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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

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 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 , it is a good time to reinvestigate how

Republican leaders such as Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and 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 , 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 : 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, Delivered in Albany, New York, October 12, 1855, 5th 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,( : 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 , the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), (1856) and the 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. 7 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. 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

‘.’ 12 Many Northern voters blamed these two groups for the

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 , Cincinnati, , 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. 5

Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013

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. 16 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 William H. Seward, The Contest and the Crisis, Delivered at Buffalo, October 19, 1855, 5th Edition, (Washington, D.C.:Buell and Blanchard Printers, 1856), 11. 6

Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013

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 , “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, : 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. 7

Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013

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. 27 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 (: 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. 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: , 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. 9

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. 38 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. 10

Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013

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. 44Salmon 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. 11

Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013

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. 50 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. 12

Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013

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 . Under this agreement, Missouri would be a slave state while the remainder of the 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 Kansas-

Nebraska 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 57 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. 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 pro- slavery advocates between whom open warfare erupted. This was realised when thousands of both 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. 64 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: 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 15

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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 , Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 203. 68 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. 16

Darren Dobson, ‘Republican’s Version of American History’, Eras Edition 14, February 2013

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 . 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, , 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. 72 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. 17

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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. 77 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. 18

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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 , 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 well- understood 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 Potter, The Impending Crisis, 279-87. 83 Lincoln, ‘“A House Divided,” 465-6. 19

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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. 85 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. 20

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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. 90 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. 21

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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. 22

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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

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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.

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