Names and Symbols: "Republican" in 1800, "Republican" in 1854, and the Hyphenated Label Between Them

Historical setting

Names in politics do two jobs at once. They describe a group, and they make a claim about it. "Republican" in the 1790s claimed loyalty to the republic against what its users saw as monarchical tendencies in the Federalist government. "Democratic" claimed the people. Each word could also be used as an insult by opponents, and each changed meaning as coalitions formed, split, and reformed over half a century.

That makes this chapter a guide to a genuinely confusing record. Three things are often run together: what people called the Jeffersonian coalition at the time, what historians and government reference works call it today, and what the Republican Party founded in the 1850s called itself. The chapter on formation introduces the first of these; this chapter follows the words, and then the pictures, across the whole period.

"Republican" in the 1790s and 1800

The Library of Congress's exhibition on the formation of parties credits James Madison with naming the opposition: "James Madison coined the term Republican Party in an essay," published in the National Gazette in 1792 loc.gov. The U.S. Senate Historical Office describes the result: the opposition led by Jefferson "became known as Democratic Republicans," while "many preferred the one-word label, Republicans," and it warns that party labels at the time "were very fluid" senate.gov.

Contemporary newspapers bear that out. Partisan papers carried "Republican" in their mastheads; one example is the Republican Gazette of Concord, New Hampshire, whose issue of September 17, 1801, survives in the Library of Congress's newspaper collection loc.gov. When people of the period spoke of "the Republicans," they meant Jefferson's side, and when they spoke of "the Federalists," they meant the supporters of Washington, Adams, and Hamilton.

"Democratic-Republican": a later label that was also used at the time

A common claim, repeated in many reference works, is that "Democratic-Republican" was invented by later historians and never used by the party itself. The evidence checked for this chapter supports a more careful statement.

It is true that "Democratic-Republican" functions today chiefly as a reference label. The Senate's party key lists "DR" for "Democratic Republican (Jeffersonian)," and explains that "Republican" refers to "two different parties widely separated in time," the earlier one being the "Democratic (Jeffersonian) Republicans of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries" senate.gov. Historians use the longer name precisely to prevent readers from confusing that coalition with the party of the 1850s.

But the phrase was not unknown at the time. A meeting notice printed on the front page of the American Watchman and Delaware Advertiser of Wilmington on September 21, 1824, begins: "At an adjourned meeting of the Democratic Republican party of Kent county," and another notice on the same page reports a meeting of "Democratic Republican Conferees" from the three Delaware counties loc.gov. The same page heads that notice "Democratic Conferee Meeting," using the single word as a shorthand. In Delaware in 1824, at least, local organizers called themselves Democratic Republicans in print, and sometimes simply Democrats.

Two cautions keep this finding in proportion. First, one state's usage in 1824, at the end of the coalition's life, does not show how common the phrase was across the country in 1796 or 1800; the formation chapter keeps that question open in our research queue. Second, the local clubs called Democratic-Republican Societies from 1793 onward used "Democratic" and "Republican" in their names in varying combinations, and they were independent associations rather than branches of a national party mountvernon.org. The fair summary is that "Republican" was the most common self-description, and "Democratic Republican" was used in some places and grew more visible as the coalition divided in the 1820s.

From Jeffersonian Republicans to Democrats

The coalition broke apart after the election of 1824, as the chapter on that election describes. The supporters of Andrew Jackson organized as Democrats; the Senate Historical Office describes Jackson's backers as "a new coalition party with national reach and a popular base of state and local support" senate.gov. Their opponents organized first as National Republicans and then as Whigs. The single word "Democratic" that headed a Delaware notice in 1824 loc.gov became the name of a national party.

This is the point at which the early coalition's history connects to a modern party, and it is easy to overstate the connection. The Jacksonian Democrats drew many of their leaders and voters from the old Republican coalition, but they were a new organization built around a new leader and new state alliances. Today's Democratic Party traces its descent to them; it is not the same organization as Jefferson's coalition, and the Republican Party of today is not descended from it at all.

"Republican" again, in 1854

The second Republican Party emerged in the mid-1850s from protests against the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which, in the words of the National Park Service, "permitted the extension of slavery beyond the limits of the Missouri Compromise" npgallery.nps.gov. The National Park Service's landmark nomination for the Little White Schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, describes a meeting there on March 20, 1854, called by "53 petitioners," and records that one of its organizers, Alvan Bovay, "recalled" years later: "We went into the little meeting, Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats. We came out Republicans, and we were the first Republicans in the Union." npgallery.nps.gov

The nomination is careful about that memory. It notes that "contemporaneous records seem to be lacking" for the Ripon meeting, that a state convention at Jackson, Michigan, on July 6, 1854, has a rival claim, and that the first adoption of the name "is a disputed issue." Its conclusion is worth quoting: the party title "was discussed fairly generally and its precise origins as the party label are not likely to be uncovered" npgallery.nps.gov.

What is not disputed is that the new party drew former Whigs, Free Soilers, and Democrats into a coalition, in the Senate Historical Office's words, "dedicated to blocking the spread of slavery" senate.govnpgallery.nps.gov. It took the old word "Republican," but it did not inherit an organization, a membership roll, or a platform from Jefferson's coalition, which had broken apart in the 1820s. Two parties widely separated in time share a word. That is the whole of the connection.

