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The Republican Party's Version of American History

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The Republican Party's Version of American History 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, 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,( 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. 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 ‘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.
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