ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2023, IN WHICH THE MURDEROUS HAMAS TERRORISTS HAD DELIBERATELY ATTACKED CIVILIAN SETTLEMENTS ON THE JEWISH HIGH HOLIDAY OF SIMHAT TORAH, MURDERING, RAPING AND KIDNAPPING CITIZENS OF ISRAEL, THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, GERMANY, FRANCE, THAILAND AND OTHER NATIONS.
THIS ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, FULL OF GLORY, SHAME, CRUELTY, MERCY AND THE HUMAN DESIRE FOR FREEDOM AND THE ERADICATION OF EVIL, IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE FALLEN, THE HOPE OF LIBERATION OF THE CAPTIVES, AND THE FINAL VICTORY OF THOSE DOING BATTLE TO SAVE THE INNOCENT AND WIPE EVIL FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.
GOD SAVE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, THE STATE OF ISRAEL, THEIR ALLIES, CITIZENS AND ARMED FORCES.
Introduction : How Are Parties Born
A : The Dual Nature of Partisan Leadership
A political party is always a paradox - on the one hand, it is a great collective which reduces individuals to cogs in its machinery. One is expected to sacrifice one’s own ambition, to swallow one’s pride, to work with and for individuals one finds distasteful and to act against and denounce others one finds appealing and worthy of admiration, for the good of the party.
On the other hand, parties are in need of central personalities and are driven by them.
The vagaries of party line shifts are rarely the product of dispassionate, academic argument over principles. Rather it is always the byproduct of the personal careers of individual actors. Each of those, as he advances in fame and influence within the party, by gathering around him by force of persuasion, personality or resources a large network, brings into the leadership his particular doctrines, incentives and priorities - which often shift over time. Thus, as the leadership shifts in composition and interest, the Party shifts in its priorities and principles.
Nevertheless, the visible, supreme leadership is subject to constant struggle and change, the secondary leadership - the newspaper editors and owners, the organizers, the financiers, whips and (often neglected and underestimated) the party philosophers - enjoy a more permanent placement. The relationship between them and the leadership is symbiotic.
The primary leadership depend on the secondary leadership to organize support, to advocate their cause to the masses of the Party and the Country, to find money for their travel and campaigning - without compromising them as the stooges of a plutocrat or a special interest - and for providing them with either particulate or general policy.
The primary leadership, who occupy actual elected positions, hold in their hands whatever there is of that precious resource for whose obtainment the partisan enterprise is set up to begin with - that is legitimate political power over the institutions of the Republic.
The secondary leadership are just as hungry for the acquisition of this power as the primary one - all of its members desire it to be delegated to them or used to further their causes. They hope for a place in government under him - in which they shall exercise some of his power - either in the benefit of their own ambition and avarice, or that of a cause they favor.
Thus while the primary and secondary layers of partisan leadership are distinct, they are also co-dependent. Therefore, while there are cases of individuals moving between them, by and large such movement is restricted.
In a mature Republic, where the rights of the citizen belong to a vast, literate and independent public, secondary leadership has the upper hand - the primary leaders must rely on their skill in managing the vast machinery the Party must maintain to convince, cajole and commit the Public to the partisan cause. The existence of such vast machinery led to relatively few raptures in old parties and almost block all new parties from emerging, since it is nigh impossible to construct the machinery in a convenient period of time, it would be folly to abandon the existing machinery. The only hope for a new party is to bring out with it as much of the individuals, techniques and organs of the old party’s machine that cripples, even kills it, while the new party spends the next few elections building up the missing parts and building its strength.
To succeed, such actions require two things:
The absolute commitment of the defectors, who are willing to not only be themselves out of power for a time, but also to see the rivals of their old party, which they are used to look upon with anger and derision, dominating the national government for a time.
They must finish their work and be ready to replace the old party within a sufficiently short period, so their supporters won’t despair and simply join the old party’s rivals - now seemingly unopposed.
Both of these require a pure character, a courageous heart, a stiff neck and independent means that few possess. If the old party has lost the men possessing all these treasures, its demise is assured - but even then the rise of the new party is not guaranteed. They might get stuck as the perpetual opposition. Their supporters may lose their nerve. They might stumble upon foolish leaders and frivolous crusades that shall wreck the entire effort. Nevertheless, with these, they at least stand a chance.
B: Factions and Parties
The more primitive conditions are in the Republic, the more ignorant or apathetic the citizenry is and the less developed the ability of the People outside the Capital to participate in its life, the easier it is for politicians to combine in what is called by the Framers’ terms “Faction”.
Factions differ from proper parties in their nature and structure. They lack a robust secondary leadership - to the degree that the functions of this layer are carried out, it is done by dependents of the primary leaders rather than independent agents in alliance with them. These dependence do not seek political power, either because they power is restricted away from their grasp or because their goal is to join the primary leadership since the concept of a dignified secondary political leadership is lacking - if only men actually holding public office are understood to be public men deserving of honor, distinction and the power of the State, those who seek power would flock to them to open the gate to an open political career.
Factions are less stable than parties and less permanent. In the primitive conditions of the Roman Republic, for instance, the Optimates and Populares shifted in their membership and goals according to personal interests and relationships. The Roman people were not a part of those factions, but their shifting loyalties were the subject of the contention between the two.
Classical Athens was unique in that it had actual infrastructure for its two main parties, supplied by the sophist schoolmasters and its social clubs, as described in Thucydides. When the Assembly executed Socrates, the ascendant Democrats were destroying what they believed to be one of the most important secondary leaders in the Aristocratic Party. When Plato started his Academy, he did so specifically at the service of this party and to train its leaders.
In a party system, the secondary leaders can not only reward but also punish the members of the primary leadership: they can withdraw or cool their support to a specific leader and bestow it upon another. This way they influence the shifting power dynamics within the primary leadership. But by doing so they risk that the displeased leaders would retaliate and deprive them and their interests of the power they crave and need, or even turn their power against them.
In the 1850s, the rapture between the (much diminished) primary leadership of the American Whigs and their secondary leaders was so sharp, that the latter erupted in open revolt. A smaller scale revolt had taken place amongst the Democrats, but while the Democratic Party managed to stabilize its ranks and recover from the loss, the Whig Party shattered.
This is the story of the revolt and its consequences.
I: From the Four Winds: The Coalescing of the Republican Party
Introduction: The Revolt of the Whig Newspapermen
As we have related before, the compromise of 1850 had failed to satisfy either the North or the South. Its main goal, however, was achieved: The United States and the Whig Party remained unified political bodies.
Its marginal objective, to cement in place a new leadership with the passing of the Old Triumvirate of Clay, Webster and Calhoun, seemed to be at least somewhat successful. President Fillmore sat solid in General Taylor’s chair with the legislative achievement that eluded the Chief, and on the Democratic side, the star of one Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois had started to shine.
