The First Re Convention- D. Eliot, pledged themselves to do all in their power to form a party to combat slavery extension, and they agreed that it should be called Republican. These are the earliest authenticated instances of the application of the Republican name to the party created by the act of 1854, throwing the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska open to slavery. Some of the histories and most of the books of political reminiscences publican State say the Republican party obtained a foothold earlier in the Eastern States than it did in the West, and Massachusetts and New York are often made the birthplace of the party. This, however, is a mistake. Michigan has the honor of being the first State to officially baptize the Republican party. At a State Convention composed of men who had been members of the Whig, Democratic and Free Soil parties, held in Jackson, Michigan, on July 6, 1854, the delegates pledged themselves and their constituents to co-operate and be known as Republicans until the contest be terminated "—meaning the contest in the Territories between slavery and freedom, which the Kansas-Nebraska act precipitated. That was the earliest formal and specific adoption of the Republican name by any large body of citizens Horace Gree Suggesting the ley's Part in Republican Conventions in The signers of the call for the Michigan Republican Convention included several men who subsequently became national figures, among them being Jacob M. Howard, Austin Blair, Isaac P. Christiancy and Zachariah Chandler. Horace Greeley wrote to Howard telling him Wisconsin, in its convention to be held July 13, was going to adopt the Republican name, and advised Michigan to get ahead of her, which she did. Kinsley S. Bingham, who headed the State ticket nominated by the Michigan Convention, which ticket swept the State, was the first Governor who was ever a candidate on the Republican ticket. Exception, of course, is here made of the Jeffersonian Republican party of 1792-1829. State Conventions which formally adopted the Republican name met in Wisconsin and Vermont July 13, 1854, a week later than MichiVermont. Mas- gan's, in Massachusetts September 7, and in New York September 26. Other Northern States nominated anti-slavery tickets in 1854, without assuming the new name. Throughout nearly all the remainder of the North the name was adopted in State Conventions in 1855. sachusetts and New York. Why the West Instead of the South. The reason why the West joined the East when the sectional division between the States took place, instead of clinging to the South as Joined the East it had done in earlier days, were these: The development of the railroad connection with the Atlantic seaboard States in the ten or fifteen years preceding 1854, created a stronger physical bond between West and East than the Mississippi had established between West and South. This, and the fact that the East furnished the principal home market for Western products, and provided most of the supplies for which these were exchanged, is the economic reason why the agricultural West broke from the agricultural South and joined the manufacturing East. Immigration to the West, so far as it consisted of home immigrants, was from the East far more largely than from the South. This is the social reason for the break with the South and the affiliation with the East when the crisis came. The moral reason for the change was in the strong anti-slavery sentiment carried with them by the immigrants from New England, whose influence could be traced along lines of latitude in the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, and in Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa. Most of the foreign immigrants to the West in those days were Germans, three-fourths of whom were anti-slavery men. Got an Earlier There are two principal causes why the Republican party got a why the Party foothold somewhat earlier in the West than it did in the East. First, the West was assailed more directly than the East by the Douglas act which threw the Territories open to slavery; and, secondly, party organization and discipline being less extensive and rigid in young States than in old ones, the chances in the former for forming new partisan combinations are always better. On January 17, 1856, a call was issued by the Chairmen of the Republican State - Committees of Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin, inviting "the Republicans of the Union to meet in informal convention" at Pittsburg on February 22, 1856. From the day of the meeting of that gathering the life of the Republican party as a national organization dates. That assemblage formed a Republican National Committee, which committee, on March 29, 1856, called the National Delegate Convention which nominated Fremont for President. Before 1856 came the Republicans had gained control of most of the free States. In the congressional elections of 1854 they secured a plurality in the House of Representatives, but not a majority, the Whigs who had as yet resisted absorption in the new Republican party or the Democracy, together with the Know-nothings, the anti-Alien and antiCatholic party of that day, holding the balance of power. This condition. of things resulted in the longest contest for Speaker in the record of the House of Representatives, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, a Republican, being elected by the aid of a few Whigs and Know - nothings, on a plurality vote, on February 2, 1856, after a struggle of sixty-one days. This was the first Republican triumph, and it gave the party much encouragement in the presidential canvass. Its ticket in that year, nominated in a convention which met at Philadelphia on June 17, was John C. Fremont, of California, for President, and William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, for Vice-President. The platform declared that it was "both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery"; demanded the admission of Kansas with its free State constitution, and condemned the Ostend manifesto as "the highwayman's plea that might makes right." The tariff was not mentioned in the national platform until 1860. First Republican National Gathering. Banks Elected Fremont Nominated. Civil War in Republican Defeat in 1856. Decision. The Know-nothing or American party as it began to be called then, nominated ex - President Millard Fillmore for President, and Andrew J. Donelson for Vice-President, in a convention which met in Philadelphia, February 22, 1856, and the Democrats, in a convention which met in Cincinnati on June 2, nominated James Buchanan and John C. Breckin ridge for the first and second offices respectively. The conflict for the possession of Kansas, between the free State settlers and the friends of slavery, which by this time had developed into a condition of civil war, aided the Republicans, yet their time to carry the country had not yet come. The business interests, always conservative, dreading a change of control in the Government at that time, threw their influence in favor of the Democracy, and that party carried the country. Buchanan received 1,838,169 popular and 174 electoral votes, as compared with 1,341,264 and 114 respectively for Fremont and 874,534 and 8 (the electoral votes of Maryland) for Fillmore. All the free States except New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and California went Republican. The vote of Pennsylvania and of any one of the other four free States would have given the Republicans the victory. In addition to their failure in 1856 to gain the Presidency, the Republicans lost the House of Representatives, which they had won on The Dred Scott a plurality vote in 1854, but they secured that of 1858. The Republicans had been assisted by the Dred Scott decision of 1857, declaring that slave holders had a right to take their property into the Territories; by the unpopularity in the North of the Buchanan Administration, which was dominated by the Southern end of the Democracy, and which tried to force the Lecompton pro-slavery Constitution on Kansas, in opposition to the convictions of a majority of its citizens. This Lecompton contest in Congress, in which most of the Northern Democrats voted with the Republicans against the Administration, was the great political event of The Lincoln 1858, and next to it in interest was the struggle for the Senatorship in Douglas Debate. John Brown's Helper's "Impending Crisis. Illinois, in the series of joint debates between Lincoln and Dougias. Douglas was re-elected, but the Republicans gained the House of Representatives, though not by a clear majority. This produced a speakership contest almost as long as that which occurred four years earlier, and much more exciting. John Brown's invasion of Virginia in October, 1859, and the publication of Helper's "Impending Crisis of the South,' which was an attack on slavery by a Southern poor white, helped to intensify the bitterness between the sections. The speakership contest began when Congress met, December 5, 1859, three days after Brown's execution, and lasted fifty-eight days. John Sherman, the original Republican candidate, who had indorsed Helper's book, withdrew, William Pennington, of New Jersey, was put in his place, and he was elected by the aid of a few Northern Know-nothing votes. The Republicans were nominally in control of the House of 185961, presided over by Pennington, but the Senate and Executive were |