Founding of the Republican Party

Founding of the Republican Party The Republican Party was founded in the mid-1850s following the fracturing of other political parties over the issue of slavery. The party, which was based on stopping the spread of slavery to new territories and states, arose out of protest meetings which took place in a number of northern states. The catalyst for the founding of the party was the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in the spring of 1854. The law was a major change from the Missouri Compromise of three decades earlier and made it seem possible that new states in the West would come into the Union as slave states. The change splintered both major parties of the era, the Democrats and the Whigs. Each party contained factions that either endorsed or opposed the spread of slavery into western territories. Before the Kansas-Nebraska Act was even signed into law by President Franklin Pierce, protest meetings had been called in a number of locations.   With meetings and conventions happening in a number of northern states, it is impossible to pinpoint one particular place and time where the party was founded.  One meeting, at a schoolhouse  in Ripon, Wisconsin, on March 1, 1854, is often credited as being where the Republican Party was founded. According to a number of accounts published in the 19th century, a convention of disaffected Whigs and members of the fading Free Soil Party assembled at Jackson, Michigan on July 6, 1854. A Michigan congressman, Jacob Merritt Howard, was credited with drawing up the first platform of the party and giving it the name Republican Party. It is often stated that Abraham Lincoln was the founder of the Republican Party. While the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act did motivate Lincoln to return to an active role in politics, he was not part of the group which actually founded the new political party. Lincoln did, however, quickly become a member of the Republican Party and in the election of 1860 he would become its second nominee for president. Formation of a New Political Party Forming the new political party was no easy accomplishment. The American political system in the early 1850s was complicated, and members of a number of factions and minor parties had widely varying degrees of enthusiasm about migrating to a new party. In fact, during the congressional elections of 1854, it seemed that most of the opponents to the spread of slavery concluded their most practical approach would be the formation of fusion tickets. For example, members of the Whigs and the Free Soil Party formed tickets in some states to run in local and Congressional elections. The fusion movement was not very successful, and was ridiculed with the slogan Fusion and Confusion. Following the 1854 elections momentum grew to call meetings and begin to seriously organize the new party. Throughout 1855 various state conventions brought together Whigs, Free Soilers, and others. In New York State, the powerful political boss Thurlow Weed joined the Republican Party, as did the states anti-slavery senator William Seward, and the influential newspaper editor Horace Greeley. Early Campaigns of the Republican Party It seemed obvious that the Whig Party was finished, and couldnt run a candidate for the presidency in 1856. As the controversy over Kansas escalated (and would eventually turn into a small-scale conflict dubbed Bleeding Kansas), the Republicans gained traction as they presented a united front against the pro-slavery elements dominating the Democratic Party. As former Whigs and Free Soilers coalesced around the Republican banner, the party held its first national convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from June 17-19, 1856. Approximately 600 delegates gathered, mainly from the northern states but also including the border slave states of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and the District of Columbia. The territory of Kansas was treated as a full state, which carried considerable symbolism given the unfolding conflict there. At that first convention, the Republicans nominated explorer and adventurer John C. Frà ©mont as their presidential candidate. A former Whig congressman from Illinois who had come over to the Republicans, Abraham Lincoln, was nearly nominated as the vice presidential candidate but lost to William L. Dayton, a former senator from New Jersey. The first national platform of the Republican Party called for a transcontinental railroad and improvements of harbors and river transportation. But the most pressing issue, of course, was slavery and the platform called for prohibiting the spread of slavery to new states and territories. It also called for the prompt admission of Kansas as a free state. The Election of 1856 James Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, and a man with an uncommonly long record in American politics won the presidency in 1856 in a three-way race with Frà ©mont and former president Millard Fillmore, who ran a disastrous campaign as the candidate of the Know-Nothing Party. Yet the newly formed Republican Party did surprisingly well. Frà ©mont received about a third of the popular vote and carried 11 states in the electoral college. All the Frà ©mont states were in the North and included New York, Ohio, and Massachusetts. Given that Frà ©mont was a novice at politics, and the party had not even existed at the time of the previous presidential election, it was a very encouraging result. At the same time, the House of Representatives began to turn Republican. By the late 1850s, the House was dominated by Republicans. The Republican Party had become a major force in American politics. And the election of 1860, in which the Republican candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the presidency, led to the slave states seceding from the Union.

