The Missouri Compromise had been in place since 1820, when Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state in exchange for the prohibition of slavery north of the 36°30′ parallel. However, on 4 March 1854 the Senate passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act to create two new territories with the potential for them to be opened to slavery, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise. In response, a coalition of opponents to the expansion of slavery began to discuss forming a new political party on an anti-slavery platform.
New York attorney Alvan E. Bovay had moved to the small town of Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1850. He quickly became a respected member of the community, and was instrumental in the construction of the single-story wooden framed schoolhouse. On the evening of 20 March 1854 he organized a meeting there for fellow opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, at which the town committees of the Free Soil and Whig parties voted to dissolve themselves in favor of creating a new party. It is generally accepted that Bovay himself proposed naming the new party ‘Republican’ in homage to the Republican Party of Thomas Jefferson.
The party’s first convention was held on 6 July 1854 on the outskirts of Jackson, Michigan, barely six weeks after President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act into law. By this time Bovay had persuaded Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, to promote the ‘Republican’ party. The party quickly built support and by 1856 it proved to be the dominant political force in the North when John C. Fremont, the first Republican presidential candidate, won 11 of the 16 Northern states.
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