HORACE Greeley

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY:June 24, 1854a Momentous Step toward Formation of the Republican Partythe GOP. June 24th 1854, Horace Greeley published in his New York Tribune a condemnation of the pro-slavery Democrats. Party Names and Public Duty called on every "champion and promulgator of Liberty" to unite politically. The name he suggested — Republican — was soon adopted by friends of freedom across the country and led to Republican Party organizations arising throughout northern states.Greeley was responding to a Democrat law that extended slavery into Kansas and Nebraska and other territories. He claimed to have coined the name "Republican" though he had actually learned about it from Alvan Bovay, who chaired that famous meeting in Ripon, Wisconsin three months earlier. Bovay had told his friend Greeley about his idea for a new party, to be called Republican. That influential newspaper publisher then brought it to nationwide attention:"We should not care much whether those thus united (against slavery) were designated 'Whig', 'Free Democrat' or something else, though we think some simple name like 'Republican' would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery."Page 24 of Back to Basics for the Republican Party explains that the name had a past as well as a future. Thomas Jefferson and his followers had also been known as "Republicans". It was chosen to contrast themselves with aristocrats who lorded over blacks and poor whites.https://rumble.com/v53fnoq-that-momentous-step-toward-creation-of-the-republican-party.html