Message:19229 In: TODAY.WW
From: KF5JRVDate: Fri, 20 Mar 26 10:42:00 Z
Newsgroups: TODAY.WW
Subject: Today in History - Mar 20
Message-ID: <21631_KF5JRV>
Path: K7EK|VE3CGR|KF5JRV
R:260320/1047z @:K7EK.#NOKY.KY.USA.NOAM $:21631_KF5JRV
R:260320/1047Z 71962@VE3CGR.#SCON.ON.CAN.NOAM LinBPQ6.0.25
R:260320/1042Z 21631@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.24
In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the we
stern 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 Compromis
e and allowed slave or free status to be decided in the territories by popular sovereignty, the Whigs disintegrated. By Februar
y 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such m
eeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party.
The Republicans rapidly gained supporters in the North, and in 1856 their first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, won 11
of the 16 Northern states. By 1860, the majority of the Southern slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Repub
licans won the presidency. In November 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president over a divided Democratic Party,
and six weeks later South Carolina formally seceded from the Union. Within six more weeks, five other Southern states had follo
wed South Carolina’s lead, and in April 1861 the Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beaure
gard opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor.
The Civil War firmly identified the Republican Party as the party of the victorious North, and after the war the Republican-dom
inated Congress forced a “Radical Reconstruction” policy on the South, which saw the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th am
endments to the Constitution and the granting of equal rights to all Southern citizens. By 1876, the Republican Party had lost
control of the South, but it continued to dominate the presidency until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.
73 de Scott KF5JRV
Pmail: KF5JRV@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA
Email KF5JRV@gmail.co
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