As if to confuse future historians, the early Republicans--who were led by Thomas Jefferson and were also known as the Democratic Republicans--evolved into the Democratic Party several years later, under President Andrew Jackson. Still later, in the years before the Civil War, a new Republican Party emerged out of the remnants of the anti-Jacksonian Whigs. That party is the forerunner of today's "Grand Old Party," which is thus younger than today's Democratic Party.