Anti-slavery Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats meet under the oaks in Jackson; they call themselves Republicans

By the spring of 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had thrown open the question of slavery to popular vote in territories once closed to it, and Northern anti-slavery Whigs, Free Soilers, and disaffected Democrats had nowhere left to go. On July 6, 1854, a large crowd gathered under an oak grove on the edge of Jackson, Michigan, known locally as Morgan's Forty. There, they formed a new party and settled on a name: Republican. Within six years it would elect a president and within seven, fight a war…