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The fragmentation of the American party system

See also Dred Scott v. Sandford.

Dred Scott

Before the Civil War, the stability of the two-party system was traditionally a unifying force. In the past the old party-system created links and alliances between parochial interests and political networks elites in various parts of the country and kept divisive issues out of the way. The American institutional structure had been able cope with sectional problems and disagreements; before the 1850s, after all, the nation had already seen sectional disputes centered on the issue of slavery in the West. These disputes did not lead to civil war, but rather the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and the Compromise of 1850.

However, as the Industrial Revolution was gaining momentum in the North, the pro-Southern Democratic party was increasingly seen as a barrier to progress in the areas of transportation, tariffs, schooling, and banking policy. Moreover, as modern capitalist development transformed the economy and society in the North, the corresponding rise of a mass society undermined the stability of the old two-party system. Sectional ideologies grew more and more vitriolic after 1856, and the growth of mass politics allowed these sentiments to enter politics with the help of the pamphlets, speeches, and newspaper articles by the Republican radicals. Sectional tensions - once merely an elite concern - were now increasingly tinged mass ideologies of free-soil and free-labor. Even the Constitution was now emerging as a source of division; in 1857 the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford would highlight the ambiguity of the Constitution, undermining the unifying force that the nationalistic veneration of Constitution used to provide.

Although indispensable mechanisms for regulating the balance of power between sectional interests in politics were eroding considerably, revisionist historians, such as Randall and Craven, have argued that its repair would not have been out of the question had the nation been led by a more able generation of politicians. Most notably, the controversy over the Lecompton constitution in 1858 offered the best opportunity for an alliance between the moderate-to-conservative wing of the Republican Party and anti-administration Southerners.

The Republicans and anti-administration Democrats

For further details see Lecompton constitution, Stephen Douglas, and James Buchanan.

President James Buchanan

President Buchanan decided to end the troubles in Kansas by urging Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state under the Lecompton constitution. Kansas voters, however, soundly rejected this constitution - at least with a measure of widespread fraud on both sides - by more than 10,000 votes. As Buchanan directed his presidential authority to this goal, he further angered the Republicans and alienated members of his own party. Prompting their break with the administration, the Douglasites saw this scheme as an attempt to pervert the principle of popular sovereignty on which the Kansas-Nebraska Act was based. Nationwide, conservatives were incensed that the people of each territory would be denied a measure of states' rights. Even in the South, ex-Whigs and border states Know-Nothings - most notably John Bell and John C. Crittenden (key figures in the event of sectional controversies) - urged the Republicans to oppose the administration's moves and take up the demand that the territories be given the power to accept or reject sovereignty.

As the schism in the Democratic party deepened, moderate Republicans argued that an alliance with anti-administration Democrats, especially Stephen Douglas, would be a key advantage in the 1860 elections. Some Republican observers saw the controversy over the Lecompton constitution as an opportunity to peal off Democratic support in the border states, where Frémont picked up little support. After all, the border states had often gone for Whigs with a Northern base of support in the past without prompting threats of Southern withdrawal from the Union.

Among the proponents for this strategy was the New York Times, which called on the Republicans to downplay opposition to popular sovereignty in favor of a compromise policy calling for "no more slave states" in order to quell sectional tensions. The Times maintained that for the Republicans to be competitive in the 1860 elections, they would need to broaden their base of support to include all voters, who for one reason or another, were upset with the Buchanan administration.

Indeed, pressure was strong for an alliance that would unite the growing opposition to the Democratic administration. But such an alliance was no novel idea; it would essentially entail transforming the Republicans into the national, conservative, Union party of the country. In effect, this would be a resurrection of the Whig party.

The radicals, however, staunchly opposed any attempts to modify the Republican position on slavery. Radicals were appalled by what they considered a surrender of their principles when, for example, each of the ninety-two Republican members of Congress voted for the Crittenden bill. Although this compromise measure prevented Kansas' entry into the union as a slave state, the fact that it called for popular sovereignty, rather than outright opposition to the expansion of slavery, was deeply troubling to the free-labor radicals.

In the end, the Crittenden bill did not forge a grand anti-administration coalition of Republicans, ex-Whig Southerners in the border states, and Northern Democrats. Instead, the Democratic Party merely spit along sectional lines. In a desperate move to reassert control over his party, Buchanan applied the patronage whip ruthlessly. Anti-Lecompton Democrats complained that a new, pro-slavery test had been imposed upon the party. The Douglasites, however, refused to yield to administration pressure. Like the anti-Nebraska Democrats, who were now members of the Republican Party, the Douglasites insisted that they - not the administration - commanded the support of most northern Democrats.

