The Formative Period
slavery as a "relic of barbarism," demanding that Congress restore and maintain the restrictions imposed upon it by the Missouri Compromise, holding in abeyance all other political issues and party differences until that paramount question should be settled, and pledging co-operation under the name of the Republican party. Similar action was taken at conventions in other western states a week later. It was suggested by some that a national convention be called, but Seward and others opposed such action as premature and it was not done. But throughout the free states of the North there were nominated for Congress either avowedly Republican candidates or Whigs and Free Soilers who were ready to coalesce with the Republicans.
The result was that at the elections in the fall of 1854 the new party, not yet six months old, polled a majority of the votes in about half of the states, secured the election of a number of United States senators and elected a large delegation to the House of Representatives. When the House thus elected met for organization in the fall of 1855 it was divided among a number of factions, not one of which had a majority. But so numerous were the Republicans that with the help of some allies they were able, after a struggle which lasted from December 3, 1855 to February 2, 1856, on the 133rd ballot to elect Nathaniel. P. Banks of Massachusetts as Speaker. Banks, who had begun work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, had been a Democrat but as already noted, had been among,the foremost organizers of the Republican party and thus became the first Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives. He filled that difficult place in those supremely trying times with such ability and fairness that during his
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