When we examine the memoir of Thurlow Weed, the Whig leader of New York, we see the ambivalence and frustration of the Northern Whigs as early as the campaign season of 1848:
We must not forget that the mass of our northern Whigs are deeply imbued with anti slavery sentiments, and thousands of them are immovably fixed.
What plagues me most of all is to think how I, after all I have said about slavery and its extension, am to look the Wilmot Proviso people in the face and ask them to vote for a southern slaveholder.
There is one but one door of escape. I think General Taylor's friends will be able to say that he is strongly in favor of peace, and will be content with a moderate acquisition of territory; that he will take less than any other man that is strong enough to be elected; and more than all that will leave all legislative questions to the decision of Congress. There is no doubt he will accept a nomination from the Whig convention if they offer it to him.
That ought to make him a Whig in all true honor yet there is no doubt if he is elected it will be by the joint votes of Whigs and LocoFocos.
His aim would be to give his administration a nonpartisan character. As between the parties it would probably be a draw game. Give me your thoughts in the free confidence of that friendship which must always subsist between us. You and I must act together. New York must be united and embodied so as to move her power as a unit in the national convention.”
Thus read a letter received by Mr. Weed from Washington Hunt, a fellow New York Whig.
The disappointment with Fillmore was not abstract. Fillmore’s old time rival within the New York Whig party, William H. Seward, was enjoying a great rise in his political fortunes. An ardent opponent of Slavery, Seward would ascend to the governorship of New York in 1839 - when Fillmore, for comparison, was still a member of the House of representatives. Due to personal financial issues Seward found himself out of electoral politics at the end of his term in office (1842) - but in 1849, when one of New York’s seats in the US Senate was up for elections, Thurlow Weed had convinced Seward to vie for it. With the help of Weed, Seward had defeated incumbent John Adams Dix (of the Free Soil Party) and secured himself a seat - which launched right into the middle of the fight over the Compromise of 1850.
Thus we can see Thurlow Weed, the man who convinced Taylor to run for president, who sponsored the rise of Millard Filmore to the vice-presidency, actively supporting Fillmore’s main rival within the Party, who was famous for his stance against any expansion of Slavery- while Taylor was still alive and in the White House. The dissension against compromise had started even before Taylor’s death - during the heady debates in the Senate over the compromise. Weed’s strategy was probably to force President Taylor to adopt a more anti slavery position - but his death and Filmore’s adoption of the compromise in its final form forced a tear in the Party.
Meanwhile, Horace Greely, Weed’s main competitor over the Whig readership of New York, was well known for his tepid and conditional support of the Taylor administration, which all but disappeared after the death of Taylor and the adoption of the Compromise.
Greely and Weed’s secondary leadership styles and sources of power were very different. Weed’s newspaper business was his ladder to the world of power- but once there, Weed's focus shifted to accumulation of acquaintances and political connections.
Greely’s influence stemmed almost entirely from his position as the editor and owner of the New York Herald Tribune, one of the most widely read Whig newspapers. As such, his attachment to the Whig establishment was much more tenuous. He was not a man depending on his power on the Whig Party structure, on the contrary - he contributed to it with his paper.
However, this influence was extremely potent. It was in wide circulation throughout the midwest and therefore had immediate influence on a large swing constituency the Whigs always sought to win. His conditional support for the Whig party had made the Herald Tribune not only more credible to these readers - and therefore strengthened Greely’s position - it also improved his bargaining power. Whig politicians knew they must court Greely before the Herald issued its support of the Party. Weed however would be a guaranteed supporter of the Whig candidate. Throughout his entire career, Greely had always maintained his position as aloof of whichever party he supported - a masterful method of maintaining his position as the arbiter of truth and morality for millions, and therefore his influence on politics.
That is not to say Greely should be accused of insincerity. He was never part and parcel of the Partisan Whig leadership, but an independent power broker which had lent his resources and support to the party he found most deserving at the moment, to further causes he held dear. In a way, his conduct and Weed's can be said to be equally virtuous and honorable.
We shall examine soon how the Whig party under Fillmore had lost the support of both - and many more - which amounted to a split in their party. But first we must acquaint ourselves with two more factions - or centers of power- of American Politics, which hitherto we left unobserved.
A: Discordant Elements: Anti-Masons, Free Soilers and Know Nothings
American minor parties traditionally distinguish themselves from the major ones in their narrow, almost single-minded focus. Indeed the major parties have always been those which have broken the barrier between the issue which have given them rise initially and a wider political philosophy which offers their adherents a different interpretive lens for society, the constitution, and events at home and abroad.
Thus, the Federalists and Republicans emerged from the singular issues of the assumption of the States’ war-debts by the Federal Government and the economic institutionalism of Alexander Hamilton into full blown political and even philosophical movements, with sharply differing views on the Constitution - many of whose Framers found themselves on opposing side, incapable of agreeing on the proper interpretation of the document they themselves had produced. These two parties had invented the American Party as we know it to this day - replete with competing structures of local clubs, donors, patronage networks, regional and national leaderships and recruiting tools for promising statesmen and activists. The utter defeat of the Federalists meant that after the War of 1812, the Federalist Party’s carcass was consumed by its Democratic-Republican rival.
The contest between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams had split this apparatus yet again - but as we have seen before, it took the genius of Henry Clay to coalesce the Whig Party around a positive idea rather than opposition to “King Andrew”. The Whig Party was capable of absorbing the Anti-Masons and National Republicans due to Clay’s vision - but the issue of Slavery had forced the Party apart again, after less than 30 years.
The small factions which emerged would be the building block of the Republican Party. Each of them focused on a policy problem that a different part of the country faced. Together, they created a truly National movement.
West: Squatters, Speculators and the Homesteaders’ Movement
In the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase, the Indian wars and the War in Mexico, the Federal Government had not only expanded its purview, but its actual land possessions as well. The picture, familiar to Americans in the West to this day, of entire districts being Federally-owned land. This land whetted the appetite of settlers - and they often did not wait for a legal title.
Such a state of affairs was not new - Anglo-Americans settling beyond the fixed boundaries of their polities, with or without official approval, have been a constant in American life since the colonial era. The change between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War occurred not in the qualitative factors of the problem, but in its size.
What was a semi-manageable problem during the first three administrations, which had all passed measures to criminalize and evacuate squatters on Federal and Indian lands, became a veritable wave during the late Jefferson administration. Furthermore, the rise of Jacksonianism was largely to the votes of squatters and their sympathizers - indeed the Trail of Tears can be explained as the placating of Georgia squatters.
