Republican Party of Wisconsin
The Republican Party of Wisconsin is a conservative and populist political party in Wisconsin and is the Wisconsin affiliate of the United States Republican Party. The state party chair is Brian Schimming. The state party is divided into 72 county parties for each of the state's counties, as well as organizations for the state's eight congressional districts. It currently controls the majority of Wisconsin's U.S. House seats, one of its U.S. Senate seats, and has majorites in both houses of the state legislature.
History
After the introduction in Congress of the Kansas–Nebraska bill in January 1854, many meetings were held in protest across the country. The meeting held in Ripon, Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is commonly cited as the birth of the Republican Party in the United States due to it being the first publicized anti-slavery meeting to propose a new party with its name being ''Republican.''Origins of the Republican Party in Wisconsin
Before the meeting in Ripon, an alliance existed between state Whigs, whose national party had weakened, and members of the Free Soil Party, with whom they formed a "people's ticket" as early as 1842. The coalition succeeded in electing the chief justice of the state supreme court, a Milwaukee mayor and aldermen. Many Wisconsin Democrats were also opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska bill, which not only would leave the question of slavery in the territories up to popular sovereignty, but as originally amended would also deny immigrants the right to vote or hold public office. The bill was roundly condemned in the Wisconsin press, as editors such as Horace Rublee, Rufus King and Sherman Booth encouraged the formation of a new party by calling for an anti-Nebraska convention at the state capitol in Madison. At a large meeting in Milwaukee on February 13, Booth led a committee that drafted many of the resolutions that would later be the basis for other anti-Nebraska meetings in the state, including the famous meeting in Ripon.Birth of the Republican Party
The organizer of the meeting that gave birth to America's Republican Party was New York state native Alvan Earle Bovay, a lawyer and mathematics teacher at Ripon College. In 1852 Bovay traveled to New York City during the national Whig Party convention and met with old friend and New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley. Bovay suggested the name "Republican" for a new anti-slavery party that would replace the fading Whigs. He favored it because it was a simple word rather than a compound name like Free Soil or Free Democrat, that it could be used as either a noun or an adjective, that it would remind people of Thomas Jefferson's affiliation, and that it symbolized what he believed the new party should represent: "Res Publica," synonymous with commonwealth. Bovay also believed that the name would attract immigrant voters that had recently fled monarchies.On February 26, 1854, Bovay sent a letter to Greeley urging him to editorialize about a new Republican party, without result. In the meantime he organized a public meeting at the Congregational Church in Ripon on March 1, where resolutions were passed condemning the Nebraska bill and promising a new party if it became law. The Senate passed the bill two days later, which prompted Bovay to organize another meeting in Ripon at Schoolhouse Dist. No. 2 on March 20, 1854, at 6:30 p.m. Composed of Whigs, Democrats and Free Soilers, 54 of Ripon's 100 voters filled the schoolhouse to capacity and were nearly unanimous in their support of a new party with Bovay's suggested name Republican. Bovay wrote Greeley on June 4 urging him to publicize the name before Michigan and Wisconsin held their state anti-Nebraska conventions, which Greeley did in a Tribune editorial on June 24.
Organizing the Republican Party of Wisconsin
On June 9 Sherman Booth repeated the call for a mass convention in Madison, and suggested July 13, the anniversary of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that had banned slavery in the Northwest Territory. Other Wisconsin editors concurred and publicized the convention.Beginning in the capitol's assembly chamber, the state convention was moved outdoors due to the many delegates and supporters arriving, with the crowd topping one thousand. The proceedings were run by experienced Whigs and Free Soilers, with editors Booth and King controlling the platform and nominating officers from all three major parties. Resolutions included abrogating the Fugitive Slave Act, re-instating Kansas and Nebraska as free states and banning all future slave states. They also resolved to invite all persons "whether of native or foreign birth" to join the party, and a committee was assigned to establish a Republican German newspaper in Milwaukee. All resolutions were passed unanimously, and nine hearty cheers went up for the state's new Republican Party.
After winning over much of the foreign-language press, the new party was very successful in the fall elections, helped greatly by the fact that the state Democrats were deeply split over the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Republicans elected two of Wisconsin's three congressmen, as well as winning enough seats in the state legislature to elect the country's first Republican senator, Charles Durkee. By 1857 they not only controlled the governorship and the state legislature by large majorities, but also held all three Congressional seats and both U.S. Senate seats.
