Wisconsin and the Republican Party

By the 1840s, slavery had increasingly become a political issue tied to a number of other political objectives. The Free Soil Party, behind its 1848 candidate Martin Van Buren, broadened the party's appeal to include such goals as free homesteads to settlers, federal aid for internal improvements, and opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories. The many-sided aims of the Free Soil Party proved more popular in Wisconsin than in the nation as a whole, especially the movement against the expansion of slavery.

In 1854, Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois presented the Kansas-Nebraska bill, a... more...

Original Documents and Other Primary Sources

	A Wisconsin youth shares a bed with Abraham Lincoln in 1859.
	Wisconsin Governor Jeremiah Rusk (1830-1893)
	Wisconsin delegates at the 1860 Republican convention
	A participant recalls the Ripon meeting of March 20, 1854
	German editors seek to foster unity among Republicans, 1858
	Alvan Bovay is credited with founding the Republican party (1929)
	What Republicans stood for in 1860.
	Ripon celebrates 75 years of the Republican Party
	The origin of the Republican Party in Ripon, 1914
	A Wisconsin Republican leader repudiates slavery in 1860
	Republican campaign tickets and other ephemera, 1864-1880
	The infant Republican Party takes shape, 1857-58.
	Carl Schurz meets with Abraham Lincoln, July 1860

Primary Sources Available Elsewhere

	Letters of Republican politician Carl Schurz 1841-1869
	Wisconsin Blue Books
	Recollections of a Republican politician, 1915
	Wisconsin Republicans invite Abraham Lincoln to the state convention, 1860

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