as the u.s. moved toward civil war the republican party grew out of
The Republican Party began as a coalition of anti-slavery Conscience Whigs and Free Soil Democrats opposed to the Kansas -- Nebraska Act, submitted to Congress by Stephen Douglas in January 1854. The Act opened Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to slavery and future admission as slave states, thus implicitly repealing the prohibition on slavery in territory north of 36 ° 30 ′ latitude, which had been part of the Missouri Compromise. This change was viewed by Free Soil and abolitionist Northerners as an aggressive, expansionist maneuver by the slave-owning South.