In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party meet to
establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the
western territories. The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834 to
oppose the "tyranny" of President Andrew Jackson, had shown
itself incapable of coping with the national crisis over
slavery. With the successful introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill of 1854, an act that dissolved the terms of the Missouri
Compromise and allowed slave or free status to be decided in the
territories by popular sovereignty, the Whigs disintegrated. By
February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper
midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One
such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally
remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party. The
Republicans rapidly gained supporters in the North, and in 1856
their first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, won 11 of
the 16 Northern states. By 1860, the majority of the Southern
slave states were pub