BRIEF HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. During the Revolutionary war there were but two parties,' Patriots, who favored the separation from Great Britian, and Tories who were opposed to separation. After Independence was declared, the two parties became Federal and Anti-Federal; the former favoring a strong National Government, and the latter the doctrine of State Rights, the States to be joined by Articles of Confederation. The Federal vote was in the majority, and elected George Washington in 1788. The Anti-Federalists soon took the name of Democrats. They came into power under Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and kept control for twenty-four years, till the time of John Quincy Adams in 1824. ANTI-SLAVERY MOVEMENT. When the constitution was adopted with its three provisions touching slavery, there was decided opposition in the minds of many, but how to do away with it and save the Union, did not seem clear. Local societies were formed against slavery, South as well as North. By the invention of the cotton gin, cotton culture became profitable, and while slavery was abolished by Northern States, it was retained in the Southern. Then the “irrepressible conflict” increased year by year. The North looked upon the selling of wives from husbands and children from parents on the auction block, and making laws forbidding the negro to learn to read and write, as great crimes. The South knew that ignorance was essential to bondage, and that to increase their influence slavery must be carried into the Territories. Each time a free State or a slave State was admitted, there was dissension, lest the balance of power be lost between North and South. When Missouri asked for admission, the North insisted that she should insert in her constitution^ clause prohibiting slavery. After a two years struggle, THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE OF 1820 devised by Henry Clay, was passed. The State was admitted with slavery, but with the provision that all territory north of her southern boundary, shpuld be forever free. This boundary line
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