Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
The Republican Party’s Version of American
History: Galvanising the Northern Public against
Southern Slavery
Darren Dobson
(Monash University, Australia)
Abstract: The 1850s in the United States were a time of intense social and political
division. The sectional crisis between the free labour economy of the Northern
states’ and the Southern states’ entrenched social system of slavery were igniting
tensions across the Nation. In the midst of this turmoil, a Northern political party
standing on a platform of anti-slavery emerged in 1854. This new Republican Party
would in the space of six years go from being a regional party in places like Illinois to
claiming the Presidential office under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
How did the Republicans gain so much public support in the Northern states in so
short a time? One technique was the use of rhetorical language through which
Republicans espoused their interpretation of the true meaning of America’s history
since the Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence. With the 150th
anniversary of the American Civil War, it is a good time to reinvestigate how
Republican leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase
and Charles Sumner were able to convey their Party’s message and persuade the
vast population of the North to favour an anti-slavery stance. In particular, this paper
discusses just how these prominent Republicans interpreted America’s history and
used it as a weapon to justify calls for containing slavery within the Southern states
where it existed at the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.
1
Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
In 1789, the first Federal government of the United States took office; however, the
nation was in actuality a tentative arrangement between Northern free labour and
Southern slavery. For the next few decades these two competing economic sections
struggled to live with each other under the Union’s banner. Sectional tension came to
a boiling point with the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848 when the
United States acquired from the spoils of this war vast new territories in the West,
including the former Mexican territories of California and New Mexico. Immediately
debate ensued over which economic system would move into these regions. The two
dominant political parties at the beginning of the 1850s were the Democrats and the
Whigs, both of whom had Northern and Southern wings. While the Democrats
remained united as a national party, the Whigs were unable to hold off the mounting
anxieties between their Northern members and their Southern wing.
What resulted would amount to the reshaping of the American political landscape
and be the main trigger for escalating the sectional crisis. 1 By 1852, the Whigs
teetered on the brink of collapse because of the deaths of leading statesmen, Daniel
Webster and Henry Clay, and the defection of the Southern planters. The former
prominent Whigs were replaced by new and younger leaders who fumed over any
political alliance with slaveholders. Chief amongst these were Charles Sumner,
William H. Seward and Abraham Lincoln. Within this malaise Seward would say that
the country needed “a bold, out-spoken, free spoken organization – one that openly
proclaims its principles, its purposes and its objects – in fear of God, and not of
1
William E. Gienapp, “The Crisis of American Democracy: The Political Systems and the Coming of
the Civil War,” in Gabor S. Boritt and David Blight (eds), Why the Civil War Came, (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1996), 95.
2
Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
man.” 2 Many likeminded Northern politicians sought a party that would not fall
subservient to the demands of an internal sectional power. Seward went on to say
that it was better “to take an existing organization that answers to these conditions, if
we can find one. If we cannot find one such, we must create one.”3 It seemed for
many ex-Northern Whigs that a new party was needed. By the mid-1850s, the
remaining Northern members drifted to either the American or the Republican
Parties.4
So just how did the Republican Party in the six years between 1854 and the 1860
Presidential election harness Northern anxieties and galvanise the majority of people
from the free states into a constituency which favoured containing the Southern
slave states? In this article I will investigate how the Republicans used their
interpretation of American history since 1776 to win Federal Administration. It was
through both the deliverance of speeches by prominent Republican leaders and their
subsequent publication in Northern newspapers, that the party was able to convince
a broader Northern audience about stopping slavery’s spread into the western
territories and contain it to those states where it already existed. As historian Harold
Holzer identified, prominent Republicans operated and spoke to audiences across
the free states whom largely “lived and breathed politics” and flocked “to hear” these
politicians talk “for hours at a time on the issues of the day.” 5 For those Northern
people unable to attend these events, they were catered for by the abundance of
politically aligned local and national newspapers. These editorials helped to provide
2
William H. Seward, The Dangers of Extending Slavery and the Crisis: Dangers of Extending Slavery,
th
Delivered in Albany, New York, October 12, 1855, 5 edition, (Washington, D.C.: Republican
Association and Buell and Blanchard Printers, 1856), 8.
3
Ibid.
4
Michael F. Holt, “Party Dynamics and the Coming of the Civil War,” in Michael Perman (ed.), The
Coming of the American Civil War, Third Edition,( Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1993), 91.
5
Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that made Abraham Lincoln President, (New
York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 4, 115, 149, 164.
3
Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
free soil citizens with full transcripts of notable speeches and acted as a “window
onto current events,” while also fuelling “mass participation in the electoral process.”6
Via these mechanisms, the Republicans promoted their anti-slavery version of
American history and persuaded a growing Northern constituency to their cause.
