Lauren N. Haumesser “Not Man Enough”: Gender And
Lauren N. Haumesser “Not man enough”: Gender and Democratic Campaign Tactics in the Election of 1856 Throughout the 1850s, the Democratic Party was frequently, as one contemporary put it, “not on speaking terms with itself.”1 Democrats disagreed on issues as fundamental as the scope of federal and state power, political economy, and even slavery. Americans had debated the relative power of the federal and state governments since the founding of the republic. Now, however, Democratic leaders had to adjudicate the dispute within their own party. Moderate Democrats emphasized states rights within the federal system, while radicals argued for states’ total sovereignty. Nor did Democrats agree on a vision for America’s economy. Southern planters celebrated agrarianism, while a group of Democrats who dubbed themselves the “Young Americans” believed the government should support economic development projects such as railroad development and harbor improvements.2 Party members did not even agree on the most important political issue of the day: slavery. The party and its members—like almost every American in the nineteenth century—were intensely racist. All Democrats agreed that blacks were biologically inferior. But Free Soil Democrats and slaveholding Democrats divided over whether slavery should be extended into America’s new western territories. 3 Free Soil Democrats, who were concentrated in New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Ohio, were suspicious of Southern planters. Free Soilers believed planters had allied with New England textile 1 Quoted in Jean Baker, Affairs of Party: The Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983), 145.
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