From then the issue of granting squatters official title to the land they have settled illegally - what was known as “preemption” - became a partisan issue, whereby Democrats would pass “temporary” measures to settle such dispute, and the Whigs would conduct rear-guard action - that had become increasingly ceremonial and performative - to resist their extension and expansion. No other issue, besides Slavery had sapped the Whigs’ will and image as serious contenders for political power with independent vision as the preemption issue.
The issue of preemption was manifold. The Whigs have been the party of legal order and improvement, and their opposition to the Squatters was on both accounts.
Many Squatters did not settle long in one place - their preferred economic model was to take over a piece of land, create some initial improvements, and sell said improved land to the next wave of settlers- who may or may not have permanent habitation in mind - before moving to the next wild parcel. This led to a large amount of land under shallow cultivation - rather than intense utilization of land - which could lead to urbanization and concentration of sedentary population and civilization.
Their interest in acquiring legal title to the land was not in view of permanent possession but to enhance their bargaining positions. Whereas previously they could offer the second-wave migrant merely the habitation of a somewhat improved farm, now they would be able to offer him the security of legal ownership - which would come to him at a premium. Where they couldn’t acquire the title by preemption, Squatter communities attempted to intimidate both auctioneers and outsider applicants to the public Land Office auctions into granting the land to the Squatter in possession rather than to the outsider - who was usually derided as “speculator”.
Further, the Whigs general anti-slavery stance was in opposition to the Squatters’ interest.
Not only were many Squatters (despite the image the word brings to mind) were actually wealthy slaveholders utilizing their bondsmen in the clearing of the wilderness, but, in a great measure, the primary customers of the Squatters were not Putnam-like associated settlers seeking new fortunes and independence in new-lands, but land-hungry planters seeking to expand and diversify their possessions.
In this sense, we can see that Squatters were not, essentially, different in their goals from their maligned “speculator” rivals - both groups sought to gain cash out of Federal lands, but only the so-called “speculators” had the decency to reward the national treasury with shares of the spoils - and at least they did not force the government into expensive and unethical conflicts with Native nations with which there were standing treaties.
On the one hand, the Yeomen settlers idealized by Jeffersonians, the type of settlers we have explored in another place, who intended to create stable and permanent copies of Anglo-American life in the West, were to a large degree exploited by both speculators and squatters. It were they who either, when coming into a land acquired legally, found it full of Squatters which had demanded hard cash in exchange for their meager improvements, or alternatively had to pay higher prices to speculators to come by such land.
On the other hand, both speculators and squatters could be construed as providing them with an essential service.
The Squatter (more likely to self style as “pioneer”) indeed provided essential, initial improvements - he cleared the land, tilled it for the first time, created ties with the Natives (or, on occasion, had pushed them out), cut down the forest and built the first European-style structures. All these acts, regardless of their morality, were useful for the permanent settler that came after him.
The Speculator provided the government with an important source of income. This income would be spent at least in large degree on the army - whose main peacetime mission was to protect the Frontier. It also took the process of land-acquisition for settlement from the auction room, where separate parcels would be sold, to consolidated tracts which could be sold to stabilizing settlement societies. Such societies, like the Ohio Company of Associates would sometimes negotiate with the US Government directly - but sometimes they required the services of a buyer, indeed many persons and bodies maligned as “Speculators'' were legitimate, patriotic, semi-professional brokers whose work benefitted permanent settlement - albeit, at the expense of Squatters.
In the aftermath of the Mexican War, and especially as the idea of “Popular Sovereignty” as a solution for the question of Slavery in the new territories, the pro-slavery forces had relied on, and anti-slavery ones feared, Squatters and “Border Ruffians” appearing in the ballots to vote slavery in, without regard to the opinions and wishes of the permanent settlers.
A growing movement urged a reform in the way public lands were allocated - to grant free land to people committing to live on it for an extended period of time, to de-incentivize both speculation and squatting. This movement was joined by the hip to anti-slavery version of the old Jeffersonian ideal of the independent Yeoman-farmer republic, but it found an unlikely ally - the railways.
While individual farmers have had disputes with the railways, they were a true boon to the permanent settlers as a group. Not only did it connect them to the wider market - whether the local one or even the older, more developed one on the Eastern seaboard - and by extension, the wider world.It also made law enforcement and communications easier, cheaper and faster. Communities which hitherto had been isolated and had to rely only on their own resources for self-defense and the proper application of justice could now participate in and benefit from the greater life of the State - indeed they facilitate the making of the new territories and states into true political bodies rather than arbitrary markers on the map.
Thus, for the first time, orderly and relatively safe realization of Jefferson’s ideal came within grasp of the American Republic.
North: The Know Nothings
The mid-19th Century was the greatest period of both economic and political upheaval in Europe.
In particular, while Americans were busy engaging in their democratic process to elect a new Chief Executive in 1848, Europeans were occupied fighting over such rights exactly. Most German-speaking states (including Austria) had suppressed, with difficulty, the liberal revolutionaries of 1848. In France, the President of the Republic (elected a year after its foundation in 1847) had spent his first tenure in office solidifying his power, which culminated in a bloody coup he launched against his own people in 1852 and his coronation as Napoleon III, emperor of the French.
In Ireland, famine has been ravaging the island for 3 years. Rebellions were started and put down by the British authorities. The failed Hungarian Uprising of 1848 saw Polish volunteer legions engaged in combat with troops of the Russian Empire occupying their homeland. The Italian states have seen a string of pro-unification liberal revolts since the 1820s, which intensified in 1848. In short, the entirety of Europe was in turmoil. In England, the industrial revolution which was at full steam had triggered
Everywhere, the side in power was prosecuting the opposition. The one place where Continental liberals could find a sympathetic ear was in the United States. For the broad population which suffered from the turmoil, regardless of their place in the political upheaval, the United States was a safe haven, which had offered universal citizenship for migrants without regard to national origin.
These waves of migration caused great consternation not only to urban workers who were afraid of their wages being depressed by the newcomers, but also to a group of conservative intellectuals and politicos who were fearful of “foreign influence” - not in the sense of growing sway f foreign powers on American politics, but of foreign ideas and a competing liberal tradition. The worry was strong in Whig (or Whig adjacent) circles.
The practical worries of these politicians were twofold: First, they view the arrival of the newcomers as a potential snag in the Whig project of creating a unified national identity. Second, they saw the Democrats, especially in New York (through the instrument of Tammany Hall and parallel institutions in other cities) picking up votes from these burgeoning communities - even in places which were Whig strongholds for decades.