This investigation looks at some of the speeches, letters and diaries of Abraham
Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Charles Sumner to explore how
the Republicans identified Northern fears and targeted their historical rhetoric to
attack slavery. Through these source materials I will investigate the ways
Republicans used historical language as a tool to oppose slavery and Slave Power,
the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), Bleeding Kansas (1856) and the Dred Scott
decision (1857). It is my goal to show that the Republican Party’s historical
understandings and campaigns promoting anti-slavery was a galvanising force
behind which many Northerners united against Southern slavery.
The Republicans as the Northern Anti-slavery and Anti-Slave Power Party
By 1854 mid-western farmers furious about the Kansas-Nebraska Act called for the
creation of a new anti-slavery party to stand against the Southern Slave Power.7 This
would become the Republican Party, whose members were derived from former
Free Soilers, Anti-Nebraska Democrats and Conscience Whigs. With the Party’s
strength being minimal in those states beyond the mid-west, its leaders recognised
that they needed some type of stimulus to gain constituents and to convince
6
Ibid.
The Republican Party had identified the Slave Power to be the combination of Southern
slaveholders uniting in State and Federal politics within the tiers of government – the Executive, the
Congress and the Judiciary – to influence and control US law with the purpose of enacting favourable
policy for slavery’s continuation and expansion. Republicans believed that through the Democratic
Party, this Slave Power, also referred to as the Slavocracy and Slave Oligarchy, formed a conspiracy
to subvert US democracy.
7
4
Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
Northerners that they were committed to defending free soil society. 8 Salmon P.
Chase believed that to effectively unite “the people of the free states” the
Republicans would need to reveal to Northerners “their own connexion with and
responsibility for National Slavery.”9 Chase held such a revelation would enable the
Party to begin espousing their historical anti-slavery understanding and “catch the
spirit of the people,” who would feel betrayed by the South.10 This would in turn allow
the Republicans “to feel that [spirit] transfused into” them and “organize a peoples
movement” with the designed purpose of “overthrow[ing] the Slave Power.”11
The Republican Party sought to become the mainstream political voice in the free
states by tapping into Northern disappointment and frustration with Northern
Democrats and those politicians who sympathised with the South, referred to as
‘doughfaces.’ 12 Many Northern voters blamed these two groups for the Missouri
Compromise’s repeal by the successful passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Amidst this political atmosphere the Republicans announced that they were
dedicated to stopping slavery’s expansion and returning Federal Government to its
original purpose. They believed that slavery implied subordination to tyranny at the
expense of liberty and equality.
13
The Republican Party aimed to convince
Northerners that slaveholders sought to enslave them under Southern social
structures. 14 Seward added to this renouncement by fostering the idea that an
8
Ray Allen Billington and James Blaine Hedges, Western Expansion: A History of the American
Frontier, (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 594-9.
9
Salomon P. Chase, “Letter to Lewis Tappan, Cincinnati, Ohio, February 15, 1843,” in John Niven
(ed.), The Salmon P. Chase Papers Volume 2: Correspondence, 1823-1857, (Ohio: Kent State
University Press, 1994), 102.
10
Salmon P. Chase, ‘Letter to James W. Grimes, Cincinnati, Ohio, June 27, 1855’, in Niven (ed.), The
Salmon P. Chase Papers Volume 2., 421.
11
Ibid.
12
David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861, (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 247.
13
Leonard L. Richards, The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780-1860,
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000),12, 193-4.
14
Holt, “Party Dynamics and the Coming of the Civil War,” 104.
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aristocracy existed in the United States contrary to the design of the Founding
Fathers by saying; “Think it not strange or extravagant when I say that an aristocracy
has already arisen here, and that it is already undermining the Republic.” 15 For the
Republicans this aristocracy was “A privileged class” of “Slaveholders” whose
“special foundation” was rooted in their “personal dominion over slaves.” 16 From this
position the Slave Power used “some of our [Northern] own representatives as their
instruments” by forcing Congress to repeal previous compromises between the free
and slave states for being “unconstitutional usurpations of constitutional legislative
power,” which “were adverse to the privileged class.”17
The Republicans devised a successful and coherent strategy by incorporating
Northern calls for freedom from slavery’s effects into a critique of Southern social
and economic backwardness. 18 This strategy attacked the Slave Power’s political
influences by portraying the non-elected Southern elites as subversive to majority
rule, the democracy’s essential principle. Seward expressed his Party’s policy as
being;
to inculcate perpetual jealousy of the increase and extension of Slavery,
and the plantation, organization, and admission of free states in the
common Territories of the United States. This policy is even older than the
Constitution itself. It was the policy of Jay, Madison, Jefferson, and
Washington. It was early exercised in prohibiting the African slave trade,
and devoting the Northwest Territory to impartial Freedom.19
15
Seward, The Dangers of Extending Slavery and the Crisis, 2, 6.
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Susan-Mary Grant, North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the
Antebellum Era, ( Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 5, 74, 144, 148-9.
