In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party met
to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into
the western territories.
The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834 to oppose the
“tyranny” of President Andrew Jackson, had shown itself
incapable of coping with the national crisis over slavery.
With the successful introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill of 1854, an act that dissolved the terms of the Missouri
Compromise and allowed slave or free status to be decided
in the territories by popular sovereignty, the Whigs then
disintegrated.
By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in
the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a
new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20,
1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of
the Republican Party.
Alvan Earle Bovay
(July 12, 1818 – January 13, 1903)
Horace Greeley
(February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872)
