HEAL America Campaign
The Founding of the Republican Party 1854
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On July 6, 1854, one hundred and fifty years ago, Jackson, Michigan hosted a major event in United States history, the founding of the Republican Party "Under the Oaks" at Franklin and Second Streets. The origins of the party and this historic day lie in the conflicts regarding the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories and the dedication of Michigan citizens to the cause of anti-slavery.
MISSOURI COMPROMISE
The Missouri Compromise, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1821, served to offer a compromise to the North and South regarding the extension of slavery. It divided the country at the 36° 30' parallel between the industrial, anti-slavery North and the agricultural, pro-slavery South.
This uneasy compromise held for over 30 years. During that time the country continued to split apart over the issue. The Democratic Republican Party (or more simply, the Democratic Party) and the Whig Party were the major political parties, with a number of single-issue parties waxing and waning over the decades of the early 19th century.KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT
The Kansas-Nebraska Act shattered this uneasy peace in March of 1854. It officially established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and in doing so, effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise.
After a number of efforts were defeated by Congress to establish the Western territories, Stephen A. Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, offered the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a concession to the Southern states. Previous bills had been rejected largely due to the South's opposition to the Missouri Compromise. The Kansas-Nebraska Act proposed that the settlers in each territory make the decision on slavery, something Douglas called "popular sovereignty." The Act contradicted the provisions of the Missouri Compromise under which slavery would have been barred from both of the Kansas and Nebraska territories.
Proposed in January of 1854, Douglas' bill passed after three months of bitter debate. Rather than offering a peaceful solution, the Kansas-Nebraska Act served to set in motion a number of events, including the founding of the Republican Party, and perhaps, eventually, the Civil War.THE FACTIONS COME TOGETHER AROUND THE COUNTRY
Shortly after the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, "anti-Nebraska" conventions were held in many towns and cities. A number of different political parties came together in these meetings including the Free Soil Party, many Whigs, Democrats who opposed slavery, Abolitionists, and Prohibitionists. They differed in the extent of their opposition to slavery -- from wishing to contain it within the South to firmly believing in a Constitutional amendment that abolished it -- but all were opposed to it and the spread of it in the new territories.
On March 20, 1854, Ripon, Wisconsin resident Alvan E. Bovay and several dozen Ripon citizens met to dissolve the local Whig party and form a new one. Bovay had earlier written to Horace Greenley, editor of the New York Tribune, to suggest the name "Republican" for a new anti-slavery party. It was a name that had been mentioned a number of times around the country over the past two decades. A committee of five was formed as a result of the March 20 meeting, but did not formally adopt the name "Republican" for the proposed party.
Other similar meetings took place in May in Washington, D.C. Bangor, Maine, and Friendship, New York. In June 1854, Greenley printed, "We should not care much whether those thus united (against slavery) were designated 'Whig,' 'Free Democrat' or something else; though we think some simple name like 'Republican' would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery."MICHIGAN ANTI-SLAVERY FORCES RALLY
On February 8, 1854, Jackson's American Citizen editor, Charles V. DeLand wrote: "This [opposition to slavery] is not a question of party loyalty, but a great fundamental principle of freedom, justice and humanity, a tenet of truth, law and legal right which is sought to be tampered with, and down-trod."
DeLand met with other state Whig editors and Free Soil leaders in the office of Austin Blair, then Jackson County prosecutor, to discuss a proposal to bring the parties together. At first it looked like the Free Soil Party would nominate their own candidates and therefore split the anti-slavery vote.But shortly after their convention, their candidate offered to withdraw his nomination and the entire Free Soil ticket if assured that the Free Soil and Whig Parties would fuse.
Inspired by other "anti-Nebraska" meetings around the state, Jackson held its own meeting on March 3.A protest, adopted at the meeting, was sent to the district's Congressional representative: "we are firmly, unalterably, immovably and forever opposed to the extension of slavery into free territories."
JULY 6TH
After working to bring together not only the Free Soilers and Whigs, but also the Temperance party, DeLand published a call for a mass convention in the June 28 American Citizen:
In view, therefore, of the recent action of Congress upon this subject (the violation of the Missouri Compromise) and the evident designs of the slave power to attempt still further aggressions upon freedom, we invite our fellow citizens without reference to former political associations, who think that the time has arrived for a union at the North to protect liberty from being overthrown and downtrodden, to assemble in mass convention on Thursday, the 6th day of July, next, at 1 o'clock p.m. at Jackson, there to take such measures as shall be thought best to concentrate the popular sentiment of this state against the encroachment of slave power.