19
th
William H. Seward, The Contest and the Crisis, Delivered at Buffalo, October 19, 1855, 5 Edition,
(Washington, D.C.:Buell and Blanchard Printers, 1856), 11.
16
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Republicans believed that if the Slave Power was allowed to spread slavery it would
reduce the North to a permanent minority position in the national government.20
In order to embed their historical interpretation within the Northern public’s mind, the
Republican Party used the Revolution, the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution.21 The Republicans employed national history to
target slavery, by declaring that the Founding Fathers had intended to implement an
anti-slavery policy, which ensured this institution would one day cease to exist in the
US.
22
Republicans argued that the Founders wanted slavery’s demise and
replacement by free labour, thereby elevating Southerners to the North’s progressive
level. 23 Abraham Lincoln cited Thomas Jefferson’s actions under the North-West
Ordinance of 1787:
Mr. Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and
otherwise a chief actor in the revolution; then a delegate in Congress;
afterwards twice president;…conceived the idea…to prevent slavery ever
going into the north-western territory…. Jefferson foresaw and intended –
the happy home of teeming millions of free, white, prosperous people, and
no slave among them.24
Republicans held that this ordinance had blocked slavery’s advance across the Ohio
River; as such, the Founders’ anti-slavery intentions linked with the Party’s policy,
where slavery was a curse upon the American republican model.25
Republicans drew on the Declaration of Independence as the Nation’s mission
statement to justify expanding free labour and halting slavery. Together with the
20
Eric Foner, “Politics, Ideology, and the Origins of the Civil War,” in Michael Perman (ed.), The
Coming of the American Civil War, Third Edition, (Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1993), 182; Eric
Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War,
(London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 54-8, 101, 265.
21
Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right, (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 20.
22
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 73, 75-85, 101, 265.
23
Grant, North Over South, 84.
24
Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854,” in Roy P.Basler (ed.), The
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol.2, (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 249.
25
Richards, The Slave Power, 159.
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Constitution, they condemned slavery as a barbaric violation of democratic values.26
On the Founding Fathers stance against slavery, Seward said;
Although they had inherited, yet they generally condemned the practice of
Slavery, and hoped for its discontinuance. They expressed this when they
asserted in the Declaration of Independence, as a fundamental principle
of American society, that all men are created equal, and have inalienable
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.27
In his book The Impending Crisis, historian David Potter noticed how the sectional
crisis of the 1850s enabled the Republicans to expand on the Founding Fathers’
aversion to slavery by acknowledging their avoidance to officially recognise it. 28
Sumner supported this position when he said that slavery was “An institution, which
our fathers most carefully omitted to name in the constitution” as they intended for it
to be “banished from the national jurisdiction.”29 However, despite the position that
slavery should be prevented from moving into the West, Republicans held that the
Southern states possessed constitutional rights to maintain slavery within their
borders. Slavery’s confinement to the South suited the Republican agenda about
convincing the Northern public that this institution was heading towards ultimate
extinction.30 In his famous Cooper Union address delivered in 1860, Lincoln built up
the Republican’s case in this matter by showing that,
[as] those fathers marked it [slavery], so let it be marked, as an evil not to
be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far
as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a
necessity. Let all guarantees those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but
fully and fairly maintained.31
26
Ibid., 2.
William H. Seward, Freedom and the Union, 4.
28
David Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1841-1861, (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
29
Charles Sumner, Freedom National, Slavery Sectional Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, of
Massachusetts, on his Motion to Repeal the Fugitive Slave Bill, in the Senate of the United States,
August 26, 1852 (Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1852), 13, 33-4.
30
David Potter, The Impending Crisis, 329, 339, 427.
31
Abraham Lincoln, “Address at Cooper Institute, New York City, February 27, 1860,” in Roy P.
Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3, (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press,
1953), 535.
27
8
Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
The Republicans believed that the Union had been established under the
Declaration of Independence to secure all Americans’ rights and as such they
promoted the historical attachment to the American Revolution and the need to
protect the republic. 32 Republicans argued that the Southern states, through
maintaining slavery, had abandoned and undermined the Founding Fathers’ ideals of
the Nation’s republican experiment. Lincoln espoused this stance by identifying the
slave states as having “discarded the old policy of the fathers” and he called upon
them to return “to the old policy. What has been will be again, under the same
conditions. If you have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of
the old times.”33
Republicans came to the realisation that slavery was not going to disappear of its
own accord. Hence, the Party’s argument was that slavery was incompatible with
freedom and that the country would have to adopt one system over the other. 34
Lincoln expressed this as,
[a] house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government
cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free…I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved – I do not expect it will cease to be divided. It will
become all one thing, or all the other.”35
From this the Republicans continued to use their national historical interpretation to
assail the slaveholding elite as betraying the Founding ideals of freedom.36
Republicans defended the Union’s integrity and greatness and sought to fulfil the
Nation’s mission under democratic republican government based on the motto: ‘of
32
Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson and the
Americans (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), 145.
