1854    The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.

1860    Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State.

1866    New Orleans's Democratic government orders police to raid an integrated Republican Party meeting, killing 40 people and injuring 150.

1870    Hiram Rhodes Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress.

1874    A cartoon by Thomas Nast in ''Harper's Weekly'', is considered the first important use of an elephant as a symbol for the United States Republican Party.

1920    During the U.S. Republican National Convention in Chicago, U.S. Republican Party leaders gathered in a room at the Blackstone Hotel to come to a consensus on their candidate for the U.S. presidential election, leading the Associated Press to first coin the political phrase "smoke-filled room".

1953    Dwight D. Eisenhower is inaugurated as the first Republican President in twenty years.

2003    Fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers bring the Texas Legislature to a standstill by going into hiding in a dispute over a Republican congressional redistricting plan.