Probably the first people that could be considered Republicans were the Federalists of the 1700s. The Federalists fought to ratify the Constitution, giving all citizens certain rights, a platform in the earliest Republican party. The Democratic-Republican party fought for States' Rights, a common theme of the Democrats later on.

The Origins

The official Republican Party first started before Abraham Lincoln-

In 1820, the Missouri Compromise basically divided the pro-slavery states from the anti-slavery states at a 36° 30 parallel line. But the Kansas-Nebraska Act let a new northern slave territory into the Union past the division. Large numbers of northerners were outraged with slavery, the South, and the Democratic Party's support of it. They formed groups to oppose this act in 1854 and Whigs, Free Soil Party members and some Democrats basically formed the Republican Party, which sought an end to all slavery.

In 1854, the first real Republican meeting was held in Ripon, Wisconsin to discuss the situation. This led to large meetings in Michigan and the first convention in Pennsylvania. This was the birth of the party.

Their Large First Support

The Democratic party of the 1940s was virtually unchallenged. They held most of the power in Congress and usually held the Presidency. Up until 1948, the Democrats maintained a platform of segregation, which Southern states believed in strongly. Because of this, the Democrats regularly acheived high margins in the South, earning it the nickname the Solid South.

Then, at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Milwaukee mayor Hubert Humphrey made an important speech. In it, he urged the party to step away from segregationist policies and embrace civil rights and equal opportunities. This speech affected American politics for years after. Humphrey and several other northern liberal democrats convinced the delegates of the convention to adopt a platform of civil rights.

This enraged Southern politicians, many of whom were democrats and the South in general. They traditionally opposed civil rights and saw segregation as the Southern way of life. The southerners still fought for States' Rights, and so firmly believed that they should be able to protect their way of life. They didn't believe the federal government had the right to dismantle it.

Days after the convention, unhappy southern politicians met in Birmingham Alabama to discuss their problem. The southerners broke away from the Democrats to form their own, the States' Rights Democratic Party, also known as the Segregationist Party or the Dixiecrats. They nominated South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond for the Presidency and won four states in the deep south. Thurmond lost horribly, but it showed that the Democrats had lost much of the vote in the South.

After the Dixiecrats disbanded, the South still had to vote for someone, and more or less by default, they supported the segregationist Republican party. Until the late 1940s, the Republicans had been seen in the south as the liberal northern party of Lincoln, who put an end to slavery. They were also seen as the triumphant northerners who humiliated the south in the Civil War. And so the fledgling Republican party won the vote of the South and their first strong following.

As for the Democrats, they knew the political implications of being for civil rights. When Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a progressive anti-segregation bill, he is supposed to have said to an aide 'I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.'