In the early 1850s Atwood was aided by Horace Rublee, who had left the University of Wisconsin to be the legislative reporter for the Democratic "Madison Argus". In 1853 he was associate editor of the "Journal" and the next year Atwood's business partner. Rublee was well positioned to participate in the new state politics that emerged in response to the Kansas–Nebraska Act. As early as January 1854 the newspaper called for a mass convention of anti-slavery citizens to meet in Madison. After events such as slave Joshua Glover's liberation in Milwaukee and the birth of the Republican Party on March 20, 1854 in Ripon, WI intervened, the convention that founded the Wisconsin Republican Party was held at the capitol on July 13 with Rublee acting as party secretary and Atwood serving on the resolutions committee. Rublee later became the chairman of the state Republican Party from 1859–1869. In 1860 he extended an unsuccessful invitation to Abraham Lincoln to speak at the party convention in Madison. Rublee allied himself with Madison mayor, postmaster and state patronage boss Elisha W. Keyes to run the "Madison Regency," the state's Republican machine. Rublee later broke with Keyes over the latter's support of President Andrew Johnson's vetoes of Freedman legislation. J.O. Culver purchased Rublee's interest in the paper in 1868 after Rublee was appointed minister to Switzerland by President Ulysses S. Grant. Rublee later became editor of the "Milwaukee Sentinel", while Culver retired in December 1876.