Therefore, the new faction - organizing itself in Americanist, Nativist clubs, but mockingly dubbed by everyone else as Know Nothings - had organized its ideology and propaganda around Native-Born American national identity - as opposed to sectional or even state identities. The Know Nothings took no issue with internal migration - they viewed it positively as cement for the new nation - that is, what they imagined as a potential ethnic American - identity - but they were plagued by nightmares of Irishmen, Germans, Jews, Catholics and free blacks marring this new American Race.
Before we discard the Know-Nothings in disgust, we must consider this: in Europe, the creation of fictive ethnic unity within the nation states, including the forced standardization of language, education and customs as well as the suppression and prosecution of uncooperative or “unworthy” minorities ended up being the dominant ideologies of the progressive, liberalizing regimes of France (under both the 2nd Empire and the 3rd Republic), the Habsburg Empire, united Italy, the Prussian lands, and the domains of Alexander II “the Liberator'' of Russia. England was the only place in which such demands were not placed on British subjects - except, of course, in Ireland. The Know-Nothings did not conceive of themselves as reactionaries - if anything, they thought of themselves as radical progressives.
Ironically, it was the “foreign influence” of the migrants who came to America’s shores full with love to the gospel of the Founders and the dream of a Platonic America (many have read Tocqueville’s Democracy in America before leaving their Alte Heimat) who enthusiastically embraced the all-American nationality, while leaving behind the notions of ethnic homogeneity as condition for liberal government - the true foreign influence governing the so called Americanists.
South: The Free Soilers and Abolitionism
The greatest power in Northern Politics on the side of abolition were not the Abolitionist clubs, but the Free Soil Party.
Made up of disgruntled Jacksonian Democrats, led by former president Martin Van Buren. Just like the Whigs, the Democrats too had suffered fissures due to the struggle over the Wilmot Proviso- we must not forget that David Wilmot was a Northern Barnburner Democrat.
After the convention of 1848 had nominated pro-slavery, anti-Proviso Lewis Cass to the presidential ticket without bothering to even attach any moderating influence on the vice-presidential place, it was this faction, strong in the rural districts of the North (hence their name- they were prone to hold their local assemblies in well-lit barns) that have left the party in anger, offering its own ticket to the voters- one time president Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams.
It tells us volumes of the national power of the Democrats that even with that split amongst them, the Whigs have won by a relatively small margin. Indeed Jacksonian Democracy has not been the older, but also the more popular party.
As the Kansas Nebraska Act created greater and greater fissures within the ranks of the major parties, the Free-Soilers became a more appealing option to former members of both. But they were not the only, or the oldest, anti-slavery party. The abolitionist Liberty Party has been competing in elections since 1840. They have believed that the Fugitive Slave Clause - indeed Slavery itself - was so opposed to Natural Law that even the Constitution cannot grant them legal protection - and therefore that clause, along with every state law sanctioning and regulating Slavery - ought to be considered null and void and stricken from the books.
Abolitionist sentiment was carried over great distances by two methods - religious revivals and newspapers, both of which were greatly facilitated by the expanding antebellum railway system.
Union: Revivals, Newspapers, Railways and the Convergence of the Minor Parties
The railways had opened not only economic opportunities for Native-Born Americans, but also the vast territories of the West to settlement by European migrants. Germans, Scandinavians, Irishmen and other European immigrants streamed into the Western states and territories and created coherent and well established communities, which could even support institutions (such as newspapers, churches and schools) catering to their tastes and needs.
Lutheranism, for instance, had precious few adherents in the United States at the time of the Founding, outside of Philadelphia – but by the end of the 19th century it was almost the State-Religion of large tracts of the West, and had sufficient number of adherents to support separate organizations on the base of national origin.
The unique input of the 1848 generation of European migration - especially to the midwest was the infusion of post-Napoleonic Continental Liberalism into the politics of the United States. As we have observed before, the political tradition of America had hitherto been influenced mainly by old English Whiggery and pre-Revolutionary French Enlightenment thought.
In particular it influenced the unique American phenomenon of rural liberalism. But this infusion of external influence did not entail rejection of the American vision.
Upon arrival, they were drawn to the Whigs and the Independent Democrats - especially to antislavery. The Know-Nothing or "Americanist'' Movement had a strained relationship with these migrants. On the one hand, their entire movement was premised on opposition to fóreign immigration and viewing their influence as pernicious and dangerous to American liberalism. On the other hand, their actual political stances often aligned with those of a large section of the migrant population.
The European liberals were naturally opposed to slavery - which they have associated to the subjugation of the peasants under the ancien-regime - and hostile to the planter-class which they compared in their mind to the reactionary aristocrats of the old continent.
Similarly, both Free Soilers opposed slavery and the great plantations since they came, so they reasoned, at the expense of small yeomen independent farmers; most Know Nothings opposed them since they were divisive and threatened the unity of the Nation. Know-Nothings and Free Soilers favored colonization, that is, the plan of creating an American colony in Africa to house slaves whose freedom shall be purchased by the United States Government. The European Liberals, however, favored granting freedmen civil rights - or at least equal protection of the laws - within the American system.
Religious revivals carried ideas from one faction to the next in a manner which frustrated and exhilarated conventional politicians. Both Abolitionism and Proslavery arguments had their advocates amongst fiery evangelists - the first relying on the liberating narrative of Exodus and the free spirit of the Hebrew Bible, the second pointing out to the existence of slavery in ancient Israel and the Curse of Ham which was interpreted as the father of the Africans. The main battle was raged over the Christian Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul- in particular, Ephesians 6:5-9 had been invoked as a sort of a “Christian Covenant” between Christian masters and slaves:
5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;
6 Not with eyeservice, as men-pleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;
7 With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:
8 Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.
9 And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.
This of course ignored centuries of Christian practice - one that the forefathers of Anglo-Americans had benefited greatly from, since the abolition of serfdom in England. The slave owners had also ignored the main message and tradition of Christian masters in the Late Roman and Early Medieval eras - to pray with their serfs in the same church, to regard them as their equals in Christ if not in Law. Further the Covenant was broken most often on the side of the masters - a forbearing and threatening master was the least a slave could suffer on a large plantation.
Of course, the majority of Americans were protestants, which has made medieval practice less relevant - and the 19th century was a period in which the non- traditional, dissenting churches were on the ascendancy. The greatest importance of the revival movement is that it was sand in the gears of political machines. A person may be a loyal Democrat or an ardent Whig, but a revival meeting could persuade him to become an ardent supporter of abolition - against his party's stance and interest. It also, together with the railroads and the spread of newspapers of truly national circulation - such as Greely’s Herald Tribune - to upset the consolidation of the geographic-ideological region and thus worked against the Partisan machines of both major parties.
