On America’s 250th anniversary, Michigan Republicans should remember not only where the party was born, but why it had to be born at all.
THE HILLSDALE CONSERVATIVES
Truth • Liberty • Local Stewardship
Hillsdale County, Michigan • July 11, 2026 • 2¢
America has now marked 250 years since the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that human beings possess rights government does not create and cannot rightfully take away.
The Declaration established the order upon which republican government rests. Rights come first. Government is created to secure them. Its authority comes from the consent of the governed. When institutions become destructive of those purposes, the people retain the right to alter or replace them.[1]
That anniversary should cause every American institution to examine itself.
Do our governments still answer to the people?
Do our public officials still recognize constitutional limits?
Do our political parties serve principles, or have their own survival, power and internal control become their highest purposes?
Those questions are especially appropriate for Michigan Republicans, because a public dispute has erupted between Jackson and Kalamazoo over which city deserves recognition as the birthplace of the Republican Party.
Kalamazoo County Republicans contend that the party was born in Kalamazoo because a June 21, 1854 convention helped issue the call and clear the path for the mass gathering later held in Jackson.
Jackson County Republicans answer that Jackson remains the party’s “true and operational birthplace” because it was there, on July 6, 1854, that thousands of citizens adopted a platform, accepted the Republican name, nominated a statewide ticket and formed an organization capable of contesting political power.[2]
Both communities have history on their side.
Jackson has the stronger claim to the actual founding event.
But on the 250th anniversary of the nation whose republic that party was formed to preserve, Republicans should not allow a fight over ownership of the birthplace to overshadow the far more important question:
What was born beneath those oaks, and does the Republican Party carrying that name today still uphold its purpose?
Jackson Performed the Founding Act
Jackson deserves more credit than simply saying it provided a convenient location.
On July 6, 1854, approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people gathered in Jackson in response to a call directed to Michigan citizens “without reference to former political associations.” The purpose was to unite northern opposition to the expansion of slavery and “concentrate the popular sentiment” of the state into effective political action.[3]
The crowd was too large for the hall originally selected. The convention moved outside beneath a grove of oak trees.
Those assembled were not members of one existing party. They included former Whigs, Free Soilers, antislavery Democrats, abolitionists and political independents. They brought with them different loyalties, different candidates and different opinions about how the new movement should proceed.
An early history of the convention described it as an unwieldy body containing “discordant views and conflicting interests.” Its success came because the participants subordinated personal ambitions and lesser disagreements to the common cause.[3]
They did not merely hold another protest meeting.
They adopted a common platform.
They accepted a common name.
They established an organization capable of placing their principles before Michigan voters.
Most importantly, they declared:
“In defense of freedom,” they would “co-operate and be known as Republicans.”[3]
The order of those words matters.
First came freedom.
Then cooperation.
Then the Republican name.
Jackson was where separate streams of opposition became an organized statewide political party. It was where moral conviction became political structure, and where political structure became a credible electoral challenge.
Kalamazoo helped bring people to the moment.
Communities throughout Michigan helped build the movement.
But Jackson performed the founding act.
That is why Jackson’s claim remains the strongest.
The Road to the Oaks
Recognizing Jackson as the operational birthplace does not mean pretending that the Republican Party was conceived in a single afternoon.
The road to the oaks had been developing through meetings, newspapers, churches, reform organizations and political networks across Michigan.
On January 12, 1854, Michigan’s Free Democracy issued a call for a state convention to be held in Jackson on February 22.
County meetings followed in places including Ionia and Eaton County. Detroit held a large anti-Nebraska meeting on February 18. The Free Democratic convention met at Jackson on February 22 and denounced the attempt to repeal the Missouri Compromise and reopen western territories to slavery.[3]
The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed Congress in May.
After its passage, Detroit Tribune editor Joseph Warren began openly advocating the dissolution of the old Whig and Free Soil organizations and the creation of a new party composed of opponents of slavery’s expansion. A statewide mass-convention call reportedly gathered more than 10,000 signatures.[3][4]
Then came Kalamazoo.
