20/03/2023
Did you know? The Republican Party was created from of a coalition of political forces to oppose the advance of slavery in the American west and was created in Ripon, Wisconsin, on this day in history, March 20, 1854. "The Republican Party grew out of resistance to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which overrode the Missouri Compromise and allowed slavery to spread into Western territory by popular sovereignty," writes PBS American Experience in its history of political parties in the United States. Abraham Lincoln was the first Republican nominee to win a presidential election in 1860 (just six years after the party was founded!). Democrat-led pro-slavery states quickly seceded from the Union in response to the Republican victory, launching the nation into the Civil War. Republicans after the war pushed through in rapid order the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution. Collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments, they abolished slavery, provided equal protection under the law and guaranteed voting rights. The Republican Party led the fight for woman's suffrage, first in the Wyoming Territories in 1869 and then pushing through the 19th Amendment after sweeping to power in both houses of Congress in November 1918. The Republican Party later pushed through the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 in alliance with Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson, who split with his own party to support the bill.
I am registered as a Republican because they most closely align to my political values.