Boller’s column replaces history with bias

As an amateur historian, I wish to take issue with a guest column in The Gazette on Feb. 15 (“Republicans are no longer ‘Wide Awakes’”). Marty Boller claims to be an historian. I suggest he needs a history lesson on the Republican Party.

Boller claims the Republican Party was birthed in Pittsburgh in 1856. Fact: The Republican Party was founded in 1854. The name was proposed at its first public meeting held on March 20, 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin. The name of the party is generally attributed to a reference to Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party from the early 1800s. This group grew from a general dissatisfaction with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1850. The party platform called for opposition to the expansion of slavery in the territories, not the abolition of slavery where it currently existed.

Boller also states that the first national convention was in Chicago in 1860. Fact: The first Republican National Convention was held in Jackson, Michigan on July 6, 1854. I’m afraid Marty Boller’s guest column displays his bias against the present Republican Party, rather than his historical knowledge.

Richard Pohorsky

Cedar Rapids