forestall any further advances, this new party would base its support on one issue — to keep slavery out of Kansas and all other territories.
One of the most powerful spokesmen for this new party was a former Whig congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln (see Figure 2-1). Lincoln was not an abolitionist; like many Northerners, he felt slavery was the source of all troubles within the country. He expressed it in this way: “The real issue in this controversy — the one pressing upon every mind — is the sentiment on the part of one class that looks upon the institution of slavery as a wrong, and of another class that does not look upon it as a wrong.” Lincoln’s party had no intention of interfering with slavery in the states where it currently existed. The Constitution guaranteed slavery there — it was unquestioned. The Republicans also had no interest in the most radical abolitionist position that demanded Blacks become the social and political equals of whites. In fact, Lincoln expounded the Free Soil Party view that the new territories should be “an outlet for free white people everywhere.”
Hesler, Alexander / The Library of Congress / Public Domain
FIGURE 2-1: Abraham Lincoln, Republican Party spokesman and future presidential candidate.
In the midst of political turmoil, with parties shifting support bases and other political parties disappearing, Lincoln masterfully and most often gave expression to the thoughts and feelings of many moderate Northerners, regardless of party. He soon became the leading spokesman for the Republican Party, traveling throughout the North addressing huge, enthusiastic crowds. By 1856, the year of the presidential election, the Republican Party already dominated most legislatures in the North.
The Republicans and the 1856 Presidential Election
Today, we decry political leaders who are all symbol and no substance, thinking this is a product of our own times. If you take a look at the election of 1856, you’ll find plenty of trends familiar to you. The Republicans nominated John C. Frémont, a famous western explorer known as “The Pathfinder.” He was a former Free Soil Party leader, but it was his youth (43 years old) and his connection to the romance of the West rather than any clear political vision that made him an attractive candidate to many.
The Democrats: Choosing a safe candidate
The Democrats nominated a pro-Southern Pennsylvanian, 65-year-old James Buchanan, whose only real qualification for office seemed to be that he had been out of the country for several years as ambassador, and thus out of the line of fire in the sectional dispute. Stephen A. Douglas, who engineered the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in part to build political support in the South for his presidential ambitions, was rejected as too controversial.
Millard Fillmore for president
The remnants of the Whigs and Know-Nothings combined to nominate Millard Fillmore, a man who has come to personify the political nonentity in our history. The Know-Nothings refused even to mention slavery, preferring to say only “the Union is in peril.”
THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, a Whig, ran against incumbent Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas. The two held a series of debates around the state arguing popular sovereignty versus limiting slavery in the territories, the basic idea expressed in the Wilmot Proviso. Lincoln faced an uphill battle against one of the most dynamic and important political leaders in America. Lincoln used the debate to smoke Douglas out on the issue of Supreme Court guarantees for slavery existing in the territories. Douglas clung to popular sovereignty and won the election, but lost the support of the South, which had been relying on the Supreme Court to guarantee slavery’s extension. Douglas’s denial of that position eventually brought an end to his presidential ambitions. Essentially, Lincoln sacrificed his chance to be a senator to cripple the sectional balance the Democratic Party relied on for survival.
Politics becomes sectional
The 1856 presidential election is important because it revealed the realignment of national politics by region. Although the Republicans lost the election to Buchanan, the party dominated the North, with the exception of a few key states (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, and Indiana). This win was to be the South’s last political victory. The growing power of the Republicans in the Northern states and the number of Republicans who would enter the House and Senate were frightening prospects for Southerners. Political power was clearly shifting to the North.
As time went on, the South found fewer and fewer options in the face of the Republicans’ open hostility to the expansion of slavery. Southerners believed that if slavery could not expand naturally, the South would then be hostage to the interests of the North. Many Southern leaders had called for leaving the Union, or secession, as the only hope for the future. A few Southern hotheads, soon called “fire-eaters,” had threatened this in 1850, but their arguments were discounted. As Republican power grew in the North after 1856, however, Southerners began to take the words of the fire-eaters more seriously.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: EARLY CAREER, 1809–1860
Abraham Lincoln is most likely the greatest mythical character in all of American history. His image is commonly known to every schoolchild: the tall, lanky, homely man in plain dark clothes and a stovepipe hat. Born in poverty in Kentucky, Lincoln lived on the Indiana and Illinois frontier, where he developed a reputation as a man of ambition and intelligence, despite his lack of formal schooling. After several attempts at different careers, including a short term as a militia leader during the Black Hawk War in 1832, he settled on politics. From 1834 to 1842 he served in the Illinois state legislature. At 25, he read law and joined the bar in 1836. In 1846, he was elected to a term in Congress. After one term, he retired from politics and returned to law. The Kansas-Nebraska Act brought him back to politics. Refuting popular sovereignty, he spoke earnestly of his dislike of slavery and the necessity that it be banned from the new territories. In 1856 he joined the Republican Party, and the same year he was a contender for the vice presidential nomination. In 1858 Lincoln challenged Douglas for the U.S. Senate seat. In the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln lost the election, but gained a large following in the North for his ability to speak plainly and sincerely about the issue of slavery and its expansion into the territories. With a presidential election only two years away, Lincoln was on his way to political greatness.
Southern reaction to the Republican Party
Many influential leaders in the cotton South came to believe that separation from the Union was inevitable to save their way of life. To many Southern partisans, Northerners were cold, self-righteous and mercenary, all too willing to impose their beliefs on others. Others cited the economic and social benefits of the slave-based cotton economy. Slaveholders controlled most of the wealth in the United States. The value of slaves as property exceeded $3 billion dollars – more than all the nation's accumulated wealth in manufacturing and transportation. Still others spoke of filibusters, quasi-legal military expeditions to Central America and Cuba, to secure new American territory for slavery.
More and more moderate Northerners and Southerners began to see their opponents as threats to their way of life, leading to a growing sense that no solution was possible. As a result, every event after 1856 created