By the early twentieth century the new party had acquired a nickname as well. Thomas Nast's 1904 biographer refers to the elephant as the symbol "which so long has represented the G. O. P. (Grand Old Party) in American caricature" hdl.handle.net.

What each party used as a symbol

Names came first; animals came much later.

The Jeffersonian Republicans have no documented official emblem in the sources checked for this site. Their supporters used the shared national imagery of eagle, stars, and Liberty, along with portraits. The best surviving example is a linen banner of 1800 at the Smithsonian, which pairs Jefferson's portrait with an eagle carrying the words "T. Jefferson President of the United States of America / John Adams is no more" si.edu.

The Jacksonian Democrats were drawn by opponents with asses and roosters in satirical prints of the 1830s and 1840s, but no item located for this site shows them adopting either as an emblem in that period. The often repeated story that Jackson put a donkey on his 1828 campaign posters is not supported by any surviving item we found; an 1828 Ohio Jackson ticket in the Library of Congress carries a woodcut of a broom instead loc.gov.

The Republicans of 1856 campaigned under the same national imagery the Jeffersonians had used: a Library of Congress print of the Fremont and Dayton ticket shows the candidates beneath "an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch" loc.gov. The elephant appears in Republican contexts only in the 1860s and 1870s.

The full history of how the donkey and the elephant became party symbols, including Thomas Nast's cartoons of 1870 and 1874 and the ballot emblems of the following decades, is told in our paper The Donkey, the Elephant, and the Long Life of Political Symbols.

Evidence

• The Library of Congress credits Madison's 1792 essay with coining the term Republican Party loc.gov.
• The Senate Historical Office describes the Jeffersonian labels as "very fluid" and notes that many preferred "Republicans" senate.gov; its party key distinguishes the two Republican parties senate.gov.
• A Wilmington, Delaware, newspaper of September 21, 1824, prints notices of "the Democratic Republican party of Kent county" and of "Democratic Republican Conferees" loc.gov. The quoted wording was checked against the page image, not only the machine-read text.
• The National Park Service nomination records Bovay's later recollection of the Ripon meeting and describes the dispute over where the name was first adopted npgallery.nps.gov.
• The 1800 Jefferson banner, the 1828 Ohio Jackson ticket, and the 1856 Fremont banner show the imagery each coalition actually used si.eduloc.govloc.gov.

What the evidence does not show

It does not show how widely "Democratic-Republican" was used across the country in the 1790s. The 1824 Delaware notices show local usage late in the period; national frequency would require a systematic newspaper survey, which is queued.

It does not show that the Republican Party of 1854 descends from the Jeffersonian Republicans. The shared word is not a shared organization.

It does not settle where the 1854 party first adopted its name. The National Park Service itself treats Bovay's recollection as a later memory and the question as unresolved.

It does not show that either name maps onto modern left or right. The debates of the 1790s concerned debt, banking, constitutional interpretation, foreign policy, and federal power in a country with very different voting rules, and the coalitions of the 1850s were organized around slavery's expansion.

Sources

1. Library of Congress, "Formation of Political Parties," Creating the United States exhibition. loc.gov (locator: entry on Madison's National Gazette essay). Accessed 2026-10-28.
2. U.S. Senate, "About Parties and Leadership: Historical Overview." senate.gov (locator: sections on the first parties, Jackson, and the 1850s). Accessed 2026-10-28.
3. Republican Gazette (Concord, New Hampshire), September 17, 1801, Chronicling America, Library of Congress. loc.gov (locator: masthead title and page 2). Accessed 2026-10-28.
4. U.S. Senate, "Key to Party Abbreviations." senate.gov (locator: entry DR and footnote on Republican). Accessed 2026-10-28.
5. American Watchman and Delaware Advertiser (Wilmington, Delaware), September 21, 1824, page 1, Chronicling America, Library of Congress. loc.gov (locator: page 1, notices headed "Democratic Conferee Meeting" and "Committee Meeting"). Accessed 2026-10-28.
6. George Washington's Mount Vernon, "Democratic-Republican Societies," Digital Encyclopedia. mountvernon.org (locator: overview). Accessed 2026-10-28.
7. Benjamin Levy, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Inventory, Nomination Form, "Little White Schoolhouse," Ripon, Wisconsin. npgallery.nps.gov (locator: Statement of Significance and continuation sheet, "Who were the First Republicans?"). Accessed 2026-10-28.
8. Albert Bigelow Paine, Th. Nast, His Period and His Pictures (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1904), HathiTrust Digital Library. hdl.handle.net (locator: p. 300, page scan 330). Accessed 2026-10-28.
9. National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, "Jefferson Banner," 1800, ID PL.227739.1800.C01. si.edu (locator: object description). Accessed 2026-10-28.
10. "[Cut of broom] To sweep the Augean Stable. For President Andrew Jackson for Vice-President John C. Calhoun," Ohio election ticket, 1828, Printed Ephemera Collection, Library of Congress. loc.gov (locator: catalog title). Accessed 2026-10-28.
11. C.E. Lewis, "Jno C. Fremont [and] Wm. L. Dayton. The champions of freedom!," Buffalo, about 1856, Library of Congress. loc.gov (locator: catalog summary). Accessed 2026-10-28.

Last checked against its sources on October 28, 2026. Report a correction.