In 1884 , newspaper printer T.B. Dowdenran out of spaceat the remainder of an article for the Cincinnati Gazette about Republican politician James Gillespie Blaine , who had just been nominated for theU.S. presidency . Dowden ’s copy terminate with the set phrase " Grand Old Party , " and up against a deadline and a blood count , he had to get creative to make the transcript fit .
And so , the next forenoon , the front page of the Cincinnati Gazette read " The Hon . James G. Blaine will turn to the meeting on ' the achievements of the Gop . ' " Dowden is credit as the first person to practice " GOP " in print .
The story of the first use of the now - ubiquitous acronym is a neat part of the Republican Party ’s story , but it ’s hardly the whole story . " GOP " stands for Grand Old Party , but why ?
The Democratic-Republican Party
For that we have to speak about the story of the two main political parties ' lineage . Democrats and Republicans were both bear from the Democratic - Republican Party ( also bang as Jeffersonian Republicans ) , which was found byThomas Jeffersonand James Madison in the 1790s . The party favored political equivalence , expansionismand the philosophy of republicanism , which holds autonomy , individual right hand and the superpower of the citizenry as central value .
The Democratic - Republican Party eventually break into factions during the 1824 presidential election . chip was only a subject of time as four Democratic - Republicans sought the administration , include Andrew Jackson , John Quincy Adams , William H. Crawford and Henry Clay . No candidate gain the electoral vote , and the House of Representatives held a detail election to pick out the United States President . Adams eventually won .
Eventually , the Democratic Party take away its name in 1844 and the Republican Party took its name in 1854 , unify former Whig ( those who favored high duty , distributing soil revenues to states , and passing economic relief legislating ) , like - apt Democrats and abolitionists .
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
This fusion of ideologies in the new formed Republican Party was , ironically , chiefly drive by a Democratic - supported sweat . Namely , theKansas - Nebraska Act of 1854 , a piece of statute law that appropriate slavery to expand into western territories . After it pass , a period of violent anti- and pro- slavery showdown arose known as Bleeding Kansas — an root to the Civil War .
The disputation over slaveholding intensify over the next several age as a youngAbraham Lincolnwas beginning to get his political footing . Lincoln vehemently opposed the Kansas - Nebraska Act and would steady bring his anti - slavery ornateness into his political speeches in result years . By 1860 , Lincoln make headway the Republican Party ’s presidential nomination and soon the presidency . Then in 1861 , seven states declared withdrawal , with four more states joining the Confederacy several months later . You know the rest . The Civil War ended in 1865 when Confederate generals deliver .
But back to the GOP . A few years to begin with in 1859 , Kentucky ’s popular Governor Beriah Magoffin — a staunch neutralist during the Civil War — hearken back to his company ’s Democratic - Republic Party origins in his inaugural address by say , " The Grand Old Party has never change its name , its purposes or its principle , nor has it ever broken its pledges . "
And in 1858 , a Democratic paper in New Haven , Connecticut , also alluded to the Grand Old Party in character to Democrats , publishing the phrase " this Grand Old Party is fraction and in danger of licking . "
But by the 1870s , the moniker had become solidified to the Republican Party . Politicians and newspapers start come to to the Republican Party as the Grand Old Party and the gallant sure-enough party — a military greeting to its function inpreserving the Unionduring the Civil War .
