After the fall of the Whig party the Republican party was organized in 1856. It took the name "Republican" from the followers of Thomas Jefferson and claimed it was a revival of the party of Jefferson. It was the liberal party, opposed to slavery. It was organized and until after the Civil War dominated by the liberal element in the United States. The Democratic party also claimed themselves to be followers of Jefferson, which they were not, at that time, except in a very narrow legal sense. Jefferson was opposed to slavery and special privilege in every form. In 1800 he advocated state rights or a decentralized government because he believed the states were and would always be more popularly controlled than the federal government. But by 1860 that situation was reversed. The states--especially the southern states--had begun to be dominated by the privileged group, who talked in terms of state rights to perpetuate this privilege, while Jefferson talked in terms of state rights because he feared the domination of the federal government by the reactionary element. Both Lincoln and Jefferson held the same views socially. The Democratic party of the pre-Civil War period had repudiated Jefferson. But the Republican party did not become reactionary until after the Civil War. When the Republican party was organized in 1856, it was regarded as "red," chiefly in the eyes of the south, for it was organized principally with the idea of keeping slavery out of the west. Its campaign literature in 1856 was composed largely of the anti-slavery utterances of Jefferson. To the south "Republican," "anarchy," "abolitionist," "Lincoln," "John Brown," and "Garrison" were soon to become synonymous terms. Because of this the Republican party had no following in the south even among a great many people who wished to abolish slavery. It became a sectional party, which was its fatal weakness in dealing with slavery, as compared with the former Whig party, which had had a national following. The Republican party was sectional before 1860. Lincoln had been a Whig, and had accepted the Compromise of 1850. Although he was one of the great men of all times, he was a victim of many of the common errors of his age. Reflecting the belief of his time, he considered slavery a stable institution. His great democratic spirit lay in the fact that he expressed the ideas of the common man, and had complete faith in him. He tried to recognize and give expression to the purposes and aspirations of the masses, which made him one of the world's greatest democrats, with democracy's strengths and weaknesses. Lincoln was not a creative thinker and had few pretensions in that direction. He had no intention of abolishing slavery in the states--he simply wished to prevent it from spreading. He also held the common attitude of his age that the Negro belonged to an inferior race.