Illinois GOP 1854




Grand Old Partisan highlights an early attempt to create the Illinois Republican Party. May 1854, Democrats passed a federal law extending slavery into the western territories. Outraged, friends of freedom organized themselves as the Republican Party of Michigan and Wisconsin and several other states.

Anti-slavery activists led by Owen Lovejoy, brother of a martyred abolitionist, attempted to do the same for Illinois. October 5th, twenty-six delegates convened in the capitol building at Springfield. Abraham Lincoln, who had addressed the state fair the previous day, they invited to be on this new party's state committee. Judging their action premature, he declined and left town.

Following year, Lincoln contended for the U.S. Senate, as a Whig. He and Lovejoy, who went on to serve in Congress, became political allies. There being no state-wide elections for another year, establishing an Illinois Republican Party waited until May 1856. 'The Railsplitter" keynoted that momentous event.
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Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.


Each day, his YouTube videos and TikTok videos and Rumble videos and Grand Old Partisan blog celebrate more than seventeen decades of Republican heroes and heroics. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states.

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