So this is the little white schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin.

That's literally its name, which is so quaint, the little white schoolhouse.

Now it was built over 170 years ago back in 1853 and that unassuming little gable roofed

building you see right there is still there today still standing there today

because in 1854 just one year after the little white schoolhouse was built, a group of people

got together in that little white schoolhouse and came up with an idea that would end up

changing the course of history in many ways, at least

political history.

I mean at the time America was hotly divided over the question of slavery and the newly

established Kansas and Nebraska territories.

And the people who met in that building,

in that little white schoolhouse,

decided they should actually start a new political party.

A coalition party that brought together members of the Whig Party and the Free Soil Movement and

even some disaffected Democrats who all had very different political visions for

the country. But who were all united around their opposition to the moral crisis at the time of slavery.

Now they decided to call their new political party, the Republican Party.

And the rest, as they say, is kind of history. The Republican Party. And the rest, as they say, is kind of history.

The Republican Party would, of course, become the Party of Lincoln, the party that would end slavery, and establish itself as one of America's two major political organizations for the next century and a half and

still today. And it's one of a history's greater tragedies that the Republican

Party of today is no longer that coalition of people committed to the idea of fighting

back against America's worst impulses.

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