Thus the small parties of the late Antebellum era were an expression of weakening parties and loosening partisan commitments brought about by new means of communication, transportation and persuasion, which the old established parties struggled to cope with. The people invested in these methods had not found a commonality yet, but one was emerging - and it emerged in the land most dramatically affected by them - the Midwest.
B: The Path to the New Party
The Free Soiler and the Last of the Whigs: Salmon P. Chase and William Seward.
Salmon P. Chase was elected the United States Senator from Ohio in 1849 - only a year into the Taylor administration, in the midst of the Congressional fight over the issue of Slavery in the new territories. A former Whig, it has been 9 years since he had left the President’s party to join the Liberty Party - and had just become a Free Soiler in the previous year. His record shed further light on the meaning of his election to the Senate. The keystone of the Compromise - and the millstone around the Whigs’ neck - was always the new Fugitive Slave Act. The Whigs only hope was to pass this measure as quickly and discreetly as possible - in the hopes that blocking Slavery in the northern part of the Mexican cession would outweigh that price amongst their Northern voter base.
Chase and the other Free Soilers would not let it be. They were an ambitious party that wished for nothing less than replacing the Whigs as the preeminent party in the North, and thus had beaten all their drums over the (very real) evils of the proposed act. The nomination and election of Chase was a real shift - the Free Soilers had won only 10% of the vote in that state, less than half of their average rate of performance in other Northern States - in Ohioan opinion. Chase had built his political career on opposing, as a lawyer, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1792 and representing fugitives in their defense. The new act would have taken away Fugitives’ ability to appeal to due process in state courts, and the election of “the Attorney General of Fugitive Slaves” was a clear protest by the Ohio legislature against it.
And so it came to pass that the Senate of the United States, during the Presidency of Millard Filmore, had three factions- the pro-compromise faction, seeking to implement the Clay plan, the pro-Slavery anti-compromise faction, now led by Stephen Douglas, already concocting the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the anti-Slavery anti-compromise faction, headed by Chase of Ohio and William Seward of New York.
Seward’s maiden speech - the Higher Law speech - was a glorious clarion call against the Fugitive Slave Act. It is worth bringing up, since it seems to reflect Chase’s sentiment as well:
I AM OPPOSED TO ANY SUCH COMPROMISE, IN ANY AND ALL THE FORMS IN WHICH IT HAS BEEN PROPOSED, because, while admitting the purity and the patriotism of all from whom it is my misfortune to differ, I think all legislative compromises radically wrong and essentially vicious.
They involve the surrender of the exercise of judgment and conscience on distinct and separate questions, at distinct and separate times, with the indispensable advantages it affords for ascertaining truth. They involve a relinquishment of the right to reconsider in future the decisions of the present, on questions prematurely anticipated; and they are a usurpation as to future questions of the province of future legislators.
Sir, it seems to me as if slavery had laid its paralyzing hand upon myself, and the blood were coursing less freely than its wont through my veins, when I endeavor to suppose that such a compromise has been effected, and my utterance forever is arrested upon all the great questions, social, moral, and political, arising out of a subject so important, and as yet so incomprehensible. What am I to receive in this compromise? freedom in California.
It is well; it is a noble acquisition; it is worth a sacrifice. But what am I to give as an equivalent?
A recognition of the claim to perpetuate slavery in the District of Columbia;
Forbearance toward more stringent laws concerning the arrest of persons suspected of being slaves found in the free states;
Forbearance from the proviso of freedom in the charters of new territories.
None of the plans of compromise offered demand less than two, and most of them insist on all of these conditions. The equivalent then is, some portion of liberty-some portion of human rights in one region, for liberty in another region. But California brings gold and commerce as well as freedom.
I am, then, to surrender some portion of human freedom in the District of Columbia, and in East California and New Mexico, for the mixed consideration of liberty, gold, and power, on the Pacific Coast.
This is explicitly the argument that the Liberty Party and other Abolitionists have been making for decades. The speech made a great impression on Chase, who has seen Seward both a kindred spirit and a competitor. This competition was not just over the leadership of the emerging anti-slavery trans-party faction - but over the path the cause should take henceforth. If Chase was to have his way, anti slavery would be the central issue around which a new party would be constructed. Seward would have had either the old Whig party shored up with antislavery - or a successor party constructed with antislavery merely another cause in its platfom.
Both have understood that the Whig path of yore could not be taken anymore. A tepid “personal objection” to Slavery would not do - Americans were chosing sides on the question, and sorting themselves out according to their choice. Soon three great events would force the discordant antislavery factions. These events would largely have to do with the West - and they would bring to the forefront the Western antislavery elements.
Broken Commitments and Bloodshed - the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas
The Republican Party would coalesce in the 1850s around the belief that the “Slave Power” had secured its hold over the Democratic Party and is adamant to exploit the Whig Party’s crisis to irretrievably alter the Constitutional and Regional order of the United States in their favor.
In truth, the opposite is true - the Wilmot Proviso and the emergence of the Free Soil Party had so shaken the Democratic Establishment that they came alive to the need to stabilize their internal coherence. The fight over the Wilmot Proviso had proven that Northern and Southern wings of the Party cannot achieve compromise on their own. The West, hitherto mostly a mere subject of the fight between the two Eastern Democratic factions, would have to play either the role of mediator or, more likely, to join the fray on one side and create an internal coalition that will dominate the National Party for the near future.
Since the West had a strong pro slavery faction - and due to the compromises of 1830 and 1850, a real presence of slavery itself and the unique constituencies it created - it couldn’t join the North as a unified anti slavery region. Furthermore, since anti slavery Democrats were defection to the Free Soil Party anyway, their power within the Party was waning - which meant the South was a more attractive ally to Western Democrats.
One such Democrat was Stephen Douglas of Illinois. A pudgy, small man with a high brow, a great rhetorical skill, penchant for pomp and circumstance. He had a calculated and highly partisan approach to politics and completely lacked principles. Personally, he was bigoted, but his bigotry was a convenient fellow traveler to his Party’s interest, which had always remained the guiding star of his politics.
In the election of 1852 Northern Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire had defeated Gen. Winfield Scott of Virginia, the Whig Party’s candidate. Both candidates supported the Compromise of 1850, in his inaugural address he says:
“With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined. Without it what are we individually or collectively? What becomes of the noblest field ever opened for the advancement of our race in religion, in government, in the arts, and in all that dignifies and adorns mankind? From that radiant constellation which both illumines our own way and points out to struggling nations their course, let but a single star be lost, and, if these be not utter darkness, the luster of the whole is dimmed. Do my countrymen need any assurance that such a catastrophe is not to overtake them while I possess the power to stay it?