As the Southern planter class saw its stranglehold over the executive, legislative, and judicial apparatus of the central government wane, and as it grew increasingly difficult for Southern Democrats to manipulate power in many of the Northern states through their allies in the Democratic Party, extremist sentiment in the region hardened dramatically.

The internal structure and character of the Republican Party

Willam H. Seward

As the Democrats were grappling with their own troubles, radicals in the Republican party fought against the idea of "non-extension" and fought to keep the issue of slavery in the West, which allowed them to mobilize a great deal of popular support, at the focal point of political discourse. Chase wrote Sumner that if the conservatives succeeded, it might be necessary to recreate the Free Soil party. He was also particularly disturbed by the tendency of many Republicans to eschew moral attacks on slavery for political and economic arguments.

As a caveat, it is important to note that the controversy over slavery in the West was still not creating a fixation on the issue of slavery. Although the old restraints on the sectional tensions were being eroded with the rapid extension of mass politics and mass democracy in the North, the perpetuation of conflict over the issue of slavery in the West still required the efforts of certain Democrats in the South and radical Republican politicians in the North. They had to ensure that the sectional conflict would remain at the center of the political debate.

William Seward, in fact, contemplated this potential as far back as the 1840s, when the Democrats were the nation's majority party, usually controlling Congress, the presidency, and many state offices. At the time, the country's institutional structure and party system allowed slaveholders to prevail in more and more of the nation's territories and to garner a great deal of influence over national policy. With growing discontent with the unwillingness of many Democratic leaders to take a stand against slavery, and growing consciousness of their increasingly pro-Southern stance, Seward became convinced that the only way for the party to counteract the Democrats' strong monopoly of the rhetoric of democracy and equality was for the Whigs to embrace anti-slavery as a party platform. Once again, to increasing numbers of Northerners, the Southern labor system was increasingly seen as contrary to the ideals of American democracy.

Republicans believed in the existence "the Slave Power Conspiracy," which had seized control of the federal government and was attempting to pervert the Constitution for its own purposes. The "Slave Power" idea gave the Republicans the anti-aristocratic appeal with which men like Seward had long wished to be associated politically. By fusing older anti-slavery arguments with the idea that slavery posed a threat to Northern free labor and democratic values, it enabled the Republicans to tap the egalitarian outlook which lay at the heart of Northern society.

In this sense, during the 1860 Presidential campaign, Republican orators even cast "Honest Abe" as an embodiment of these principles, repeatedly referring to him as "the child of labor" and "son of the frontier," who had proved how "honest industry and toil" were rewarded in the North. To remind everyone that although Lincoln had been a Whig, the "Wide Awakes" (members of the Republican clubs), used replicas of rails that he had split to remind voters of his humble origins.

In almost every northern state, the radicals attempted to have a Republican party or an anti-Nebraska fusion movement organized in 1854. The groundswell of popular clamor fed by the issue of free soil, however, was powerful enough to thwart these aims (and ensure the nomination of a conservative Republican candidate less likely to inspire the secession of Southern states in 1860). In areas where the radicals controlled the new organization, the comprehensive radical program became the party policy. Just as they helped organize the Republican Party in the summer of 1854, the radicals played an important role in the national organization of the party in 1856. Republican conventions in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois adopted radical platforms. Republican platforms in such radical states as Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and Vermont usually called for the divorce of the government from slavery, the repeal of the fugitive slave law, and no more slave states, as did platforms in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Massachusetts when radical influence was high.

Conservatives at the Republicans' 1860 nominating convention in Chicago were able to block the nomination of the radical William Seward. More significantly, conservatives were unable to bring about the resurrection of "Whiggery." The convention's resolutions regarding slavery were roughly the same as they had been in 1856. Non-extension was defeated. In the following months, Republican conservatives like Tom Ewing and Edward Baker voiced public objections which declared that the normal condition of territories was freedom. All in all, the radicals had done an effective job of shaping the official policy of the Republican Party.

Southern slaveholding interests now faced the prospects of a Republican president and the entry of new free states that would altar the nation's balance of power between the sections. To many Southerners, the resounding defeat of the Lecompton constitution would foreshadow the entry of more free states into the Union. Dating back to the Missouri Compromise, the region desperately sought to maintain an equal balance of slave states and free states so as to be competitive in the Senate. Continuing with this tradition was growing more and more unlikely.

This whole section on the Civil War is from the Wikipedia Free Open source encyclopedia.