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Jan 25, 2024 · In the years after its founding in 1854, the Republican Party became known as the Grand Old Party or GOP for short. At the time, the name paid tribute to the political party's values. Party ...
Oct 30, 2023 · The Party of Lincoln has changed a lot over the past 160 years. Here's a look at what today's Republican Party stands for, and a little history of how it got here. What do today's Republicans ...
Mar 17, 2021 · Scott Olson/Getty Images. CNN —. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) made a really important point in a recent podcast interview with conservative commentator Matt Lewis. “There’s more to being a ...
- Overview
- History
The Republican Party is a political party in the United States founded in 1854. The party’s first elected U.S. president was Abraham Lincoln, who took office in 1861.
What does the Republican Party stand for?
The Republican Party traces its roots to the 1850s, when antislavery leaders joined forces to oppose the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories. The party ultimately stood for slavery’s complete abolition. Today, Republicans advocate reduced taxes as a means of stimulating the economy and advancing individual economic freedom, and they generally support conservative social policies. Republicans also tend to oppose extensive government regulation of the economy, government-funded social programs, and affirmative action. Regarding foreign policy, the Republican Party traditionally has supported a strong national defense and the aggressive pursuit of U.S. national security interests. Republicans also support states’ rights against the power of the federal government in most cases.
Read more below: Policy and structure
Why is an elephant the symbol of the Republican Party?
Both the Democratic Party’s donkey and the Republican Party’s elephant symbols were popularized by satirical comics drawn by Thomas Nast from 1862 to 1886. The use of animal imagery was meant as a metaphor to compare American politics to a circus.
The term Republican was adopted in 1792 by supporters of Thomas Jefferson, who favoured a decentralized government with limited powers. Although Jefferson’s political philosophy is consistent with the outlook of the modern Republican Party, his faction, which soon became known as the Democratic-Republican Party, ironically evolved by the 1830s into the Democratic Party, the modern Republican Party’s chief rival.
The Republican Party traces its roots to the 1850s, when antislavery leaders (including former members of the Democratic, Whig, and Free-Soil parties) joined forces to oppose the extension of slavery into the Kansas and Nebraska territories by the proposed Kansas-Nebraska Act. At meetings in Ripon, Wisconsin (May 1854), and Jackson, Michigan (July 1854), they recommended forming a new party, which was duly established at the political convention in Jackson.
At their first presidential nominating convention in 1856, the Republicans nominated John C. Frémont on a platform that called on Congress to abolish slavery in the territories, reflecting a widely held view in the North. Although ultimately unsuccessful in his presidential bid, Frémont carried 11 Northern states and received nearly two-fifths of the electoral vote. During the first four years of its existence, the party rapidly displaced the Whigs as the main opposition to the dominant Democratic Party. In 1860 the Democrats split over the slavery issue, as the Northern and Southern wings of the party nominated different candidates (Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge, respectively); the election that year also included John Bell, the nominee of the Constitutional Union Party. Thus, the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, was able to capture the presidency, winning 18 Northern states and receiving 60 percent of the electoral vote but only 40 percent of the popular vote. By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration as president, however, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, and the country soon descended into the American Civil War (1861–65).
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Republican or Democrat?
In 1863 Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves in rebelling states to be “forever free” and welcomed them to join the Union’s armed forces. The abolition of slavery would, in 1865, be formally entrenched in the Constitution of the United States with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Because the historical role played by Lincoln and the Republican Party in the abolition of slavery came to be regarded as their greatest legacy, the Republican Party is sometimes referred to as the party of Lincoln.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Republican Party, also known as the GOP ( Grand Old Party ), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s. The party was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, an act which allowed for the ...
Apr 4, 2018 · Sources. The Republican Party, often called the GOP (short for “Grand Old Party”) is one of two major political parties in the United States. Founded in 1854 as a coalition opposing the ...
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Oct 6, 2023 · Fourteen experts on the roots of Kevin McCarthy’s ouster and why Republicans keep destroying their own leaders. "A banner of dysfunction." "Erosion of democratic values." "We have a party that ...