I hold that the laws of 1850, commonly called the "compromise measures," are strictly constitutional and to be unhesitatingly carried into effect. I believe that the constituted authorities of this Republic are bound to regard the rights of the South in this respect as they would view any other legal and constitutional right, and that the laws to enforce them should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully and according to the decisions of the tribunal to which their exposition belongs."
The speech as we can see is unionist and pro-compromise - but on the argument that it is the South whose rights are threatened and require protection to keep the Union viable. The Union, in turn, is important not only due to its utility to Americans but its value to Mankind as a whole. Thus Americans have a universal duty - that transcends the one they owe to their particular states, each other or even the country itself - to preserve the Union and prove that a free constitution is a practicable form of government. There is an implied rejection of both the Free Soilers and the Know-Nothings, if one would care to heed it. It is the quintessential establishmentarian speech, supporting the measure advanced by the leadership of the two major parties against the perceived excesses of the minor ones.
And yet, it was not one year into the Presidency of Mr. Pierce that Stephen Douglas had introduced the Organic Act for the creation of the Kansas and Nebraska territories upon the Senate Floor.
The act provided for the creation of two territories out of the yet unorganized territories of the Prairie into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. These territories would not be bound by the Missouri Compromise or that of 1850, but would have “popular sovereignty” “for all white males above age twenty five in actual residence” to determine the legality of Slavery within their borders. This would, in effect, repeal both previous compromises - further, it would grant to the old territories where slavery was already outlawed by those compromises the ability to reverse the course.
Why did Douglas propose such a law, while the president and his Party’s seeming leader, expressed satisfaction with the existing situation?
To understand this we must understand that parties never exist in a vacuum - they are always parts of a complete political system and it reacts not only to the external maneuvering of its rivals but also to their internal dynamics
The weakness of the Whig party had also weakened the Democratic party.
As the anti-slavery Whigs had shown that they had the power to rebel against the establishment of their party, the temptation to similarly inclined Democrats was great. Moreover, if the Northern and Southern wings of the Party split, on which side would the Western Democrats stand? The side that they will choose will be a partner, Douglas thought, in the strongest faction in the new multi-party system. The only question was what the West could squeeze from both sides. The North, which until now was the source of population, capital and resources for the West began to appear as an economic rival. The south, on the other hand, was an inferior market for which the west could serve as an industrial and commercial center.
In particular, Stephen Douglas hoped for Southern approval of a transcontinental railway to pass through Illinois, solidifying the status of Chicago as the main entrepot for Midwestern trade and orienting it North towards Canada. The alternative was a Southern route that would have solidified the position of New Orleans and orient the trade of the entire continent towards the Caribbean and Mexico. Thus the alliance between the Western and Southern Democrats was of Western political and economic support of the expansion of the South’s slave economy in exchange for Southern concession of the commercial autonomy - or even dominance - of the West in a new economic system which would isolate the North.
The act passed and was signed into law in 1854. The Democrats enjoyed absolute majorities in both houses. Thus was the Whigs last great achievement - on whose altar they sacrificed their future - as well as Henry Clay’s great legacy, which allowed the Union to continue expanding for 24 years, undone.
The most forceful protest the anti slavery forces in Congress could have mounted was the publication of The Appeal of the Independent Democrats. It is important to note that out of its six signatories only one, Alexander de Witt, was at a certain point a Democrat (he was elected to Congress as a Free-Soiler in 1853). The other 5 included 4 former Whigs (Chase, Sumner, Wade and Giddings) and Gerrit Smith - an abolitionist philanthropist, preacher, supporter of women’s suffrage and temperance and of the Colonization plan - who held proto-libertarian opinions and was one of the founders of the Liberty Party.
Nevertheless, the Appeal had a great public impact - it laid down the arguments against the Act succinctly and clearly, and allowed for public opposition to its goal to crystalize outside the halls of power. It states:
Here is proof beyond controversy that the principle of the Missouri act prohibiting slavery north of 36° 30’, far from being abrogated by the Compromise Acts, is expressly affirmed; and that the proposed repeal of this prohibition, instead of being an affirmation of the Compromise Acts, is a repeal of a very prominent provision of the most important act of the series. It is solemnly declared in the very Compromise Acts "that nothing herein contained shall be construed to impair or qualify" the prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30’; and yet in the face of this declaration, that sacred prohibition is said to be overthrown. Can presumption further go? To all who, in any way, lean upon these compromises, we commend this exposition.
These pretenses, therefore, that the territory covered by the positive prohibition of 1820, sustains a similar relation to slavery with that acquired from Mexico, covered by no prohibition except that of disputed constitutional or Mexican law, and that the Compromises of 1850 require the incorporation of the pro-slavery clauses of the Utah and New Mexico Bill in the Nebraska act, are mere inventions, designed to cover from public reprehension meditated in bad faith. Were he living now, no one would be more forward, more eloquent, or more indignant in his denunciation of that bad faith, than Henry Clay, the foremost champion of both compromises ….
We appeal to the people. We warn you that the dearest interests of freedom and the Union are in imminent peril. Demagogues may tell you that the Union can be maintained only by submitting to the demands of slavery. We tell you that the Union can only be maintained by the full recognition of the just claims of freedom and man. The Union was formed to establish justice and secure the blessings of liberty. When it fails to accomplish these ends it will be worthless, and when it becomes worthless it cannot long endure.
We entreat you to be mindful of that fundamental maxim of Democracy—EQUAL RIGHTS AND EXACT JUSTICE FOR ALL MEN. Do not submit to become agents in extending legalized oppression and systematized injustice over a vast territory yet exempt from these terrible evils.
We implore Christians and Christian ministers to interpose. Their divine religion requires them to behold in every man a brother, and to labor for the advancement and regeneration of the human race.
Whatever apologies may be offered for the toleration of slavery in the States, none can be offered for its extension into Territories where it does not exist, and where that extension involves the repeal of ancient law and the violation of solemn compact. Let all protest, earnestly and emphatically, by correspondence, through the press, by memorials, by resolutions of public meetings and legislative bodies, and in whatever other mode may seem expedient, against this enormous crime.
For ourselves, we shall resist it by speech and vote, and with all the abilities which God has given us. Even if overcome in the impending struggle, we shall not submit. We shall go home to our constituents, erect anew the standard of freedom, and call on the people to come to the rescue of the country from the domination of slavery. We will not despair; for the cause of human freedom is the cause of God.
The principles laid down in the Appeal can therefore be summarized thus:
The Expansion of Slavery is an act of wickedness, never intended by the Founders or by the Framers of the Constitution.
The Compromises of 1830 and 1850 suffered some expansion only to be able to limit it within fixed boundaries.