On June 21, approximately 200 Free Soil delegates gathered at the Kalamazoo County Courthouse. They adopted antislavery resolutions and agreed to abandon their own state ticket and separate organization if a broader popular coalition could be formed upon their principles.
That was no small concession.
The Free Soilers did not demand that everyone else submit to their organization. They were willing to surrender their own candidates, structure and political identity in order to make a larger union possible.
Kalamazoo therefore deserves serious recognition. Its convention helped remove an obstacle to unity and helped direct the movement toward Jackson. A Western Michigan University study devoted to Kalamazoo’s role concluded that its action materially assisted the formation of the new party.[5]
But the historical sequence does not transfer the birthplace from Jackson to Kalamazoo.
Calling people toward a founding convention is not the same as completing the founding.
Kalamazoo helped clear the way.
Jackson brought the coalition together, adopted the name and principles, nominated the candidates and created the party.
That is not a slight against Kalamazoo. It is the distinction between preparation and formation.
Hillsdale Was Not Watching From the Sidelines
The call that led to Jackson did not belong to one city. The convention record described it as arising from communities across the state.
Hillsdale County was part of that movement.
Hillsdale’s contribution cannot be reduced to the statement that Hillsdale College professors attended the convention. The college played a meaningful role, but the political and civic culture that reached Jackson was created by a much broader community.
The people of Hillsdale County had spent more than two decades building farms, mills, roads, stores, churches, schools, newspapers, courts, banks, railroads and local governments.
They constructed a civic network in which merchants served on school boards, ministers participated in reform movements, lawyers operated newspapers, farmers financed institutions and public officials remained connected to the communities they represented.
Several Hillsdale County men occupied visible positions in the convention itself.
Judge Levi Baxter of Hillsdale County was selected as temporary president of the July 6 convention and delivered its opening address. Baxter was not an outside political professional. He was a pioneer Jonesville attorney and civic leader who had helped build the community in which he lived.[6]
William Walton Murphy, also of Jonesville, served as one of the convention’s vice presidents. Murphy had helped establish Hillsdale County’s early legal profession, owned and edited a newspaper, participated in antislavery activity and had already moved from the Democratic Party to the Free Soil movement before helping organize the new Republican Party. He later served as a delegate to the first national Republican gathering and as a United States consul under President Abraham Lincoln.[7]
Edmund Burke Fairfield, president of the college, was recognized as a leader in the emerging Republican movement. Hillsdale College’s own history states that Fairfield and several Hillsdale professors participated in the party’s founding at Jackson.[8]
Ransom Dunn, a minister, educator, moral philosopher and tireless public organizer, was part of the Hillsdale reform network that connected religious conviction, education and antislavery political action. His papers preserve extensive material concerning antislavery activity, Republican organization and the public life of Hillsdale College.[9]
County histories also identify Hillsdale County residents such as Joseph Riggs of Scipio Township and Charles Gregory as participants in the movement and founding convention. Both heavily involved in the Hillsdale community.[10]
Hillsdale County therefore did not merely send observers.
Its people helped preside over the proceedings, serve among the convention officers, participate in its deliberations and carry the new organization home.
The Builders Who Changed Parties
The Republican realignment also reached deeply into the generation that had built Hillsdale County, as it did across all of Michigan.
William Walton Murphy had been a Democrat until 1848. He then joined the Free Soil Party and became a leader in the Republican organization of 1854.
Henry Waldron had been a Whig presidential elector in 1848. He helped develop Hillsdale’s railroads, financial institutions and commercial life. When the Whig Party collapsed, Waldron entered the Republican movement and was elected to Congress as a Republican in 1854.[11]
Charles T. Mitchell, another major figure in Hillsdale’s banking, railroad and civic development, had also been associated with the Whigs before becoming an influential Republican. He later represented Michigan at national Republican conventions and remained active in the party for decades.
Ebenezer O. Grosvenor of Jonesville likewise moved from the Whig tradition into the Republican Party. He became a state senator, lieutenant governor, state treasurer, university regent, banker and prominent civic leader.
These were not people waiting for an institution to tell them which label to wear.
They were builders who had already invested their labor, property, reputations and lives in their communities. When their old political organizations could no longer meet the crisis before the country, they changed them.
