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The party was founded in Newark, New Jersey, in 1876 as the Workingmen's Party of America. Renamed in 1877, the SLP was a confederation of small Marxist parties from throughout the United States, becoming the first nationwide Socialist party and only the second one of the so-called "third parties" (the Prohibition Party being the first).
In 1890, the SLP came under the leadership of Daniel De Leon, a lawyer how lectured at Columbia Law School. Since then, the SLP has adhered to the form of orthodox Marxism known as DeLeonism.
De Leon's opponents, led by Morris Hillquit, left the SLP in 1901 and fused with Eugene V. Debs's Social Democratic Party and formed the Socialist Party of America. The SLP also lost membership of militant Marxists to the Communist Party of America and the Socialist Workers Party of America.
Always critical of both the Soviet Union and of the Socialist Party's "reformism," the SLP has been isolated from the majority of the American Left, and that isolation seems to be ever-increasing. In 1976, the SLP nominated its last Presidential candidate and has run few campaigns since then. They recently have been having trouble funding their newspaper, The People.