The GOP lost its congressional majorities during the Great Depression (1929–1940) under President Franklin D. After 1912, many Roosevelt supporters left the Republican Party, and the Party underwent an ideological shift to the right. In 1912, former Republican president Theodore Roosevelt formed the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party after being rejected by the GOP and ran unsuccessfully as a third-party presidential candidate calling for social reforms. With the election of its first president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, the Party's success in guiding the Union to victory in the American Civil War, and the Party's role in the abolition of slavery, the Republican Party largely dominated the national political scene until 1932.
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While the Republican Party had almost no presence in the Southern United States at its inception, it was very successful in the Northern United States, where by 1858 it had enlisted former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats to form majorities in nearly every Northern state. The party opposed the expansion of slavery before 1861 and led the fight to destroy the Confederate States of America (1861–1865). While both parties adopted pro-business policies in the 19th century, the early GOP was distinguished by its support for the national banking system, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs. The party had very little support from white Southerners at the time, who predominantly backed the Democratic Party in the Solid South, and from Catholics, who made up a major Democratic voting block. The early Republican Party consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and after the Civil War, former black slaves.
In 1854, the Republican Party emerged to combat the expansion of slavery into American territories after the passing of the Kansas–Nebraska Act.
It is the second-oldest extant political party in the United States after its rival, the Democratic Party. The Republican Party, also referred to as the GOP (meaning Grand Old Party), is one of the two major political parties in the United States. Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President (1861–1865)