Rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s Brings Victory in 1860

Apr 11, 2010
Michael Streich

Kansas-Nebraska Political Cartoon - Library of Congress

Political realignments began after the Whigs lost the 1852 presidential election and Stephen Douglas crafted the unpopular Kansas-Nebraska Act.

At the end of President Andrew Jackson’s first term in office there were two political parties, the National Republican and the Democrats. The Whigs, formed in opposition to Jackson, would become the American Whig Party. By the mid-term elections of 1854, the political landscape changed dramatically as old allegiances were dissolved over the questions of expanding slavery into the newly acquired lands from Mexico and the results of Stephen Douglas’ ill-fated Kansas-Nebraska Act. By 1860, four parties competed for the presidency, an election won by Abraham Lincoln.

Political Changes Began in 1848

Unable to capture the Democratic Party nomination in 1848 because of the prevailing two-thirds rule, Martin Van Buren left the convention to lead the newly formed Free Soil Party. The two-thirds rule stipulated that party candidates had to achieve a two-thirds majority of the delegate count. Van Buren did not have crucial Southern support.

The Free Soil Party was supported by former Liberty Party members. In 1844, Liberty Party candidate James Birney helped deny Henry Clay victory. An abolitionist-oriented third party, it opposed Texas annexation. Northerners that supported the Wilmot Proviso also gravitated to the Free Soilers, as did some Northern Whigs disenchanted by the Whig Party’s nomination of Zachary Taylor, a Southern slave-owner and part of the elite Southern Slaveocracy.

Immigration and the Know-Nothing Party

The Whig Party dissolved as a national force following their failed attempt in 1852 to elect General Winfield Scott. Out of the ashes of the Whig Party, several new parties emerged. Although the Free Soil Party was still active in 1854, the so-called “Know-Nothing” Party had reemerged, targeting the large numbers of immigrants entering the United States. This was a virulent nativist party that in 1856 received 8 electoral votes as the American Party, led by Millard Fillmore.

In the 1854 mid-term election, the American Party sent 62 members to the House of Representatives, just two more than the waning Whig Party. The newly formed Republican Party sent 46 representatives. By the 1858 mid-term election, the Whigs survived only in parts of New England, eastern Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

The Democrats and the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Stephen Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska Act was pivotal in splitting the Democratic Party. Anti-Nebraska Democrats gravitated to the American Party and then the Republicans. Nebraska Democrats would divide in 1860 into Breckinridge Democrats and Douglas Democrats. The Kansas-Nebraska Act also had the effect of uniting disparate Northern constituencies under the Republican banner.

By 1860 the efforts to unify Northern parties under the Republican platform were complete. Republicans drew strength from former Free Soilers, Northern Whigs, the now defunct American Party, and Anti-Nebraska Democrats. Democrats split at their 1860 Charleston Convention, resulting in two separate candidates: John C. Breckinridge whose faction favored secession, and Illinois “Little Giant” Stephen Douglas whose adherence to the doctrine of popular sovereignty alienated Southerners as well as Republicans.

The fourth party, led by John Bell, called itself the Constitutional Union Party, deriving its support from Southern pro-union Whigs and Southern Know-Nothings. Ironically, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had been a major catalyst in these political changes, yet by 1860 there were only two slaves in all of Kansas.

Parties and Issues in the 1850s

The on-going issue of expanding slavery was a chief cause of political realignments in the decade preceding the Civil War. It was the issue that ultimately led South Carolina to conclude it was no longer safe to remain in the Union. Failure to compromise led to a Civil War and the ascendancy of the Republican Party. Not until the election of 1884 would a Democrat again win the Presidency.

References:

Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic: An Account of the United States Government’s Relations to Slavery (Oxford University Press, 2001)
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1995)
Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 1999)
Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (Basic Books, 2000)
Frederick Merk, History of the Westward Movement (Alfred A. Knopf, 1978)

Michael Streich - Former Adjunct Instructor, History & Global Studies

Comments

Feb 11, 2011 3:58 AM

Guest :

The author, in the above paragraph, has focused on the symptom rather than the problem. Streich has fails here to adequately mention or explain the real reason there was contention over the questions of expanding slavery into the newly acquired lands. On the surface Streich seems to be implying that the issues of there being slaveholders and slaves in the new territories and Steich stated coming into the Union west of the Mississippi River was the issue upon which the North and South disagreed. That was not the case at all! The real issue was the numbers of North or South sympathetic U.S. House of Representative would be added to the House delegation as each new state came into the United States. Both the sectional North and South understood well that whoever garnered a majority of House delegates would control all legislation coming out of the U.S. House of Representatives for years to come. The new Republican Party leaders, the Northern industrialists, wanted to accelerate an American Industrial Revolution that was already almost one hundred years behind the English and Continental Europe Industrial Revolution, who was at that time dumping large amounts of European manufactured products in the American colonies and states at very low prices due to overproduction of their factories. This was devastating the then cottage industry of small scale manufacture in America. But, the American industrialists needed a source of ready capital, cash, with which to upgrade, develop and expand industry in the United States and achieve their goal of become the leading manufacturing nation in the world. Funding and investment money had dried up for American industrial investment because the U.S. lagged far behind the European industry and the financiers of Europe were already heavily invested in European manufacturing businesses. The American industrialists needed a plan to acquire the needed funds to expand American industry.

The American industrialists would settle on a plan to pack the U.S. House of Representatives with members sympathetic and favorable to northern industrial development and expansion so that high tariff and duty act could be passed by Congress primarily focused on the South's products and foreign customers and shippers. Among these was an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln who had done considerable legal work with the American Industrial Revolution’s main player the railroad, strongly favored industrial development and expansion.

To this end they formed the new Republican Party in 1858. They first chose Millard Fillmore as their new party presidential candidate. With his narrow defeat the industrialists sought another presidential candidate for the 1960 elections. That candidate was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln’s election by a minority, 39%, of the popular vote also ushered in a Republican Party majority in the U. S. Congress. This and subsequent events gave the new Republican Party of the northern industrialists, small population of abolitionists, and Abraham Lincoln a clear majority to write and pass bills that would increase taxes on the southern agriculture industry, its foreign suppliers and overseas shippers. This U.S. House majority gave the new Republican Party, through their sympathetic northern delegates the power to pass tariff and duty bills punitive to the South and a cash land fall awarded by Congress to the North for industrial investment in the North. No offer was ever made to expand industry into the South. But, an offer was made to industrialize the West. This western effort was to persuade new states coming into the Union to come in as slave-free so their House members would be sympathetic to the North's quest for more and more tariffs and duties on the South.

The issue of western expansion was the South’s last chance to get back at least an equal number of U.S. House members by persuading and working in Congress to bring new western states into the Union as slave states instead of non-slave states. Each bill offered was rejected by the majority members of the House sympathetic to the North's position on industrial development. After all the western regions had no suitable land or climate to grow either tobacco or cotton. The western regions could only successfully grow grain, primarily wheat, a perishable crop, unlike tobacco and cotton which could be shipped to the lucrative European markets, while grain produced in the western United States had to be sold within America because of its perishabilty. And, with the invention of the mechanical harvester by Cyrus McCormick in 1831 there would never be a need for large numbers of slaves in the new western states. The slave issue was a political issue not a humanity issue or a concern for slaves! The new Republican Party was in fact against any blacks living in the states they controlled politically. They care little about slaves, but they did care a great deal about money.

Sep 22, 2011 6:26 AM

Guest :

Who voted for the republicans? Platform Policy? Legacy?

2 Comments