That was the point of the Republican realignment.
The party was created by people willing to give up old political identities when those identities no longer served first principles.
Not every influential Hillsdale builder made the same choice. John P. Cook and Chauncey Ferris remained Democrats while continuing to participate in Hillsdale’s civic, commercial and educational development.
That difference is also important.
Hillsdale’s early civic culture was stronger than party identification. Men could disagree politically while continuing to build institutions, conduct business, serve their neighbors and work together for the community.
Political disagreement did not automatically make someone an enemy.
Parties remained instruments of public action, not substitutes for the whole of civic life.
The People Built Hillsdale College
Hillsdale College deserves recognition for its part in the Republican Party’s formation.
But the college should not be allowed to absorb the history of the people who made its role possible.
Michigan Central College was founded at Spring Arbor in 1844. It did not move to an empty field and create the City of Hillsdale around itself.
Hillsdale already possessed the transportation, commerce, local government, public leadership and civic cooperation necessary to support the institution.
In 1853, Ransom Dunn came to Hillsdale seeking a new location for the college. He first met with local leaders and then addressed a larger public meeting at the county courthouse. The community agreed to raise $15,000, an enormous sum at the time, to bring the college to Hillsdale.
The effort was supported by farmers, ministers, merchants, mechanics, tradesmen and local families. Prominent residents including Charles W. Ferris, Charles T. Mitchell, George W. Underwood, Henry Waldron, William Waldron and John P. Cook made major financial commitments. The people of Hillsdale exceeded the amount asked of them and provided the material foundation upon which the relocated college was built.[12]
The community gave the institution land, money, transportation access, trustees, political relationships and eventually the Hillsdale name.
The college became an important part of Hillsdale’s civic life.
It did not create that civic life by itself.
That distinction matters today.
Hillsdale College has grown into a nationally influential institution that teaches constitutional government, liberty, citizenship and the American political tradition.
That national work has value.
But the college’s earliest leaders were not separated from local civic life. They stood within it. They worked beside the people of the county, participated in public controversies and accepted responsibility for the political consequences of the principles they taught.
As the college’s national institutional role has expanded, its local civic role has become more distant.
It speaks forcefully about liberty and republican government across the nation, while often appearing removed from the difficult local work of defending those principles in the county whose people helped bring the institution into existence.
That is not a reason to deny the college its rightful historical credit.
It is a reason to call the college back to its historical civic purpose.
An institution devoted to citizenship should stand beside citizens when constitutional government, public accountability and civil liberties are tested close to home.
The people of Hillsdale did not build the college merely so it could remember them in historical publications.
They built it because they believed education should produce citizens capable of preserving a free republic.
Why the Republican Party Had to Be Born
While Jackson and Kalamazoo debate where the Republican Party was born, the importance of why it was born is being lost.
The United States did not lack political parties in 1854.
It lacked parties willing and able to confront a moral and constitutional crisis.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively overturned the Missouri Compromise restriction and reopened western territories to the possible expansion of slavery.
Citizens petitioned, preached, published, assembled and demanded that their representatives resist.
Many officeholders ignored them.
The call to Jackson accused political leaders of disregarding the people’s petitions and allowing executive influence, patronage and political calculation to overcome representative responsibility.[3]
The old political organizations fractured because their leaders placed institutional preservation above the principles citizens expected them to defend.
The people who assembled at Jackson understood that no political party possesses an inherent right to continued loyalty.
A party is an instrument.
It is created by citizens to advance principles and carry those principles into government.
When it ceases to serve that purpose, citizens retain the right to reform it, replace its leadership or leave it behind.
That is exactly what the founders of the Republican Party did.
They did not protect failed organizations merely because an election was approaching.
They did not silence disagreement to preserve the appearance of unity.
They did not treat party leaders as the owners of the movement.
They left their old parties and created a new one.
More Than an Antislavery Platform
Opposition to slavery’s expansion was the central cause that brought the Republican coalition together.
But the July 6 platform also addressed the nature of government itself.
It called for:
“A more economical administration of the government and a more rigid accountability of the public officers.”
