Good morning,
It’s the first full day of spring, and Whitewater’s forecast calls for an increasingly sunny day, with a high temperature of fifty-six degrees.
The Wisconsin Historical Society notes that yesterday, March 20th, was the Republican Party’s founding, in Ripon:
1854 – Republican Party Founded
On this date Free Soilers and Whigs outraged by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, met in Ripon to consider forming a new political party. The meeting’s organizer, Alvan E. Bovay, proposed the name “Republican” which had been suggested by New York editor Horace Greeley. You can see eyewitness accounts of the meeting, early Republican campaign documents, and other original sources on our page devoted to Wisconsin and the Republican Party. Though other places have claimed themselves as the birthplace of the Republican Party, this was the earliest meeting held for the purpose and the first to use the term Republican. [Source: History of Wisconsin, II: 218-219]