Republican Party (United States) Timeline of Events

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Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

Timeline of Events

1854

2.28.1854

The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.

1860

5.18.1860

Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State.

1866

7.30.1866

New Orleans's Democratic government orders police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150.

1870

2.25.1870

Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.

1874

11.7.1874

A cartoon by Thomas Nast in ''Harper's Weekly'', is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party.

1920

6.11.1920

During the U.S. Republican National Convention in Chicago, U.S. Republican Party leaders gathered in a room at the Blackstone Hotel to come to a consensus on their candidate for the U.S. presidential election, leading the Associated Press to first coin the political phrase "smoke-filled room".

1953

1.20.1953

Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated as the first Republican President in twenty years.

2003

5.12.2003

Fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers bring the Texas Legislature to a standstill by going into hiding in a dispute over a Republican congressional redistricting plan.