Origins of the American Civil War
In almost every northern state, organizers attempted to have a Republican Party or an anti-Nebraska fusion movement on ballots in 1854. In areas where the radical Republicans controlled the new organization, the comprehensive radical program became the party policy. Just as they helped organize the Republican Party in the summer of 1854, the radicals played an important role in the national organization of the party in 1856. Republican conventions in New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois adopted radical platforms. These radical platforms in such states as Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and Vermont usually called for the divorce of the government from slavery, the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Laws, and no more slave states, as did platforms in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Massachusetts when radical influence was high.
Republican Party (United States)
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the party's core base shifted, with the Southern states becoming more reliably Republican in presidential politics and the Northeastern states becoming more reliably Democratic. After the 1960s, whites increasingly identified with the Republican Party. After the "Roe v. Wade" 1973 Supreme Court ruling, the Republican Party made opposition to abortion a key plank of its national party platform and grew its support among Evangelicals. By 2000, the Republican party was firmly aligned with Christian conservatism. The party's core support since the 1990s comes chiefly from the South, the Great Plains, the Mountain States and rural areas in the North.