Despite such electoral domination, the Republican party was split over many issues. Many former Whigs pressed for temperance legislation, resulting in charges of nativism from many of the Germans brought into the party by Carl Schurz. United by national events like the Dred Scot decision, abolitionists still drove the party agenda, but were criticized for showing more concern for the black slave than for the white man. Following Sherman Booth's role in inciting the liberation of runaway slave Joshua Glover from a Milwaukee jail in 1854, many Republicans championed the issue of states' rights, declaring the Fugitive Slave Law effectively repealed in Wisconsin. Some in the party anticipated a confrontation with the federal government. Governor Alexander Randall ordered an Irish militia disbanded because he doubted their loyalty to Wisconsin. Many in the militia subsequently perished in the shipwreck of the Lady Elgin.
The Civil War era
The Wisconsin delegation to the 1860 Republican convention backed Senator William Seward for president, but quickly supported Abraham Lincoln once his nomination appeared inevitable. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, governors like Randall and Edward Salomon vigorously endorsed the war and mustered thousands of troops to meet the federal quotas, later resorting to a draft.Politically, the Civil War was a boon to the Republicans. Returning officers like Brigadier General Lucius Fairchild, who had lost an arm at Gettysburg, were the perfect spokesmen for the party. Fairchild later became a three-term governor. Republicans could forever claim they fought to preserve the Union, and veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic became a powerful constituency.
The state Republican chairman from 1859 to 1869 was Wisconsin State Journal editor Horace Rublee, who with former governor Randall, Madison postmaster Elisha W. Keyes and others became known as the "Madison Regency." Randall later became President Andrew Johnson's postmaster general, and with Keyes they steered federal patronage jobs to political allies and strengthened the party's hold on the statehouse. Despite such power the state Republicans were divided into factions, with the more ideological members opposed to Johnson's vetoes of Freedman legislation and President Ulysses S. Grant's corrupt administration. Another faction of patronage-seekers and loyal veterans supported Grant as a bulwark against what they saw as a traitorous Democratic Party. Nevertheless, the Republicans would continue to dominate Wisconsin government for the next six decades with few interruptions.
The 1870s and 1880s
Rublee ran a quiet campaign in the legislature for possible election as U.S. Senator, but after losing to Matthew H. Carpenter, Rublee was appointed by Grant minister to Switzerland in 1869. The party machinery was left in the hands of "Boss" Keyes. Yet the Industrial Age hailed a shift of Republican power away from Madison, to wealthy men like Philetus Sawyer of Oshkosh, whose lumber fortune would help fund the party and advance him from mayor to state legislator to congressman to U.S. senator. Milwaukee's Henry C. Payne rose from dry goods dealer to the Young Men's Republican Club, where he engineered a voter registration drive among the city's immigrants to vote the Republican ticket. In 1876 Payne was appointed Milwaukee's postmaster, a powerful source of patronage jobs. He later became wealthy as a manager of banks, utilities and railroads. John C. Spooner of Hudson was the principal attorney for the West Wisconsin Railroad, and his manipulation of land grants into Sawyer's hands contributed to his future as party insider, and later, U.S. senator alongside Sawyer. Upon his return from Europe Rublee resumed the chairmanship of the party. With help from backers, he purchased the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1882 and was its editor until his death in 1896.The Republicans briefly lost control of state government following the Panic of 1873, when a reform coalition of Democrats, Grangers and Liberal Republicans elected Democrat William Taylor as governor. Immigrant backlash against Republican-supported temperance legislation was also a major factor. In 1874 Republicans backed the weak railroad regulation of the Potter Law, but replaced the law with the even weaker Vance Law once they returned to power the next year.
Civil War veteran Jeremiah Rusk of Viroqua proved a popular Republican governor during his three terms. A farmer, Rusk supported measures that improved the state's agriculture, such as university-run experimental farms. He was later appointed the country's first Secretary of Agriculture by president Benjamin Harrison. In 1886, he issued the "shoot to kill" order to the National Guard in response to widespread May Day strikes in Milwaukee, resulting in the Bay View Tragedy that left seven people dead. Despite the loss of life, Rusk's decision was applauded in state newspapers as well as nationally. Rusk's administration was followed by that of another Republican farmer, William Hoard, who published a widely read journal on dairy farming.
In 1890 the Republicans were swept from state offices again when the party ran afoul of ethnic politics by supporting the Bennett Law, a compulsory school attendance measure that stipulated that all classes must be taught in English. Immigrant groups and supporters of parochial schools condemned the law while Governor Hoard and the Milwaukee Sentinel continued to defend it. Democrats won in a landslide, but the GOP returned to power two years later.