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.
History of the United States Republican Party
The early standard bearers of the party expressed views of government that marked the first years of its existence. For instance, William H. Seward, New York governor who vied with Lincoln for the nomination in 1860, had called for welcoming immigrants with "all the sympathy that their misfortunes at home, their condition as strangers here, and their devotion to liberty, ought to excite". In his 1861 message to Congress, Lincoln argued that the essential reason for preserving the central government was to maintain "in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men — to lift artificial weights from all shoulders — to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all — to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life".