The Kansas Nebraska Act is a betrayal of the Compromise, of the principles of the Founders and the Will of God. Since the legislature had failed to stop it from passing, it is the duty of the People to resist it.
Such resistance must be done on legal lines - such as voting against the implementation of Slavery in the new territories.
This sheds new light on the title and ideology of the “Independent Democrats” - they were true believers in the People as an extra-governmental sovereign, with right and ability to check all three constitutional branches. Furthermore, they believed that this Sovereign body has not merely rights, but duties - first and foremost to institute and support just government enforcing just laws. Therefore, if Douglas’ Democrats had committed an injustice, it was the duty of the People to rectify what their representatives had perverted.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act went into effect on May 30, 1854, and its obvious flaws were revealed almost immediately. It was not merely a moral crime - it was a governing travesty.
By tying the settlement of the new territories to the national controversy around the expansion of Slavery, the KNA have created political incentives which would soon rock the nascent Kansas body-politics. Well-Armed Border Ruffians were crossing over from Missouri as early as late 1854 to overwhelm the polling stations in the small settlements - in one case, almost 300 votes were counted in a village with no more than 30 residents. Northern (especially New England) enterprises to bolster the anti-slavery element of the population by sending over settlers - and guns to defend them. Two competing legislatures convened - an antislavery one in Topeka, who wrote a constitution excluding all blacks- free or enslaved - from Kansas. This Constitution was submitted to the Federal Government in 1856, where it passed the House, but failed in the Senate (due to two southern votes) and was rejected by President Pierce in July 2nd, 1856. The pro-slavery legislature in Pawnee (who later moved to Lecompton) assembled in September of the same year to write a competing document which stated:
Article VII:Slavery
Section 1. The right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same, and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever.
Sec. 2. The legislature shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves without the consent of the owners, or without paying the owners previous to their emancipation a full equivalent in money for the slaves so emancipated. They shall have no power to prevent emigrants to the State from bringing with them such persons as are deemed slaves by the laws of any one of the United States or Territories, so long as any person of the same age or description shall be continued in slavery by the laws of this State:
…
Sec. 4. Any person who shall maliciously dismember or deprive a slave of life shall suffer such punishment as would be inflicted in case the like offense had been committed on a free white person, and on the like proof, except in case of insurrection of such slave.
This constitution also made sure to secure to the voters who elected its writers permanent power:
Article VIII: elections and rights of suffrage
Section 1. Every male citizen of the United States, above the age of twenty-one years, having resided in this State one year, and in the county, city, or town in which he may offer to vote three months next preceding any election, shall have the qualifications of an elector, and be entitled to vote at all elections. And every male citizen of the United States, above the age aforesaid, who may be a resident of the State at the time that this constitution shall be adopted, shall have the right of voting as aforesaid; but no such citizen or inhabitant shall be entitled to vote except in the county in which he shall actually reside at the time of the election.
Clearly, the intent was for the Border Ruffians to cross over from Missouri three months before any election -and in the case of those of them still present within the borders of Kansas at the time of the Lecompton Constitution’s adoption, not even that - which would have amounted to the disenfranchisement of actual, permanent Kansas residents and reducing Kansas to an territory of Missouri. Ever since Virginia had given up its claims on the Ohio country and New Hampshire her claims on Vermont in the late 18th century, there was no attempt by one state to swallow another in its infancy. The same body of so-called “electors” approved it in late 1857 - but within a month the actual residents of Kansas had voted to reject it. Nevertheless, the Lecomptonites brazenly decided to send it to Congress - but despite the support of another Democratic President, James Buchanan of Virginia, the House refused to pass it before Kansans had another opportunity to vote on it. It died at the last vote in August 1858.
Throughout the entire period, violence and bloodshed - nothing short of a civil war - ravaged the territory. Proslavery forces had ransacked Free-State strongholds such as Lawrence, using swords, pikes, rifles, muskets and even small artillery, which was used to great effect in reducing the Free State Hotel, and much of the rest of the town, founded mostly by New Englanders, to rubble.
In retaliation, John Brown - that fiery antislavery preacher - and his followers had hacked to death proslavery settlers assembled in Powhatahomie. Murder and mayhem ravaged the countryside. Both competing governments never managed to gain control over those fighting in their names. The anarchy had left an indelible mark on Kansas - and the blood rests squarely on the shoulders of Douglas. But Stephen Douglas was never called to face the consequences of his ambition and maneuvering - the voters of Illinois had voted him a seat in the US Senate twice, and while he had failed to secure the Democratic nomination for President in 1856, due to the scandal of Bleeding Kansas, as the conflict caused by the KNA was known, the Party did reward him with this prize in 1860.
A New Birth - the Emergence of the Republican Party
It was in the background of this bloodshed that the Whig party sighed out its final breath - and that the Republican Party was born. Starting as a coalition of opponents to the KNA (or “the Anti-Nebraska Party”). Originally merely another local party, its foundation is accredited to one Alvan E. Bovay, a former Whig from Wisconsin. In a now famous meeting in the Congregational church of Rippon, Wisconsin, Bovay’s hometown, on Wednesday evening, March 1, 1854, it was resolved:
“That of all the outrages hitherto perpetrated or attempted upon the North and freedom by the slave leaders and their natural allies, not one compares in bold and impudent audacity treachery and meanness to this Nebraska Bill; as to the sum of all its villainies it adds the repudiation of a solemn compact held as sacred as the constitution itself for a period of thirty-four years”
The bill had passed the Senate the following Friday. Bovay started organizing for a second meeting almost immediately - and he had a new party organization in mind. At a certain point during the coming weeks, he received an icy letter from his friend Horace Greely discouraging him from the enterprise - but nevertheless, on Monday, March 20, 1854 such a meeting took place. The local Free-Soil and Whig clubs agreed to dissolve themselves and a new organization was brought to being - which by Bovay’s suggestion, took the name of “The Republican Party”.
The new party organization was unique in that it did not seek to prefer one faction over the other. Bovay had taken great pains to unite representatives from the local branches of all parties: “one Democrat, three Whigs and one free soiler” formed the new committee of the Republican Party. By doing this and by dissolving the Whig and Free Soiler committees, the Rippon Republicans had accidentally discovered the perfect way out of a multiparty gridlock - by the creation of a new body whose aim is not to bestow upon any existing faction on one side of politics superiority over the others, but by creating a single body that recognizes no other legitimate representative of it. Thus, the new body consolidates into itself an entire half of the political field - by promising the possibility of leadership to people who hitherto could not dream of it, and threatening the recalcitrants with delegitimization. Any Ripponite Whig, Free-Soiler or Northern Democrats that would have refused to join would have been accused by his newly-minted Republican colleagues of insincerity in his devotion to anti-slavery.
