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The Kansas-Nebraska Act had shattered the Whig Party and galvanized anti-slavery sentiment across the North. Disillusioned Whigs, Free Soil Party members, anti-slavery Democrats, abolitionists, and reformers came together to oppose the expansion of slavery into the western territories Alabama GazetteAlabama Gazette+1. The Jackson convention was the first large-scale meeting to formally adopt the name “Republican Party”, inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s early Republican faction The National Constitution CenterThe National Constitution Center.https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-the-republican-party-names-its-first-candidates