It sought lower taxation, payment of public debt, careful protection of school and university funds, responsible management of state property and laws that would encourage development while protecting the rights of the public and individuals.[4]
Those principles were not unrelated additions to an antislavery platform.
They arose from the same understanding of republican government.
Government exists to protect rights, not distribute privilege.
Public office is a trust, not personal property.
Public money belongs to the people.
Political power must remain limited by law.
Officials exercising public authority must remain answerable to the citizens from whom that authority comes.
The Republican Party was born in opposition to an entrenched political system that had stopped listening to the people and was using governmental power to expand injustice.
That warning is not confined to 1854.
Government agencies still resist transparency.
Public bodies still treat citizen participation as an inconvenience.
Officials still elevate procedures, customs and internal rules above constitutional rights.
Political institutions still protect insiders while demanding trust from the public.
Civil liberties are still defended selectively, loudly when an ally is affected and quietly when the person whose rights are threatened is unpopular or inconvenient.
The founding principles of the Republican Party remain necessary because the temptations of political power have not changed.
The Division in Michigan and America
Michigan Republicans have suffered through years of division.
That division is often blamed on personalities, factions, social media or ideological differences.
Those things have played a role.
But beneath them lies a deeper problem: the collapse of trust caused by inconsistent standards and the absence of meaningful accountability.
Grassroots leaders have sometimes mistaken election by delegates for freedom from later scrutiny.
Institutional leaders have sometimes treated outside recognition, money, legal authority or organizational control as a substitute for earning the confidence of members.
Elected officials have demanded loyalty from the party while remaining distant from the citizens and delegates expected to provide it.
Different factions have condemned conduct by their opponents while excusing similar conduct by their allies.
No side has possessed a monopoly on wisdom.
No faction has been incapable of failure.
That is why accountability must apply equally.
Accountability cannot mean removing only leaders one faction dislikes.
It cannot mean protecting someone because the person is considered grassroots.
It cannot mean protecting someone because the person has institutional recognition.
It cannot mean changing standards depending on which faction benefits.
Every leader must remain accountable to the purpose of the office, the rules governing it and the people whose authority placed that leader there.
Accountability is not the enemy of unity.
It is the condition that makes durable unity possible.
Without accountability, unity becomes another word for submission.
With accountability, members can identify failures, correct them, replace ineffective leadership and reunite around a common purpose.
The Founders Practiced Principled Unity
The convention beneath the oaks was not a gathering of people who already agreed about everything.
They represented competing parties, candidates, regions and political traditions.
The historical record describes genuine disagreement over nominations, strategy and the future shape of the new organization.
The convention succeeded because its participants distinguished between first principles and lesser disputes.
They compromised on personalities.
They adjusted tickets.
They abandoned old labels.
They placed personal ambitions beneath the common good.
But they did not compromise on the cause that had brought them together.
That is principled unity.
It is not silence.
It is not blind loyalty.
It is not the protection of leaders from scrutiny.
It is the decision to apply shared principles consistently, resolve legitimate disagreements honestly and then unite around the purpose the organization exists to serve.
Michigan Republicans do not need less accountability in order to become united.
They need accountability that every faction trusts will apply equally.
They need rules that do not change according to who controls the meeting.
They need delegates whose lawful authority is respected.
They need officers who understand that titles create duties, not personal ownership.
They need elected officials willing to answer difficult questions from the people who put them in office.
They need local parties strong enough to represent their communities rather than merely transmit instructions downward.
And they need the humility to admit when leaders from any part of the party have failed.
The Party Was Created by People
The Republican Party was not created by a national committee granting recognition to an approved group.
Its authority moved upward.
Citizens met locally.
Newspapers carried their arguments.
Churches and reform societies developed moral conviction.
County and state gatherings passed resolutions.
Old party members surrendered their former identities.
Delegates assembled.
A platform was adopted.
Candidates were nominated.
The people then decided whether the new organization deserved political power.
The people did not ask an existing institution for permission to become Republicans.
Their decision created the Republican institution.
That order remains important.
Party officials do not own the party.
Elected officials do not own their offices.
