The collapse of the old political system led to the realignment of voters and parties in the formation of the Third Party System, which formed in the mid-1850s and lasted until the mid-1890s. Michigan was dominated for 80 years by the new Republican Party, later nicknamed the GOP. First established in Jackson and other cities in 1854, it gathered together anti-slavery elements from the Whig, Know-Nothing and Democratic parties, and was a majority in Michigan by the end of the decade. The Democrats had always used equalitarianism as a way to attack the rich elitist Whigs. Now the Republicans turned the tables by charging that Michigan's Democrats were in bed with the South's "slave power aristocrats." The Republicans encouraged the moralistic spirit of the pietists by turning it against slavery and the liquor traffic.