33
Lincoln, “Address at Cooper Institute,” 538.
34
Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 96, 139.
35
Abraham Lincoln, “‘A House Divided:’ Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858,” Basler (ed.),
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2, 461.
36
Grant, North Over South, 31, 46, 54-7, 72, 133.
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Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
the people, by the people, and for the people.’37 They used this tool against Southern
glorification of hereditary privilege, racial caste and slavery to show Northerners that
democracy was threatened by Southern slavery. 38 Following these sentiments,
Chase argued for the rightful return of American government to its original purpose:
to divorce the General Government from slavery; to rescue Government
and its administration from the control of the Slave Power; to put its
example and influence perpetually and actively on the side of Freedom at
home and abroad;…in short, to make the American Republic, what our
Fathers designed it should be – the country of Freedom, - and the Refuge
of the Oppressed, - the light of the world.39
Republicans were convinced that this Slave Power had infiltrated and manipulated
the nation’s democratic institutions overturning Federal Government’s designed
purpose as stipulated in the Constitution. Sumner expressed this subversion of the
Founding Fathers’ initial “generous sentiments” of liberty as having “lost their power”
to the “slave-masters” who had “succeeded in dictating the policy of the National
Government, and have written SLAVERY on its front.” 40 From this position of
national dominance the Slave Power was able to institute “an arrogant and
unrelenting ostracism” against “not only [those] who express[ed] themselves against
Slavery, but to every man who [was] unwilling to be the menial of Slavery.”41
Republicans were so convinced of this conspiracy’s existence that they argued it
was comprised of 347,000 slaveholders who in turn owned more than three million
slaves. The Slave Power was the governing class in all of the Southern states and
responsible for the selection of thirty Senate members, ninety members of the House
37
Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 316.
James M. McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 9, 28; Grant, North Over South, 9-12.
39
Salmon P. Chase, “Letter to Alfred P. Edgerton, Cincinnati, Ohio, November 14, 1853," in John
Niven (ed.), The Salmon P. Chase Papers Volume 2: Correspondence, 1823-1857 (Ohio: Kent State
University Press, 1994), 374.
40
Sumner, Freedom National, Slavery Sectional, 32.
41
Ibid.
38
10
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of Representatives and 105 of the 295 electors of the President and Vice
President.42 Those appointed to these offices were typically Southern politicians or
Northern doughfaces. In the 72 years between 1789 and 1861, slaveholders retained
the Presidency for fifty years, while at the same time also occupying half of all
cabinet positions and other diplomatic appointments.43 Chase used similar statistics
when he noted there were “90 Rep[representative]s” together with “30 Senators”
within the federal “legislation” who favoured slavery.44 This amounted to the Slave
Power’s “control of nominations” such as those of the “President …Rep[resentative]s
…Senators” and “judges.”45 According to Chase, “Government patronage all over the
land” was “in hands of” the “Slave Power.”46
Republicans harnessed Northern anxieties about this powerful conspiratorial
presence by showing it as repudiating the nation’s democratic values. 47 Lincoln
explained this by announcing that the Founding Fathers were aware of
the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these
great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some
faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men,
or…white men were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
their prosperity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence
and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began.48
Through this careful handling of American history, the Republicans believed the
Slave Power had managed to stop unfavourable legislation while passing those bills
advantageous to slavery, such as the Fugitive Slave Laws (1850) and the Kansas-
42
Charles Beard and Mary Beard, “The Approach of the Irrepressible Conflict,” in Michael Perman
(ed.), The Coming of the American Civil War, Third Edition (Massachusetts: D.C. Heath, 1993), 26.
43
Potter, The Impending Crisis,. 445.
44
Salmon P. Chase, “Journal IV, Entry for August 17, 1853,” in John Niven (ed.), The Salmon P.
Chase Papers, Volume 1, Journals, 1829-1872 (Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 1993), 242.
45
Ibid.
46
Ibid.
47
Gienapp, “The Crisis of American Democracy,” 92.
48
Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 26, 1857,” in Roy P. Basler (ed.), The
Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2, 546.
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Nebraska Act (1854). 49 Sumner noticed that the Slave Power’s perpetuation was
driven by
a spirit of vaulting ambition which would hesitate at nothing;…a madness
for slavery which should disregard the Constitution, the laws, and all the
great examples of our history….To overthrow this Usurpation is now the
special, important duty of Congress,….It must turn from that Slave
Oligarchy which now controls the Republic, and refuse to be its tool.50
Such beliefs strengthened the Republican argument that the Slave Power’s
aristocratic hold needed to be severed, to allow the restoration of the Founding
Fathers’ original policies for expanding democratic freedom.51
Seward saw the inequality of the Slave Power’s position of dominance in national
politics, which he believed was contrary to the Founding Fathers; “In the States
where the slave system prevails, the masters, directly or indirectly, secure all political
power, and constitute a ruling aristocracy.” 52 The Republicans argued the Senate
had been converted by doughfaces into a Slave Power stronghold, where these
lackeys repeatedly converted Southern minorities within the House into a majority
political arrangement.53 Through these alliances the Slave Power was able to exert
its designs to extend slavery into the West and eventually into the free states. 54
Sumner argued how this had occurred with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act, saying “[the] passage of the bill in the Senate by a well-nigh unanimous South,
49
Richards, The Slave Power, 92, 194.
Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas, in the Senate of the United States, May 19, 1856,” in
Slavery Pamphlets, (New York: New York Tribune, 1856), 2, 30.
51
Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 87.
52
William H. Seward, “The Irrepressible Conflict, Rochester, New York, October 25, 1858,” in Louis
Schade, Appeal to the Common Sense and Patriotism of the People of the United States
(Washington: Little, Morris, & Co., 1860), 3.
53
Richards, The Slave Power, 4-7, 38-45, 107, 159.
54
Potter, The Impending Crisis, 329.
50
12
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and the body of the Democratic senators from the North, was assured from the
beginning.”55
Republican Renouncement of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas
In May 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act allowed these two territories to be open to
the possibility of slavery. Democratic Senator, Stephen A. Douglas was the chief
architect of this Act and he championed the decision to allow Kansas and Nebraska
to determine their fates to be either free or slave regions via popular sovereignty.
This notion involved the citizens residing in these two territories to vote either for
slavery or a free soil economic system. Yet, popular sovereignty presented some
problems when it came to Kansas and Nebraska. Most noticeably as Kansas shared
its eastern border with Missouri, which had been admitted in 1820 to the Union as
part of the Missouri Compromise. Under this agreement, Missouri would be a slave
state while the remainder of the Louisiana Purchase to the north above the
geographical line of 36˚ 31΄ would be exclusively left open to free soil. Many
Northerners viewed the 1820 Compromise as having set aside the Northern regions
for free labour in order to be a sacred pact and oath with Southerners, which the Act
had revoked. The opening up of Kansas and Nebraska to the possibility of slavery
was fair, for the Southerners because the Southern Territories of New Mexico and
Utah were arid and not suitable for cotton production. For Lincoln the KansasNebraska Act not only repealed the Missouri Compromise but rejected the Founding
Fathers’ desire to prevent slavery’s expansion into federal regions where it did not
previously exist. He used the Northwest Ordinance established “[in] 1789, by the first
55
Charles Sumner, “Chapter 38, 1853-1854,” in Edward L. Pierce (ed.), Memoir and Letters of
Charles Sumner, Vol. 3 (Boston: Robert Brothers, 1877-1893), 370.
13
Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
Congress which sat under the Constitution” which stipulated “the prohibition of
slavery.”56
Republicans held that the Slave Power’s consolidation and desire to rapidly expand
slavery under this Act was another part of pro-slavery ideology bent on reducing free
labour societies. To foster this sentiment, they talked up Northern fears about the
Slave Power conspiracy that sought to undermine the Nation’s republican
experiment, but also to threaten free soil citizens with the loss of their identity and
place within the Union.57 Venting his hostility against this danger, Sumner mocked
the Kansas-Nebraska Act and appealed for Northern unity against it, as it reversed
“the settled policy” with the specific intention “to establish slavery in an immense
territory” which had been previously “guaranteed to liberty by solemn compact.”58
The passage of this “bill” was “a gross violation of a sacred pledge.”59 For Sumner
“[the] repeal of the Missouri Compromise had…arrayed the mass of good citizens
against the further extension of slavery. The spell of compromise had been
broken.”60
Republicans saw how popular sovereignty had transformed Kansas into a battle site
between free soil advocates and pro-slavery forces. 61 They understood that as a
device popular sovereignty was designed to overthrow freedom’s guarantees in the
West by establishing slavery as a local issue not to be affected by national opinion. 62
On popular sovereignty, Lincoln expressed how he disliked it
56
Lincoln, “Address at Cooper Institute,” 527
Grant, North Over South, 20; Foner, Free Soil, Free labor, Free Men, 56.
58
Sumner, “Chapter 38,” 350, 374.
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid.
61
Richards, The Slave Power, 3-4, 16.
62
Potter, The Impending Crisis, 172-4.
