

Press) In assembling at Chicago the Republican national convention is sitting in the section where the Re- publican party was first named and within 200 miles of where the first re- corded Republican meeting was held sixty-six years ago. The convention . recalls this early history, though with the passing of the years and the de. velopment of new issues the first steps of the party have passed from com ssnon view.
 Tt will probably not be possible to trace to the earliest date the first pos itive meeting which led to the forma- tion of the new party" writes Francis Curtis, in his history of the Republican party. Tt is quite likely that there was no considerable gathering of men, nor discussion of plans and policies, until A. E. Bovay, Whig of Ripon, Wis, together with a MT. Bowen, a Democrat, and a MT. Baker, a Free Soldier, issued a call for a public meeting to consider the now alarming situation
 The great issue of the hour was the extension of slavery. Of the political situation prefacing the formation of the Republican party, MT. Curtis says:
 No political party was able to elect enough members of congress to over rule the united will of the slavehold- CTS, and until the anti-slavery senti- ment of the North should be so welded ! together, and it's opponents should be so united in one party as to be able to send to Washington enough men to outvote the representatives of the slave power, there was no hope that its advance could be checked"
 Reference was made to the llipon meeting by Henry Wilson, when vice president of the United States, ill his book Rise and Fall of the Slave Power" published in 1874. One of the earliest, if not the earliest, O. tbe movements" he said "thst conte.n- plated definite action and the forEla- tim of a new party, was made ill Rtror, Fond du Lac county, Wiscon- sin, in the early months of 1854, in consequence of a very thorough can vas. conference, and general compari- son of views inaugurated by A. B. Bovay, a prominent member of the Whig party, among the Wings, Free Sellers and Democrats of that town. A call was issued for a public meet ing to consider the grave issues which were assuming an aspect of such alarming proportions"
 The meeting thus called, wrote Charles M Harvey in the Chautau- quan, September, 1897, twas called in the Congregational church at Ripon, February 28 1854. A resolution was adopted in the meeting that if the bill then pending in the senate to throw open to slavery the territories of Kan sas and Nebraska should pass, the old party organizations in Ripon should be cast off, and a new party, to be called the Republican, formed on the sole issue of opposition to slavery ex- tension.
 The bill passed the senate. in which body it originated, on March 3, 1854, and on March 20, the second meeting, participated in by men of all parties, was held, this time in school house, at which Bovay was the leading spirit
 By vote of the assemblage, the town committees of the Whig and Free Soil parties were dissolved, and a committee of five, three Whigs, one Democrat and one Free-Soiler, was chosen to begin the task of forming a new party
 At these two meetings was started the earliest systematic work begun anywhere in the country to bring about the coalition of the enemies of slavery extension, who were eventual 1y fused into a Homogeneous and az gressive party, adopting the name Re- publican"
 Mr. Harvey quoted a letter Bovay later wrote to him about this meeting, in which he said:
 T went from house to house and from shop to shop and halted men on the streets to get their names for the meeting March 20, 1854 At that time there were not more than a hundred voters in Ripon, and by a vast deal of earnest talking I obtained fifty