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The Republican Party, also commonly called the GOP (for "Grand Old Party"), is the second oldest existing political party in the United States after its great rival, the Democratic Party. It emerged in 1854 to combat the KansasNebraska Act, which threatened to extend slavery into the territories, and to promote more vigorous modernization of the economy. The Party had almost no presence in the South, but by 1858 in the North it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats to form majorities in nearly every Northern state.

With its election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, and its success in guiding the Union to victory and abolishing slavery, it came to dominate the national political scene until 1932. The Republican Party was based on northern white Protestants, businessmen, small business owners, professionals, factory workers, farmers, and African-Americans. It was pro-business, supporting banks, the gold standard, railroads, and tariffs to protect industrial workers and industry.

Under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, it emphasized an expansive foreign policy. The GOP ("Grand Old Party"), as it is often called, lost its majorities during the Great Depression (192940). Instead, the Democrats under Franklin D. Roosevelt formed a winning "New Deal" coalition, which was dominant from 1932 through 1964. That coalition collapsed in the mid-1960s, partly because of white Southern Democrats' disaffection with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Republicans resurged, winning seven of the 10 presidential elections 1968 to 2004, with Ronald Reagan as the party's iconic conservative hero.

The GOP expanded its base throughout the South after 1968 (excepting 1976), largely due to its strength among socially conservative white Evangelical Protestants and traditionalist Roman Catholics. As white Democrats in the South lost dominance of the Democratic Party once federal courts declared the Democratic White Primary elections unconstitutional, the region began more taking on the two-party apparatus which characterized most of the nation. The Republican Party's central leader by 1980 was Ronald Reagan, whose conservative policies called for reduced government spending and regulation, lower taxes, and a strong anti-Soviet foreign policy.

It began as a coalition of anti-slavery "Conscience Whigs" and Free Soil Democrats opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, submitted to Congress by Stephen Douglas in January 1854. The Act opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states, thus implicitly repealing the prohibition on slavery in territory north of 36 30 latitude, which had been part of the Missouri Compromise. This change was viewed by Free-Soil and Abolitionist Northerners as an aggressive, expansionist maneuver by the slave-owning South.

The Act was supported by all Southerners and by Northern "Doughface" (pro-Southern) Democrats, and by still other northern Democrats persuaded by Douglas' doctrine of "popular sovereignty". In the North the old Whig party was almost defunct. The opponents were intensely motivated and began forming a new party.[1]

The new party went well beyond the issue of slavery in the territories. It envisioned modernizing the United States emphasizing giving free western land to farmers ("free soil") as opposed to letting slave owners buy up the best lands, expanded banking, more railroads, and factories. They vigorously argued that free-market labor was superior to slavery and the very foundation of civic virtue and true republicanism this is the "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" ideology.[1]

The Republicans absorbed the previous traditions of its members, most of whom had been Whigs; others had been Democrats or members of third parties (especially the Free Soil Party and the American Party or Know Nothings). Many Democrats who joined up were rewarded with governorships.[2] or seats in the U.S. Senate[3] or House of Representatives.[4] Since its inception, its chief opposition has been the Democratic Party, but the amount of flow back and forth of prominent politicians between the two parties was quite high from 1854 to 1896.

Historians have explored the ethnocultural foundations of the party, along the line that ethnic and religious groups set the moral standards for their members, who then carried those standards into politics. The churches also provided social networks that politicians used to sign up voters. The pietistic churches emphasized the duty of the Christian to purge sin from society. Sin took many formsalcoholism, polygamy and slavery became special targets for the Republicans.[5]

The Yankees, who dominated New England, much of upstate New York, and much of the upper Midwest were the strongest supporters of the new party. This was especially true for the pietistic Congregationalists and Presbyterians among them and (during the war), the Methodists, along with Scandinavian Lutherans. The Quakers were a small tight-knit group that was heavily Republican. The liturgical churches (Roman Catholic, Episcopal, German Lutheran), by contrast, largely rejected the moralism of the Republican Party; most of their adherents voted Democratic.[5]

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History of the United States Republican Party - Wikipedia ...