57
14
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because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the
world – enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt
us as hypocrites – causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our
sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men
amongst us into open war with the fundamental principles of civil liberty –
criticising the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no
right principle of action but self interest.63
Republicans continued to single out Stephen A. Douglas, the Act’s chief architect, for
having persuaded his fellow Northern Democratic Party members to vote in favour of
opening the Louisiana Purchase’s northern half to slavery.64 Republicans continued
their use of national history against democracy’s breaches in Kansas, with Sumner
declaring, “the People will unite once more with their Fathers of the Republic, in a
just condemnation of slavery – determined especially that it shall find no home in the
National Territories – while the Slave Power…will be swept into the catalogue of
departed Tyrannies.”65
The people living in Kansas at the time of the Act were both free soilers and proslavery advocates between whom open warfare erupted. This was realised when
thousands of both New England free soilers and Missouri slaveowners rushed into
Kansas. In the territorial elections, free soil settlers would most likely have been
victorious, allowing for Kansas to become a free State. However, as the
multitudinous pro-slavery Missourians crossed into Kansas, willingly using firearms
and other violent means against anyone opposed to slavery, free soilers decided to
boycott the March 1855 election. With no viable voting opposition, the Missourians
stopped at nothing to silence judges and anyone who stood in their way to vote.66
The lack of a present anti-slavery opposition allowed the pro-slavery forces to
63
Lincoln, “Speech at Peoria,” 255.
Richards, The Slave Power, 13, 86, 184; Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham
Lincoln and the Promise of America (Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1993), 35.
65
Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas,” 30.
66
Paul S. Boyer, Clifford E. Clark, Jr., Sandra McNair Hawley, Joseph F. Kent, Neal Salisbury,
Harvard Sitkoff, Nancy Woloch, The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People Volume One:
To 1877 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006), 282
64
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gerrymander the voting process and submit the favourable Lecompton Constitution
as Kansas’ proposed admission into the Union.67
While abstaining from voting, free soilers organised an alternative territorial
government at Topeka. In 1856, the antagonists clashed at Lawrence, forever
labelling the territory ‘Bleeding Kansas.’ Here the pro-slavery forces burned buildings
and destroyed two free soil printing presses. Sumner expressed his outrage and
disappointment over these events, saying “[indeed], we are on the brink of a fearful
crisis. The tyranny of the slave oligarchy becomes more revolting day by day. To-day
I am smitten by the news from Kansas. That poor people there are trampled down
far beyond our fathers.”68 In the aftermath, the Lecompton Constitution was defeated
in Congress, inflicting the Southern elite’s first setback. This reflected the growing
Republican presence: the Party had gained control of most Northern governorships
and legislatures, while also having many Party members elected to Congress.69
By 1856, Kansas was rife with corruption and physical violence. Sumner beleived
these events violated the Revolutionary generation’s democratic principles; “in a land
of constitutional liberty, where the safeguards of elections are justly placed among
the highest triumphs of civilization, I fearlessly assert that the wrongs…of Kansas,
where the very shrines of popular institutions, more sacred than any heathen alter,
have been desecrated.” 70 In this Republican dramatisation, anti-slavery heroes
fought to uphold the Nation’s freedom in the face of the villainous pro-slavery
advocates. As Sumner said,
67
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 203.
Charles Sumner, “Letter to William Jay, May 6, 1855,” in Edward L. Pierce (ed.), Memoir and
Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol.3, 438.
69
Gienapp, “The Crisis of American Democracy,” 102-3.
70
Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas,” 2, 21.
68
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the children of the Free States, over whose cradles has shone the North
Star, owe it to themselves, to their ancestors, and to Freedom itself, that
this right should now be asserted to the fullest extent. By the blessing of
God and under the continued protection of the laws, they will go to
Kansas, there to plant, their homes, in the hope of elevating this Territory
soon into the sisterhood of the Free States. 71
Sumner named specific Southern politicians in his ‘Crime Against Kansas’ speech,
most notably Senator Andrew P. Butler from South Carolina. As a result, Preston
Brooks, a relative of Butler’s and a Southern representative, physically assaulted
Sumner while he was still in the Senate chamber. So severe were Sumner’s injuries
that he did not return to perform his Senatorial duties for another two and a half
years.72 The Republicans used this infamous attack to demonstrate that Southerners
were dangerously uncivilized.73 Bleeding Kansas and Sumner’s assault led them to
call for a united North to resist the fanatically violent Slave Power from extending
their dominance and destroying freedom.74
Republican Fury over the Dred Scott Decision
The United States’ Supreme Court’s Dred Scott Decision (1857) further fuelled
Northern anxieties about a slaveholding conspiracy.75 With this ruling, Republicans
carried their rhetoric further, claiming that the Supreme Court’s decision was the final
proof of the Slave Power’s attempt to control the entire Nation. This conspiracy was
deepened when the newly sworn in Democratic President, James Buchanan,
implored Americans to respect the upcoming ruling. Republicans claimed the
Supreme Court conveniently announced their decision two days after Buchanan’s
Presidential inauguration. The Dred Scott ruling now declared all federal territories
71
Ibid.
Potter, The Impending Crisis, 210-17.
73
Grant, North Over South, 134.
74
Holt, “Party Dynamics and the Coming of the Civil War,”. 108-9.
75
Donald, Lincoln, 240.