Delegates are not ceremonial volunteers whose authority exists only when leadership agrees with them.
Citizens are not merely a source of votes, money and campaign labor.
The organization is the instrument.
The principles are the purpose.
The people are the source of legitimate authority.
When those relationships are reversed, a party may retain its name, committees, officers, bank accounts, ballot access and legal recognition.
But it loses the character that once made the name honorable.
Jackson, Kalamazoo and the Better Answer
Jackson County Republicans are justified in defending their history.
The July 6 convention performed the acts that created Michigan’s organized Republican Party. Jackson should be proud of that accomplishment and should continue preserving the site beneath the oaks.
Kalamazoo Republicans are also justified in asking that their June 21 convention and the role of western Michigan’s antislavery movement be remembered accurately.
Historical examination is not inherently divisive.
The Republican Party itself was created because citizens refused to accept that an important political question was settled merely because established leaders wanted debate to end.
But historical credit does not have to be a possession that one county gains only by taking it from another.
Kalamazoo helped clear the way.
Meetings and organizers throughout Michigan built the movement.
Hillsdale supplied citizens, civic networks and convention leaders who helped carry it forward.
Jackson brought those forces together and transformed them into a political party.
Each community may honor its part.
Then all of them should turn to the greater task.
Hillsdale’s Call
Hillsdale does not need another historical marker.
It does not need to declare itself the hidden birthplace of the Republican Party.
It does not need to diminish Kalamazoo’s work or take Jackson’s title.
Hillsdale’s role was and is different.
The people of Hillsdale County built a civic culture from which influential Republican leaders emerged.
They financed institutions.
They organized churches, schools, newspapers and civic groups.
They built businesses, mills, railroads and local government.
They abandoned old parties when conscience and public duty required something new.
They participated in the meetings and political realignment leading to Jackson.
They held leadership positions beneath the oaks.
They helped carry the new Republican Party into public office.
On America’s 250th anniversary, Hillsdale does not issue a claim of ownership.
It issues a call.
A call to return the Republican Party and governments to first principles.
A call to defend freedom of speech, conscience, assembly and petition.
A call to protect civil liberties consistently, including when the citizen asserting them is inconvenient or unpopular.
A call to demand accountability from Republican officials as firmly as from Democrats.
A call to apply the same standards to institutional and grassroots leaders alike.
A call to restore the lawful authority of citizens, precinct delegates and local organizations.
A call to administer government economically and honestly.
A call to treat public money and public office as public trusts.
A call to restrain government within its constitutional authority.
A call to place the Republic above the Republican institution.
The people who assembled beneath the oaks did not inherit a Great Republican Party.
They created one.
They created it because the political institutions of their time had fallen away from the principles they were supposed to serve.
They did not answer that failure by protecting those institutions from criticism.
They answered it with accountability, courage, political independence and principled unity.
Jackson should proudly defend the place where the party became real.
Kalamazoo should proudly preserve the history of the convention that helped bring the coalition together.
Hillsdale should proudly remember the citizens who helped build the movement and participate in its founding.
But none should mistake ownership of the birthplace for ownership of the principles.
The birthplace has never mattered as much as what was born there.
At 250 years, the question facing Michigan Republicans is not simply whether Jackson or Kalamazoo possesses the stronger historical claim.
The question is whether the Republican Party carrying that name today still resembles the party created beneath the oaks.
And whether we possess the courage to bring it back.
in libery,
Lance Lashaway
Sources and Notes
1. National Archives, “Declaration of Independence: A Transcription.”
Primary text of the Declaration, including unalienable rights, consent of the governed and the people’s authority to alter institutions destructive of those purposes.
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
Official America250 website:
2. Danielle Salisbury, “Amid Squabble Over Birthplace of 172-Year-Old Republican Party, a Michigan City Doubles Down,” MLive, July 2026.
Source for the current Jackson and Kalamazoo dispute, their competing resolutions and statements from county Republican leaders.
3. History of Jackson County, Michigan, Inter-State Publishing Company, 1881.
Contains the convention call, the February 22 Free Democratic convention, the political developments leading to July 6, the estimated attendance, the disagreements within the convention and the resolution adopting the Republican name.
