How exactly did the Republican Party start?

The Republicans were part of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party. Around the civil war they had differences on the matter of slavery and the course of the great nation. So they divided n not in a violent way they just peacefully went their separate ways. Republicans were the most liberal of them all and Democrats were conservative. Republican Abraham Lincoln went on to represent the republican and then you know hopefully the civil war happened and Republican party went into conservation thingy and Democrates became Liberal. The main sign of democrate liberalism is when Willson became president and signed the Fed into law n etc. Ronald Reagan made the current republican trend by increasing military spending and using more aggressive international methods to reach goals (not bashing on Reagan) And the current democrates try to Model after Bill Clinton.

before lincoln was President we had the Democratic republican party and that is the ticket Lincoln ran under. In that time frame they dropped the word Democratic from that party and it became the Republican party.

the opposing party at that time , later became the Democratic party! It may have been the Whig party, don't quote me on that one!

Good question, I am going to delve into the history of the party's and see who was for what, WHEN!

add: Love nodemspl's answer , very funny!

Add: I did just what i said i would do! I looked up the history of both parties.

You can't trace back any particular party to when we first started the voting process for President! most countries had Kings, Queens, dictators, or rulers. Ours was pretty much a new method of governing back in 1776!

We started out with the Federalists and the anti Federalists. they usually ran two people for President and the top winner was President and the 2nd was vice president.

We have had so many party's since its inception that we cannot go directly back and follow one party straight through!

We had the Whig party that became the No Nothing Party ( not to be confused with being dumb). to the free soil party to the Democratic-Republican party. we also had the National Republican party! Confusing , YOU BETT!

They in turn split when two candidates ran on the same ticket and they could not decide who to run as the nominee.

The Democrats are the oldest party in the two party system, but in no ways is the same as it was 200 years ago, in fact it isn't even like it was 40 years ago.

The Democratic party was once know as the Jackson men and the other major party was the anti Jackson men.

You can't even go back in time to see who's philosophy was followed through on as the issues through out the years have changed so much!

Who knows , in the future we may have a political party called the TEA party. ( Totally different from the Republicans or the Democrats)!

Or maybe one of these will cease to exist!

There was a caveman who wanted to eat so he hunted and earned his food. The democrats showed up shortly after and whined that they too should benefit from his kill, though they themselves did not have the initiative to hunt and kill their own food. Hence, the basic difference between pubs and dems began.

The wealthy needed a political party that hated everyone but whites and the wealthy, so they created the Republican party.

It was created to oppose slavery.