72
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and states open to slaveholders under national government protection. 76 Chase
claimed that it was the Court’s decision which had finally aroused “a more
determined resolve” by Northerners against slavery’s expansion. 77 This sentiment
had been derived from “the determination of the Republican Party to counterwork
[and] defeat” the Slave Power’s perpetual subversion of American democracy.78 To
many Northerners, the Republican Party was their counter force against the Slave
Power conspiracy.79
With regard to Dred Scott’s status, the Supreme Court ruled that as a slave, Scott
could not be considered a free man, despite having been taken by his master into a
territory and a state where slavery did not exist. The Court also stipulated that no
free black person could be considered a citizen. This ruling heightened Republican
fears that the Supreme Court would issue additional Constitutional protection for
slaveholders to reside in the free states with their slave property.80 The party labelled
the Court’s ruling a declaration to the country that all federal territories were opened
to slavery. The Republicans renounced the ruling by using the Old Northwest
Ordinance as the precedent against slavery’s expansion into federal territories. For
Lincoln, this example showed that the Founding Fathers never intended there to be a
“line dividing local from federal authority…nor anything in the Constitution” which
“forbade the Federal Government, to control as to slavery in federal territory.” 81 As
Republicans had used Bleeding Kansas and Bleeding Sumner within their historical
76
Royster, The Destructive War, 67.
Salmon P. Chase,”Letter to Charles Sumner, Columbus, Ohio, May 1, 1857,” Niven (ed.), The
Salmon P. Chase Papers, 450.
78
Ibid.
79
Potter, The Impending Crisis, 202, 279-91.
80
Richards, The Slave Power, 12, 199-200, 205.
81
Lincoln, “Address at Cooper Institute” 527.
77
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scheme to battle the Slave Power, they were unanimously agreed that the Dred
Scott decision represented the final confirmation of this conspiracy.
The Dred Scott Decision was adjudicated in the South’s favour by a majority led by
Chief Justice Taney. The Supreme Court who ruled on this case was comprised of
five Southern and four Northern judges. Within this body, three Northern judges
actively dissented or failed to coincide with the ruling’s vital features, igniting
Republican accusations of the Court being in league with the Slave Power. 82 Here,
Lincoln used his ‘House’ metaphor to present the former President Franklin Pierce,
newly elected President James Buchanan, Senator Stephen A. Douglas and Chief
Justice Roger Taney, all Democrats, as being complicit in this conspiracy;
when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know
have been gotten out at different times and places and by different
workmen – Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James,…and when we see
these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a
house…we find it impossible to not believe that Stephen and Franklin and
Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, all
worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first lick was
struck.83
For Republicans, the Dred Scott Decision represented the Slave Power tightening
the noose around the free states and setting the stage for the final annihilation of
freedom. Lincoln declared that through this ruling the Slave Power had sabotaged
the Constitution and revealed their ultimate desire to eventually transform the United
States into a slave nation:
When you make these declarations, you have a specific and wellunderstood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take
slaves into federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no
such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is
82
83
Potter, The Impending Crisis, 279-87.
Lincoln, ‘“A House Divided,” 465-6.
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literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a
right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.84
Following Taney’s ruling, Republicans abhorred the decision that all Congressional
enactments excluding slavery from the national territories were constitutionally
unwarranted and void. 85 Republicans saw this as trampling upon the Founding
Fathers’ sacred Constitutional right of petition. Here, Lincoln quoted Thomas
Jefferson; “whenever a free people should give up in absolute submission to any
department of government, retaining for themselves no appeal from it, their liberties
[are] gone.”86 On the basis of the Court’s ruling, the Republicans argued that the
master-slave relationship could not be dissolved, and that the Court was determined
to bring slavery within the free states against Northerners’ will.87
Republicans predicted that another Supreme Court ruling similar to Dred Scott,
would make slavery national rather than sectional. In opposition to the possibility of
national slavery, Sumner harked back to the “fathers” who “create[d] a National
Government, and” endowed “it with adequate powers,” where the “Nation” did not
“exercise rights reserved to the States” and “the States” did not “interfere with the
powers of the Nation. Any such action on either side is a usurpation.” 88 This was the
principle of States’ Rights. The Dred Scott Decision now effectively allowed
slaveholders to take their slaves into all regions by overruling Northern state laws
opposed to slavery. Sumner announced that
if the slaveholder has a right to be secure at home in the enjoyment of
Slavery, so also has the freeman of the North – and every person there is
presumed to be a freeman – an equal right to be secure at home in the
84
Lincoln, “Address at Cooper Institute,” 543.
Donald, Lincoln, 199, 207-8.
86
Abraham Lincoln, “Fifth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Galesburg, Illinois, October 7, 1858,” in
Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3,(New Jersey: Rutgers University
Press,, 1953), 232.
87
Richards, The Slave Power, 130-1, 199-200.
88
Sumner, Freedom National, Slavery, 49-51.
