Milford chronicle. [volume] (Milford, Del.) 1878-1974, 1928-10-19
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LITTLE BAND-WAGON
JOURNEYS ..r. n 81
$'-"Sto- - ktsSt~l1 O psEts4dI-oSrtts 49,
90. 1928. Western Newspaper Union.)
I5.-Birth of the Republican
Party
Party


ing a large portion of the pub
lie into a false sense of the finalit,
of his compromise of 1850 as
permanent settlement for the slav
cry question. Clay went to hi
grave thinking he had saved the
Union. But the "irrepressible con
hict" merely had been postponed.
Senator Stephen A. Douglas re
opened the slavery issue in the
territo-ies only four years actel
Clay thought he had laid it, with
the Douglas Kansas-Nebraska bill
by which he proposed admission to
the Union of these two states,
slave or free, according to the de-
/ cisiOn of the citizens living in them.
In the North, passage of this
bill made Douglas the cur emily
most hated man in America. He
was Kissed off the platform in Chi
cagO when, in his own state, he
tried to explain his position. In
various places he was hanged in
effigy for Ttreason."
The immediate political effect of
the sansas-Nebraska bill was to
smash the Wing party wide open
along sectional lines. A coalition
of northern Democrats and men,
bers of the shOrt-lived Free Soil
party began at once to set in.
Credit for being the original mi
tiatOr as well as provider of the
name for the new Republican party
belongs to Maj. Alvan e. BOvay,
a Wing lawyer in the town of
RipOn, Wis.
Visiting New York in 1852, he
had SUI gested TO Horace Greeley
that formation of a new party op-
posed to extension of slavery in
the territories vas inevitable, and
he proposed the name Republican
for it. When the Kansas-Nebraska
bill was in congress, BOvay put
his plan into execution in his home
town. With Jehdiah Bowen and
Amos Lopez, Bovay summoned a
meeting in the RipOn COngrega-
tional church, March 1, 1854, which
passed resolutions declaring that
In event of enactment of the Kan
sas-Nebraska bill the old parties
must be discarded and a new one
be formed, on the basis of opposi-
ton to slavery.
A few days later the senate
passed the bill. The Ripon leaders
promptly called another meeting
FOR March 20, 1854, at which "a
voters, out Of the scarcely more
Tb'n 100 in the town, met and be-
came the first members of the Re-
publican party in America.
The little schOOlhOuse wherein
this meeting was held still stands
in a corner of the RipOn college
carefully preserved as the
of the narty.
Three and a half months later
a state convention met at Jackson.
Mich, for the similar purpose of
fusing old parties in a new anti
slavery group. Too large for the
biggest hall in tow, the gathering
adjourned to an oak grove nearby,
where it adopted a ringing plat
form against slavery extension,
urged the calling of a national cOn-
7entiOn. and as had been suggested
It RipOn, selected Republican as
he name of the new party. The
name was proposed to leaders i'll
he Michigan convention by Horace
ireeley, who ha received the sug-
yeStiOn two years earlier from Bo-
'ay.
The appellatiOn Republican was
n Of hn
pplied to the party of Jefferson
the Republicans, or Democratic
who had shortened
heir party designation to Demo-
rats under the Jackson regime. It
lsO was recalled that Jefferson,
lOugh a STAKEHOLDER himself, had
lid down the policy of slavery re-
friction for the old Northwest ter
tory region north of the Ohio
yer.
Southern Democrats were not a
tile irked that the Republicans
lOuld claim to be reviving the
eas of Jefferson and also should
,vive the first name by which JEFF
rsOn's followers had been known.
hey tried to discredit the new
lrty by referring to it's members
!. "Black Republicans"
Once begun, the Republican
Ovement was spread rapidly by
cal mass meetings and state con-
ntions. Within a year of the
ssage of the Kansas-Nebraska
j, the party had sent eleven SEN
prs to Washington and had ma
rites in fifteen northern states.
was ready to give battle on a
tiOnal front in the Presidential
,ctiOn of 1856.
The date of the national NOM
lting convention was timed for
! anniversary of the Battle of
mixer Hill, June II, 1856, and
the cradle-city OF
lerican freedom, was chosen as
meeting place. Every free
tie, also Delaware, Maryland,
ginia and Kentucky, were rep
ented in the convention by men
o came stirred on the moral is.
of the day with a strong cru
ing spirit.
he picturesque figure of the
ifOlnia explorer and adventur-
Col. John @. Fremont, doomed
We all others, including States
q of more seasoning, as the
It available nominee for Presi-
t, and he was selected on the
/ ballot.
he sun of Abraham Lincoln,
was to be the successful stand
bearer of the party only four
rs later, had but family risen
We the national horizon. Put
nomination for vice president,
vas eclipsed by Senator William
Dayton of New Jersey by a vote
30 10 10