On May 22, when the House had passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the representatives opposing it of both Whig and Democratic parties had agreed to unite. The name “Republican” was suggested, but for the time being they preferred to be known as “the Opposition Party” - indeed this combination had made them the largest party in the House of Representatives. In Maine, the Prohibitionists and anti-Slavery Democrats agreed to unite in support of nominating Anson P. Morril for governor in a convention in Strong, Oxford County, Maine - and agreed their new party to be named The Republican Party.
The lynchpin to all these developments was Horace Greely - who was in communication with the antislavery coalition in Congress, with Bovay and his Ripponites, with the Strong Convention as well as with another one that was being prepared in Michigan - it was through his paper that the various factions claiming the Republican mantle and antislavery cause. Thurlow Weed and his friend Seward, which as we have seen, were completely disillusioned at this point with the dying Whig Party, soon followed, and the Weed’s newspaper had joined the growing list of powerful newspapers and other semi-official party organs seamlessly shifting to form the backbone of the new party.
First Run and Counterstrike - John Fremont and the Scott vs. Sanford Decision
The first candidate the Republican Party had fielded was John Fremont, who ran in 1856 against Democrat John Buchanan and Whig Millard Filmore. The defeat of this hero of the Mexican War (who had lead the Californian Black Bear Revolt) can be explained away by Millard Fillmore inserting himself into the race out of a sense of personal grievance and need to prove his own merit and old whigs still hoping to revive their old party. Fremont certainly had his weaknesses as a candidate- impetuous, impolitic and carrying behind him accusation of self-serving attempted legislature from his brief stint in the US Senate.
The Republican Party was also smeared as a party of cranks and busybodies concerned with a list of moralizing causes with no chance of success or interest to the ordinary American. Too much hay was made of individual Republicans’ support for temperance, women’s vote and revival besides their anti-Nebraska stance. This led to the identification of Republicans with a particular type of voter - the native-born Northern (or Westerner of Northern extraction), devoutly evangelical, temperate Yankee in business. This solidified support for the new party in this particular demographic, but have made virtually everyone else apprehensive. Southerners, Immigrants and moderates were essentially sold the lie that the Republican Party lacks seriousness and focus.
Nevertheless, the elections were not a total loss - Republicans had gained a presence in Congress and soon combined with the Opposition Party and the Free Soilers (the fact that Fremont was a Free Soiler himself was helpful). The only recalcitrants were the Know-Nothings - there was a perennial feeling of repulsion and distrust between Republicans such as Lincoln and the so-called Americanists who, after all, had only a passing interest in the KNA. The Know-Nothings refusal to commit to an alliance with the Republicans left the Democrats still able to pass legislation through Congress - with the Presidency firmly in their hands. It can be said that their narrow mindedness had doomed the Republic to the Civil War.
It was, however, a force that hitherto stayed aloof from the fight over Slavery that will accelerate the growth of the Republican Party and the clash between proslavery and antislavery forces.
In 1837, a US Army Surgeon had brought with him his slave, Dred Scott, to his post at Ft. Snelling in the free territory of Wisconsin, after being previously stationed in Ft. Armstrong, in the free state of Illinois for the previous 4 years of his service. In Wisconsin, Scott had met an enslaved woman - owned by another officer - named Harriet, whom he married in front of a local justice of the peace. Emerson had left the Scotts - he bought Harriet - and continued to lease out their services to other officers in Snelling while he was traveling to Louisiana, where he married Eliza Sanford.
After the death of Emerson in 1842 in the free territory of Iowa, his widdow and the Scotts moved to Missouri where she continued to lease out the couple and pocket their wages. Dred, a conscientious and hard working man, had managed to save for himself from work performed outside the widow’s purview, a tidy sum which he hoped would secure his family’s freedom - a common enough arrangement. Mrs. Sanford refused the offer of $300 in 1846 and the Scotts filed separate lawsuits for their freedom.
The long and arduous journey of their cause is of the greatest interest, but to our subject, it woud be sufficient that their grounds were based on them living for nearly 10 years in free states and territories, and being recognized by the justice of the peace officiating their wedding as free persons. By the laws of Iowa, Illinois and the Wisconsin territory, Emerson had long lost his claim on the Scotts - and in fact he and his widow where not only unjustly detaining, but actively robbing the Scotts’ wages for more than a decade.
After his first suit was rejected by Missourian courts, Madame Sanford complicated matters by transferring Dred Scott to her New York brother in 1853. This opened the door to a Federal lawsuit against the brother. The case finally had found its way in front of the Supereme Court of the United States in February 1856.
In 1857, the Court, presided over by Chief Justice Roger Taney, had rejected Scott’s suit. In and of itself that won’t be an inordinary event - slaves suing for their freedom lost very often - as we saw, Scott’s suit was rejected on by the Missuori court system - but what was unique was the grounds for the verdict - Taney had declared that under the Connstitution, a black man - whether free or enslaved - can never be an American citizen (or that of an Ameircan state) and have no standing before Federal Courts.
Not only did the decision nullified the laws of free states and terrirories - since Taney have decided that Scott remains a slave despite the explicit laws of Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois - but it stripped blacks of all legal protection and turned state prohibition of their mistreatment and re-enslavement (if they were free) into a dead letter on a racial basis. Suffice it to say, the Constitution does not and never did recognize race as a category.
Taney is often cited alone in this judicial invention, this travesty, this most blatant example of legislation from the bench to have ever occurred - but the decision belonged to all seven concuring justices. The two dissenters - Curtis and McLean - had mounted a brave offense against the majority but to no avail.
The Republicans now faced with a much greater challenge than before. To achieve their aim to limit Slavery - even to restore the legal order that have prevailed just until the Scott decision - woud require a constitutional amendment or an overturning of a Supreme Court ruling. The task seemed insurmountable, but the first step would be to find a new leader to represent the Party’s position to the public on coherent and sensible lines - and Fremont was simply not the right man. A few names were brought forward - Chase who so eloquently defended teh freedom of many black Americans just like Scott in court for years - Seward of the Higher Law Speech fame - Sumner, who had been brutally beaten by a Southerner representative for his fiery speech against Slavery. Another name, who only few considered, was a certain railway lawyer of Illinois, practically the head of the local (and not very successful) Republican branch, a self educated, witty, commonplace and commonsensical man of little flare and fame - one Abraham Lincoln of Springfield who, despite a series of very well-attended public debates with Stephen Douglas, had failed to wrestle away the latter’s senate seat in 1856.
And thus a dispirited and indignant Republican Party advanced to its national convention in Chicago, having little hope that whoever they chose would win the coming Presidentia contest - but determined to try and find the man least likely to embarrass them nevertheless.
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