85
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enjoyment of Freedom. The same principle of States Rights by which
Slavery is protected in the Slave States throws an impenetrable shield
over Freedom in the Free States.89
According to the Dred Scott Decision, free black men had never been deemed
American citizens.90 Seward ardently disagreed, saying that there had existed “[an]
earnest spirit of emancipation…in the Colonies at the close of the Revolution, and all
of them, except, perhaps, South Carolina and Georgia, anticipated, desired, and
designed an early removal of [slavery] from the country.”91 He also stated how the
“nation was founded on the simple and practically new principle of the equal and
inalienable rights of all men, and therefore it necessarily became a republic.” 92
Lincoln took this further when he identified that it was as a republic where free blacks
had been allowed in five of the original states of “New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina” to vote and play a “part in making the
Constitution” like that which “white people had.”93
In their attacks against the Dred Scott Decision, Republicans saw equality as a vital
element within their version of the Nation’s past. Contrary to the Supreme Court’s
ruling, Republicans sought to extend limited liberty as created by the Founding
Fathers’ to free blacks. Yet, despite this stance, Republicans widely held that the
differences of blacks caused them to be inferior to whites. As such, Republicans
were not prepared to insist upon total legal and political equality. Instead, they
developed a doctrine for black equality conditional upon black men proving their
89
Ibid.
Donald, Lincoln, 199.
91
Seward, The Abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, 3.
92
Seward, The Dangers of Extending Slavery and the Crisis, 2.
93
Lincoln, “Speech at Springfield,” 403.
90
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capability for economic advancement as free labourers.94 Lincoln justified this with
the Declaration of Independence:
I think that the authors of that noble instrument intended to include all
men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They
did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral
developments, or social capacity…they consider[ed] all men created
equal – equal in ‘certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.’95
Republican Rhetoric as a Unifying Force?
In their dedication to stopping slavery’s expansion and returning Federal government
to its original purpose, the Republicans developed a national historical interpretation
to combat slavery and the Slave Power. This historical version was predicated upon
their belief that the Founders’ original intention to implement an anti-slavery policy
was shown by the combined mechanisms of the Old North-West Ordinance in 1787
and the planned abolition of the African slave trade by 1808. Republicans used these
to display the Founding Fathers’ hatred of slavery and their desire for the
development of new territories to be occupied by free white settlers. Lincoln
connected the Republicans to the Founders by the shared belief that “we do, in
common with ‘our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,’ declare
our belief that slavery is wrong.”96
However, as the South refused to abandon slavery, Republicans declared this
institution to be incompatible with freedom and the Union’s original democratic
principles. Republicans viewed freedom’s founding oath as repudiated by a Southern
oligarchy intent on expanding slavery into the western territories. The Republican
historical rhetoric portrayed Southern slaveholders as a conspiracy that dominated
94
Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998), xx, 75; Foner, Free
Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, 139, 267, 290-8.
95
Lincoln, “Speech at Springfield,” 405-6.
96
Lincoln, “Address at Cooper Institute,” 539.
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Federal government and reversed the Founding Fathers’ policy by making slavery
the Nation’s ruling power. Republicans combined this historical dramatisation with
factual evidence of the Slave Power’s dominance, revealing that between 1789 and
1861, Southerners, together with their Northern sympathisers, had held the
Presidency for fifty years, while also repeatedly holding a majority of other positions
and offices within Federal institutions.
To Republicans these alliances enabled the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
This conspiracy theory was additionally furthered by Kansas’ gerrymandered
elections by Missourian pro-slavery forces, who later converted the territory into a
battle zone. Republicans used these events to promote their version of the American
past and future, calling upon free settlers to fight for the Declaration of
Independence’s principles.
In the same vein, Republicans considered the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott Decision,
which gave slaveholders additional constitutional guarantees within the territories, as
culminating the Slave Power’s plans. This heightened Northern fears that the
Supreme Court was preparing the way to open the free states to slavery.
Republicans were likewise convinced that this ruling prevented the code of all men
being created equal.
Ultimately, the Republicans were able to create a coherent historical ideology to use
against the Slave Power. The important tools of the Declaration of Independence,
the Constitution, the Founding Fathers and the Revolution were used to convince a
majority of free soil citizens that their liberties were under threat from slavery’s
expansion. Republicans employed their version of American history since 1776 not
only as an attack against Southern social structures, but also as a justification of the
23
Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013
North’s supremacy and progress as the true representation of the Nation’s character
and destiny. For Republicans it was the Founding Fathers’ intention that slavery
should be contained to the Southern states where it would ultimately perish, while
free labour should move into the West to extend the benefits of republican freedom.
The 1860 Presidential election swept the Republican Party into Federal government,
implying that their message had been successful in reaching a wide range of
Northerners. This office would now allow them to take up the mantle of the country’s
original purpose as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, where free labour could
claim victory over slavery in the territories. In turn, a largely pro-Republican North
would find waging a political conflict and a possible military war against an
aristocratic South easier to imagine and eventually realise.
24