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.
Democratic-Republican Party
Taking a leaf from the Jacksonians, the Whigs tended to nominate non-ideological war heroes as their presidential candidates. The Whig party fell apart in the 1850s over the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery into new territories. The modern Republican Party was formed in 1854 to oppose the expansion of slavery. Many former Whig party leaders (such as Abraham Lincoln – modern Republican Party supporters still sometimes refer to themselves as "the party of Lincoln") and former Free Soil Party leaders joined the newly formed anti-slavery party. The party sought to combine Jefferson's ideals of liberty and equality with Clay's program of using an active government to modernize the economy.