Fact of the Week
Did you know?
In 1834 former members of the Whig Party met to establish a new Republican Party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories.
In November 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president and six weeks later South Carolina formally seceded from the Union. Within six more weeks, five other Southern states had followed South Carolina’s lead, and in April 1861 the Civil War began.
The Civil War firmly identified the Republican Party as the party of the victorious North, and after the war the Republican-dominated Congress forced a “Radical Reconstruction” policy on the South, which saw the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution and the granting of equal rights to all Southern citizens.
Information from https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/republican-party-founded