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Show Three Party Divisions Had Name "Republican" The name Republican has been applied ap-plied to three parties, a fact which gives rise to confusion. The Republican Repub-lican party of today originated in 1S54-3G', after the dissolution of the Whig party. The southern Whig went over to the Democratic party on the slavery question and the northern Whigs affiliated with the Free Soil and Know-Nothing parties. At a meeting held at Ripon, Wis., in 1S54, a group of Whigs, Free Soilers and Democrats threatened to form a new party if the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed. The bill passed, and ou July 6, 1S54, representatives of the same groups met at Jackson, Mich., and formed a party to which they gave the name Republican. In the election that fall, the new party carried car-ried 15 of the 31 states. The Democratic Dem-ocratic party as now known began with the Anti-Federalists, who opposed op-posed the federal Constitution because be-cause of the rights surrendered .by the states to the federal government. govern-ment. In 1792, it took the name Republican Re-publican party to oppose the Federalist Feder-alist party. It was later sometimes known as the Democratic-Republican party, which name is still the official designation of the Democratic party. After its principles were clearly formulated in 179S by Thomas Jefferson, Jeffer-son, it was sometimes called Democratic, Demo-cratic, but generally Republican, until un-til Andrew Jackson's administration, which began in 1S29. He was the first President to be officially listed under the name Democrat. |