How to Use a Pell Grant Calculator

How to Use a Pell Grant Calculator SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips If you're trying to plan out your college expenses, the ability to estimate your federal aid eligibility can be a big advantage. There are so many factors to take into account, though - it might be hard to know where to begin. The good news is that calculating your Pell Grant eligibility probably isn't as hard as you think it is. And there's an added bonus: calculating Pell Grant eligibilitywill also generate informationabout other federal aid programs, like Stafford loans and work study. Best of all, it should only take about 10 minutes! Read on to learn about what you need to get started and how to calculate your eligibility. What Information Do You Need Before You Get Started? There are certain pieces of information that you probably don't need to research - like how many siblings you have, or your marital status - thataffect Pell Grant calculations. The calculator will also check for certain federal aid eligibility requirements.If you don't meet all federal requirements, you can't receive the Pell Grant; check out our Pell Grant eligibility guide for more information before you get started. The information you probably will need to research will be on your family's finances. If you don't have the documentation on hand it's fine to give estimates, but your calculations probably won't be as accurate.Here's thedocumentation you should have when you do your calculations: Your parents' most recent tax returns. Specifically, you need their adjusted gross income. The calculator will tell you exactly what line number you can find the adjusted gross income, depending on what form you have available. Your parents' asset net worth.The calculator will estimate an asset net worth based on the adjusted gross income you enter, but you may need to edit this. Asset net worth is defined as what your parents own (money, businesses, investments) minus any debt on those assets. You shouldn't include your parents' home or retirementplans. Your own most recent tax returns and asset net worth.If you don't file taxes or have any assets (like cash savings), you don't have to worry about inputting this information. Once you've gathered all this information, all you need to do is plug it into the federal aid calculator! What was that thing Ben Franklin said about taxes again? How Do I Actually EstimateMy Pell Grant Award? If you have financial information discussed above, this next step should be quick and easy. First, you should know there's no dedicated application for the Pell Grant - instead, all applicants are considered for it when they submit their Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA. To calculate your Pell award, we'll be using the FAFSA aidcalculatorcalled ... wait for it ... the FAFSA4caster.The FAFSA4caster isn't the actual application, so using it doesn't mean you've submitted an application for the Pell Grant. Although the calculator is pretty accurate, there's no guarantee that you'll receive the exact amount of aid estimated by the 4caster. To get started, click here and select theFAFSA4casterlink towards the top of the page. From there, follow the prompts on the screen; answer all questions as honestly as possible for an accurate estimate.There's a "helps and hints" section on the right side of the screen that will provide more information about the question prompts. Interpreting Your Calculator Results I completed an example calculation to demonstrate how to interpret your federal aid eligibility results. Keep in mind that my (fake!) results will likely look different from yours. Here's an example of what an aid eligibility calculation looks like before you enter college cost Whenmaking this example, I chose all of the standard options (no special housing circumstances, married/remarried parents, US citizen), didn't enter any personal income, and set my "parents'" income to $50,000. Based on this information, I would be eligible for a $2885 Pell Grant, in addition to $1465 in work-study and $5,500 in Stafford Loans.You can see these results in the image above. You've probably noticed that there are some blank boxes for state grants, college grants, and scholarships. The FAFSA4caster doesn't calculate these for you - it's just for federal aid - but itincludes these boxes in case you have other sources of aid you wanted to take into account. What you can do next, if you'd like, is calculate the difference betweenthe total cost of college and the amount of aid you get. The difference would be the remaining balance, or what you would be responsible for paying. Using the same information as above, I entered a College Cost of $30,000 and pressed "calculate." An example estimate of college cost minus total aid available In this example, my total aid (Pell Grant + work study + Stafford Loan) subtracted from my College Cost ($30,000) leaves me with a difference of $20,210. You'll notice that at the bottom of your calculation page there are spots to input savings and additional loan amounts - these numbers can be helpful to play around with if you're working out how to pay that remaining balance. What if the Aid You're Eligible For Isn't Enough? You've figured out roughly what you'll have to pay for college after accounting for federal aid, but what if that "difference" calculation is more than you expected? The good news is that you have other opportunities for aid. State financial aid also uses information generated by the FAFSA, so make sure to submit your application sooner rather than later. You can also look into private loans, scholarships through your school, or other merit-based scholarships. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now: