Political Challanges to Slavery and Immigrant Citizenship 

In the years prior to and immediatelyfollowing statehood, Wisconsin political life was dominated by the Democratic Party. National debates over slavery and immigrant suffrage, however, would present the opening for a new political party in the 1850s.In 1854, Illinois Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas presented Congress with a plan to organize the Kansas and Nebraska territories. The proposed legislation, known as the Kansas-Nebraska bill, recommended repealing the 1820 Missouri Compromise that had closed the area to slavery, instead allowing settlers to decide for themselves whether to make slavery legal. Wisconsin residents — most of whom were immigrants — were outraged by the measure that denied non-citizen immigrants the right to vote or hold office in either territory. 

Ripon: The Birthplace of a New Political Party 

Whig, Free Soil and most Democratic Wisconsin newspapers disapproved of the amendment disenfranchising aliens as well as the provision opening the territories to slavery. Political leaders held meetings against the bill across the state in the early months of 1854. In February 1854, dissenting members of the Whig, Free Soil, and Democratic parties gathered in Riponto form a new political party.Lawyer Alan E. Bovay, formerly an enthusiastic Whig, suggested the formation of a new party. Other anti-Nebraska meetings in Michigan, New York and throughout the North also recommended the organization of a new party to protest the bill.In June of 1854, New York editor Horace Greeley proposed the term “Republican” to describe the insurgent movement, writing that the term would “fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery.” 

In July of 1854, a convention to organize the new party was held in Madison. The more than one thousand delegatespresent, the majority of whom were former Whigs,resolved, “That we accept this issue, forced upon us by the slave power, and in the defense of freedom will cooperate and be known as Republicans.” Convention attendees, however, stopped short of supporting abolition or racial equality for African Americans; their resolutions to “restrict Slavery to the States in which it exists” and “to prohibit the admission of any more Slave States into the Union” instead focusing on containing the expansion of slavery into the American West. 

Wisconsin’s Early Support for the Republican Party in National Politics 

When the 1854 election results were in, Wisconsin Republicans had captured one of the two U.S. Senate seats, two of the three U.S. House of Representatives seats, a majority of the state assembly and many local offices. Wisconsin elected a Republican governor the next year.Local meetings were held throughout the North in 1854 and 1855. The first national convention of the new party was held in Pittsburgh on February 22, 1856. That year, the majority of Wisconsin’s electorate voted for John C. Fremont, the first Republican presidential candidate. The following election, a majority of Wisconsinites voted for Abraham Lincoln, and enthusiastically supported the Union effort as the country entered the Civil War. 

Republicans Dominate Statewide Politics 

Republicans dominated state politics from 1855 to 1900. They held the governor’s mansion for all but three terms from in the final four decades of the nineteenth century. The most notable exception to that control came in a Democratic landslide election in 1890, when an immigrant-led coalition rallied against the bitterlycontested Bennett Law, an initiative supported by Republican Governor William D. Hoard and other members of the party which mandated English-only instruction in elementary and secondary schools. 

The La Follettes and the Rise of the Progressive Republicans 

During the early decades of the twentieth century, the Republican Party was divided into rival camps. The Stalwarts were controlled by party bosses like John Coit Spooner, Philetus Sawyer, and Henry Clay Payne, who deployed a machine-style approach, including at times buying elections, to consolidate party power. They were challenged by the Progressive wing of the party, which argued thateconomic and political power in Wisconsin had become concentrated in the hands of the banks, railroads, and timber and companies. Progressive leaders such as Frances McGovern and Robert M. La Follette, Sr. championed a reform movement from within party, determined to return control of local and state elections to the Wisconsin citizens. With La Follette at the lead, Progressive Republicanschampionedthe direct primary, tax reform, railroad regulation, and civil service and anti-lobbying legislation.La Follette became a national figure in the Progressive Movement, serving as U.S. Representative (1885-1891), Governor (1901-1906), and Senator (1910-1925) before mounting a third-party run for the presidency in 1924. 

The Wisconsin Progressive Party and Fractures in Republican Politics 

From 1900 to 1934, a period in which Republicans dominated most state-level offices, theStalwarts battled with Progressivesfor control of Wisconsin’sGrand Old Party.Following Robert La Follette Sr.’s death in 1925, sons Phil and Robert Jr. carried on their father’s legacy and ensured that progressivism remained the dominant strain with Republican politics. When Stalwarts recaptured control of the party in the mid 1930s, the La Follettes and their allies split from Republicans to create the independent Wisconsin Progressive Party.Aligning with radical farm organizations, labor unions, and even Milwaukee Socialists, the Progressive Party secured a handful of victories during the Great Depression and passed social safety net legislation that became a model for national efforts. A galvanized Republican Party and the Progressives’ early opposition to United States’ involvement in World War II, however, helped bring the third party’s dominance to an end. 

McCarthyism and Cold War Anticommunism 

The defeat of the Progressive Party in the mid 1940s brought a two-party realignment to Wisconsin politics. While many former progressives joined the Democratic Party, the Republican Party became growingly more conservative.1946 served asa sea change year for the state party, as Joseph R. McCarthy defeated Robert La Follette Jr. for the Republican senatorial nomination. Amid the Cold War, McCarthy became the most visible and vocal anti-communist in Congress, alleging that communist subversives had infiltrated the federal government, universities, and the film industry.Whenhisunverifiable claims and aggressive tactics lost public credibility, McCarthy was censured by his fellow senators in 1954. McCarthy’s demise from national prominence and death in 1957 coincided with the end of Republican dominance of Wisconsin politics. Through much of the second half of the twentieth century, Republicans and Democrats regularly alternated control of the governorship and state legislature, and sent representatives from both parties to Washington, D.C.