A small school house in Ripon, Wisconsin was the setting for a change in the political landscape still felt today.

Some thirty opponents to slavery gathered (commonly called anti-slavery Whigs) and agreed to call for a new political party which became the Republican Party.

Republican would be the most appropriate name (to link their cause with the Declaration of Independence). The group also took a leading role in the creation of the Republican Party in many northern states during the summer of 1854.

Many conservatives and some political moderates were content on stopping the spread of slavery, called a prohibition on slavery expansion, the group insisted that no further political compromise with slavery was possible.

The February 1854 meeting was the first political meeting of the group that would become the Republican Party. The first meeting by a group that called itself “Republican” took place later in 1854 in Jackson, Michigan.

Led by men who include prominently Sen. William Pitt Fessenden, 49, of Maine and Indiana abolitionist George Washington Julian, 38, they take the name Republican from the party founded by Thomas Jefferson, which became known as the Democratic-Republican Party but dropped the last part of its name in 1828

The modern Ripon Society, a Republican think tank, takes its name from Ripon, Wisconsin.

The Little White Schoolhouse of Ripon, claimed birthplace of the U.S. Republican Party (i.e. the site of one of the first meetings of the general "anti-Nebraska" movement of 1854 to use the name "Republican"). Photo/Laharl 2004.

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