Other newspapers around the state echoed the call. Jackson citizens met during the last week of June to form committees and plan the convention.
Delegates began to arrive on July 5. Although originally planned for Bronson Hall, organizers began to believe that the indoor facility would not be large enough to accommodate the crowds.
July 6 arrived, "a most beautiful day, bright and sunshiny, but not excessively warm," according to DeLand. By early in the day over 3,000 representatives had arrived. Bronson Hall, which only held 600, overflowed with delegates. After a few speeches, the group adjourned to Morgan's Forty, an oak grove located at what is now Franklin and Second Streets, now know as "Under the Oaks." As the group left Bronson Hall, it gathered "half the people of the town," according to DeLand.THE WORK OF THE CONVENTION
A brass band welcomed the delegates to "Under the Oaks." Many speeches entertained the crowds, but the real work of the convention was done in committee. The declaration of rights was handwritten by Jacob Howard and signed by delegates from around the state:
We believe that slavery is a violation of the rights of man -- as a man -- we vow at whatever expense, and publicly proclaim our determination, to oppose by all the powerful and honorable means in our power, now and henceforth, all attempts, direct and indirect, to extend slavery in this country, or to permit it to extend into any region or locality in which it does not now exist by positive low, or to admit new slave states into the Union.
We Resolve that the history of the Ordinance of 1787, prohibiting slavery north of the Ohio River, shows it to have been the purpose of our fathers not to promote, but to prevent, the spread of slavery... the Constitution of the United States gives to Congress full power to administer Territories.That power looks to the formation for states to be admitted into the Union; whether they shall be admitted as free or slave states demands that Congress adopt such prudent and preventative measures as the liberties and interests of the whole country require.
This question is one of the gravest importance to the free states... it is one which we hold it to be our right to discuss; we hold it to be the duty of Congress in every instance to determine in unequivocal language... the prevention of the spread of slavery. In short, we claim that the North is a party to the new bargain, and is entitled to have a voice and an influence in settling its terms.
The committee drew up a thirteen-plank platform, ten of which concerned slavery. The platform condemned slavery and called for the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law.It adopted the name "Republican," nominated the first state Republican ticket, and called for economic reforms.
After the platform was adopted, the Free Soil Party announced the dissolution of their party and pledged their loyalty to the new Republican Party.
Following the founding of the Republican Party in Jackson on July 6, the party swept the state elections the following November.Please See...
Original, Radical Republican Presidential Platforms:
1854 Founding Principles of Party established in Rippon, Wisconsin
1856 Republican Presidential Party Platform
1860 Republican Presidential Party Platform
1864 Republican Presidential Party Platform
1868 Republican Presidential Party Platform
1872 Republican Presidential Party Platform
1876 Republican Presidential Party Platform -
* The political incident that led to Republicans loosing their way and abandoning athe sacred cause of the Republic
1880 Republican Presidential Party Platform
1884 Republican Presidential Party Platform
After 1854, the Republican Party began to loosing Presidential elections as they become increasing similar to the Democratic Party which they abandoned the freed chattel slaves and their descendant children to, even under the yoke of generations-destroying Jim Crowism which ended only as late as 1964.
(Ret) US Army General, Late President, Dwight David Eisenhower: Champion of Chattel Slave Descendants and Freemen
The only time since 1854 that a US President (Republican candidate John C. Freemont of California) championed the descendants of chattel slaves and Jim Crow victims was in 1952 with the election of (Ret) General, Dwight D. Eisenhower to Presidency.
John C. Freemont Abraham Lincoln Dwight D. Eisenhower
* Brown vs. Board of Education to end segregation in schools as that is violation of Section 2 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 whereby Eisenhower employed and implemented special Presidential authority listed in Sections 4,8,9. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education or simply google "Brown vs. Board of Education"
* Federalized Arkansas National Guard to enforce desegration at Little Rock High School in 1957 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock_Nine or simply google "Little Rock Arkansas High School"
* Sent federal marshals, FBI, etc to destroy the Ku Klux Klan(KKK) according to Section 5 of the Act combined with his Presidential powers of Sections 4,8,9.
Other than Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D. Eisenhower was the best Presidential champion of the descendants of chattel slaves and freemen in US history.