Full searchable text:
https://archive.org/stream/historyofjackson00chic/historyofjackson00chic_djvu.txt
Scanned book:
https://archive.org/details/historyofjackson00chic
PDF:
https://archive.org/download/historyofjackson00chic/historyofjackson00chic.pdf
4. Zachariah Chandler, An Outline Sketch of His Life and Public Services, Detroit Post and Tribune, 1880.
Reproduces the July 6 platform, including economical government, reduced taxation, protection of public funds and “more rigid accountability of the public officers.” It also describes the withdrawal of the Free Soil ticket and the mass-convention call signed by more than 10,000 people.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/50423/50423-h/50423-h.htm
5. James M. Rigterink, “Kalamazoo, Michigan, and the Formation of the Republican Party of Michigan,” Western Michigan University master’s thesis, 1965.
Detailed treatment of the June 21 Kalamazoo convention and the role it played in preparing the way for Jackson.
Landing page:
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/4998
Direct PDF:
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6034&context=masters_theses
6. Charles V. DeLand, DeLand’s History of Jackson County, Michigan, 1903.
Identifies Austin Blair as calling the July 6 convention to order and Judge Levi Baxter of Hillsdale County as its temporary president.
Searchable text:
https://archive.org/stream/delandshistoryj00landgoog/delandshistoryj00landgoog_djvu.txt
Scanned book:
https://archive.org/details/delandshistoryj00landgoog
7. Stephen D. Bingham, Early History of Michigan, With Biographies of State Officers, Members of Congress, Judges and Legislators, 1888.
Biographical material on William Walton Murphy, including his move from the Democratic Party to the Free Soil Party, his role organizing the Republican Party and his service as a vice president of the July 6 convention.
Searchable text:
https://archive.org/stream/earlyhistorymic01binggoog/earlyhistorymic01binggoog_djvu.txt
Scanned book:
https://archive.org/details/earlyhistorymic01binggoog
Grace Episcopal Church of Jonesville also preserves Murphy’s local history and convention role:
https://www.gracechurchsuite.com/history
8. Hillsdale College, official history and institutional accounts.
The college identifies Edmund Burke Fairfield as an early Republican leader and states that several Hillsdale professors were involved in the founding of the Republican Party at Jackson.
https://www.hillsdale.edu/about/history
https://www.hillsdale.edu/about/history/past-presidents
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/hillsdale-college-and-imprimis
9. Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, Ransom Dunn Papers.
The finding aid describes material concerning Dunn’s antislavery work, Republican Party activity, religious leadership and Hillsdale College.
https://findingaids.lib.umich.edu/catalog/umich-bhl-851288
10. Compendium of History and Biography of Hillsdale County, Michigan, 1903.
Contains biographies and histories of Hillsdale County pioneers, convention participants, political leaders, civic institutions and the people who financed and built Hillsdale College.
PDF:
Archive record:
https://archive.org/details/bad0930.0001.001.umich.edu
11. United States House of Representatives, Henry Waldron biography and bibliography.
Official congressional source documenting Waldron’s public service and Republican political career.
https://history.house.gov/People/Detail/23266
Additional Hillsdale County biographical material appears in the county compendium listed above.
12. Dr. Arlan K. Gilbert, “Hillsdale College: The Frontier Years,” Hillsdale County Historical Society.
Describes the relocation of Michigan Central College, Hillsdale citizens’ fundraising and the community support that brought the institution to Hillsdale.
https://www.hillsdalehistoricalsociety.org/hillsdale-college-frontier-years
Hillsdale College, Liberty and Learning: The Evolution of American Education, provides an institutional account of the 1853 meetings and local financial support:
13. Mitchell Research Center, Hillsdale, Michigan.
Local pioneer biographies, newspaper clippings, unpublished manuscripts and historical files reviewed for background concerning Hillsdale County’s early civic, commercial, educational and political development.
https://www.mitchellresearchcenter.org
Dan Bisher’s Faded Memories: Examination & Profiles of Hillsdale County’s Pioneer Period was used as a secondary research guide where the original source identified by Bisher was not yet independently available.
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