of Illinois introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Essentially, Douglas wanted to bypass the issue of slavery altogether in favor of westward expansion. Never believing slavery would expand into the Great Plains anyway, he proposed legislation that would allow the people who entered the territory to decide whether their future state would allow slavery or not. This idea, called popular sovereignty, would take Congress off the hook and give the power to individual citizens to decide the issue for themselves. While it seemed the perfect solution for a democracy, the act threw everything out of balance. Under the logic of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, all territory could legally be opened to slavery, and the compromise boundary line of 1820 no longer held.
This outraged Northerners who were willing to take action to ensure that slavery would be restricted in new territories at all costs. With the rest of the unorganized territory legally open to slavery as a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the South believed the time was now or never to assert its rights and ensure that its future power base in the West would be secure. By doing so, it would stave off what appeared to be the increasingly real threat of the North eventually overwhelming the South. Without a balance between free and slave states, the North would gain a permanent majority in both houses of Congress, leaving the South to the mercy of hostile Northern politicians and abolitionists, who would dictate the future direction of the nation. The stage was set for conflict in Kansas. Whichever section won political control of Kansas — by fair means or foul — had a good chance of controlling other territories and the political power in Congress when those territories became states. The political stakes for each section now became very high.
The violence begins
Between 1855 and 1856, Kansas experienced the horror of irregular warfare, serving as the first battleground of pro-slavery and antislavery forces. Northern abolitionist supporters sponsored settlers to move to Kansas and establish a non-slaveholding voting majority that would ban slavery in the new state. Pro-slavery groups from Missouri, called Border Ruffians, entered the state to stuff ballot boxes and intimidate non-slave owners. Soon violence became commonplace as each faction used open force and intimidation to gain an advantage. New Englanders sent rifles to Kansas (in containers labeled “Bibles”) to arm antislavery paramilitary groups. Pro-slavery raiders completely destroyed the town of Lawrence, Kansas. Amazingly, only two people were killed. But acts of retaliation followed, including the murder of five suspected pro-slave settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. A radical antislavery activist named John Brown (see the upcoming section “John Brown’s Raid”) led the band of six murderers.
A congressional committee investigating the incident took no action. Pro-Northern newspapers played down the murders, and Brown was never prosecuted. This outraged Southerners, who claimed justice was being ignored in favor of a political agenda (this may sound familiar to you). As lawlessness took control, the country stood by as Kansas tumbled into anarchy, bleeding from a thousand wounds.
Rising from the Collapse: The Republican Party
The struggle for political power was reflected in the birth and death of a number of political parties between 1850 and 1860. To understand the rise of the Republican Party, one must first understand the collapse of the national party system, which occurred between 1854 and 1858. For over a decade, two political parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, dominated American politics.
Disappearing Whigs and Southern Democrats
The Democrats supported states’ rights, the belief that dominant power should be held by the states rather than by the central, or federal, government. The Democrats supported the traditional view that there were limits to federal power. The Whigs believed in progress and modernization, supporting a strong central government and the expansion of federal power to support internal improvements to strengthen the national economy. The Whigs were strongest among prosperous farmers, manufacturers, and city dwellers, both North and South. The Democrats had strong support among frontiersmen and small farmers, many of whom desired America to expand into western lands not yet owned by the United States. Clearly, the Democratic Party favored the South’s vision of what America should be. Up until 1850, the Whigs and the Democrats maintained balanced constituencies in both the North and South. This balance was essential to the political health of the nation. As long as both parties could rely on both Northern and Southern voters, the system of representative government worked. Once the parties could no longer build support across sectional lines, the system was doomed. The sectional political stakes that arose after the Compromise of 1850 created such dissension within these two parties that neither could maintain its Northern and Southern coalitions. Essentially what happened is this: The Democrats became a pure Southern party, and the Whigs, unable to support a purely sectional party, disappeared.
The Free Soilers
The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act illustrates how divisive the issue of slavery in new territories had become to the two dominant political parties. Northern Democrats, especially, paid a heavy political price for their support of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The Northern Democrats who had supported the measure in the House and Senate (and had given the bill the margin of victory to ensure its passage) were roundly defeated in the next congressional elections as outraged Northern voters turned to other parties more in line with their antislavery views. The Democratic Party became more allied with the view of the South alone. The Whigs lost support as Southern members deserted them to join the Democrats. Northern Whigs lost members to other splinter parties that rose up in protest to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. One such group, the Free Soil Party, which grew to prominence in 1848, supported the Wilmot Proviso (see Chapter 1) that endorsed no extension of slavery into new territories. The new party attracted dissatisfied Democrats, antislavery Whigs, and others generally disaffected with abolitionist radicalism. Free Soilers were closely connected to the free labor ideology (see Chapter 1 also), reflecting an interest in limiting the expansion of slavery into the territories, but not necessarily an interest in offering Blacks any special advantages. In other words, free soil for many in the party was intended for whites only.
The Know-Nothings
Another party was the Know-Nothings, which grew from a secret fraternal organization in New York in 1849. Any member, when asked about his affiliation with this organization, responded with the cryptic phrase “I know nothing.” The Know-Nothings drawing support from Whigs in both the North and the South, peaked in 1855, claiming a million members. The main attraction seemed to be this: If you were tired of listening to arguments over slavery, the Know-Nothings offered their version of 100 percent Americanism by opposing the growing voting power of Irish and German immigrants. With a strong anti-Catholic bent (because many German and nearly all Irish immigrants were Catholic), the Know-Nothings demanded a 15-year naturalization period before being allowed to vote, and limits on the production and sale of alcohol. This, too, was directed at the immigrants, whose consumption of strong drink was part of their culture. Because their pure anti-immigration message had little traction, the Know-Nothings disappeared as a political party in 1856. As political power shifted in the North, the Know Nothings drifted into other parties, most notably in the emerging Republican Party. Ironically, the growth of the Know Nothings, largely as a result of the defection of many voters from the Whig Party, helped to bring about the Whig Party’s final disappearance in 1855.
The Republican Party arrives
By 1856, a new coalition of antislavery Whigs, Free Soil Party members, and Know-Nothings had been formed to become the Republican Party. The catalyst for this action, like that for other new parties, was the Kansas-Nebraska Act. To many observers, the
