Chapter 3: Democrats vs. Fusion Free Soilers

But it is the aftermath of the Mexican War that leads to the Third Political System, with the founding of two new parties.

The most consequential being the Free Soil Party, the brainchild of political strategist Salmon Portland Chase. He is an abolitionist intent for years on defeating the Democrat’s Slavocracy. In 1840 he helps found the Liberty Party, but soon realizes that most Northerners want to cleanse their states of Negroes, not free and assimilate them. Thus his abolitionists will never attract enough voters on their own to win the White House.

Chase then asks himself whether enough scale could result by “fusing” those who wish to ban slavery in the west with those Whites who oppose all Black residency there. This is an improbable coalition, but he arrives at a solution in what he labels the Free Soil Party, with its slogan of “Free Men, Free Labor and Free Territory.” The call for Free Men appeals to the smaller anti-slavery bloc. Free Labor and Free Territory add the larger wing of white settlers who do not want to compete for land with wealthy plantation owners or to see the “dignity of their labor” diminished by the presence of those enslaved.

While the Free Soil Party, led by Van Buren, garners only 10% of the popular vote in 1848, Chase’s “fusion strategy” will form the basis for the Republican Party in 1854.

Another party gains momentum in 1848, this one focused on purging the body politic of Irish and German Catholic immigrants who flock into the country after the 1845 “potato famine” and the failed anti-monarchy uprisings of 1848 in Europe.

The American Party — also called the Know-Nothings for the refusal of members to publicly disclose its inner workings — is founded by Pennsylvania congressman, Lewis Levin, who preaches that Catholics cannot be trusted because they owe allegiance to the Pope in Rome rather than to the Union. The party slogan is “America for native born Americans,” and it catches fire in several states, most notably Massachusetts, before being drowned out by subsequent slavery crises.

 Third Political System: 1849 – 1857

The contrasts here already revolve around slavery in the west.

Third Political System Comparisons

With Northern support for a slavery ban in the west gaining momentum, the Democrats are forced in 1848 to seek new ways to retain their Southern support. They settle on a platform calling for “popular sovereignty” whereby elections would be held among territorial settlers to select a Free State or Slave State declaration. Their 1848 nominee, Michigan Senator Lewis Cass runs on this “let the voters decide” appeal, but his campaign falls short.

Instead, the 1848 race goes to the hero of the Mexican War, General Zachary Taylor, who rides to victory over his Democrat and Free Soil opponents. Taylor’s Whig credentials are flimsy at best, but his military career finds favor especially in New England and the Border states, while his ownership of some 300 slaves reassures the South. That is until he announces, off the cuff, that we would sign the Wilmot Proviso if Congress passed it!

However, like the first Whig president, Harrison, Taylor dies in office in 1850, and is succeeded by the anodyne Millard Fillmore, who is soon confronted by one challenge after another.

The 1849 gold rush mandates the early admission to the Union of California, with half its land above, and the other half below, the 36’30” demarcation line on slavery in the Louisiana Territory. When the settlers there demand Free State status, the South howls that the move will upset the 15-15 seating parity in the Senate, in favor of the North.

This prompts Henry Clay and Stephen Douglas to craft the 1850 Compromise Bill designed to mollify the South. The legislation not only fails to do that, but it also includes an updated version of the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act which mandates that Northerners must actively support bounty hunters in capturing run-aways in their communities.

The response across the North is growing antagonism toward “the Slave Power” in Congress, along with broader empathy toward the plight of the run-aways. Both outcomes are further fueled by publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with over one million copies sold, and by the ongoing spread of Anti-Slavery Society chapters. When mobs in Boston break into jails to free captured slaves, Fillmore and his Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, are forced to unpopular measures to restore law and order.

Between the Wilmot Proviso and the admission of California as a Free State, a band of “Fire-eater” Southerners led by John C. Calhoun warn that a ban on slavery in the west would pose an existential threat to the region’s economic future. It would not only curtail the production of “king cotton,” but also the enormous profits from auction sales of its inventory of “bred slaves” to new start-up plantations. (By 1860 the dollar value of those enslaved reaches just over $3 Billion, nearing the total U.S. GDP of $4.4 Billion comprising all manufacturing facilities, railroads and other productive capacity!)

In order to stem the tide of Southern defections in 1852, the Democrat’s first political move lies in nominating New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce to head the ticket and play the role of the “Doughface” president – a Northern man by birth but pro-Southern on policies, especially around the protection of slavery. This works, as Pierce handily defeats the last Whig candidate, the aging General Scott, and sets out to ensure party unity above all else.

This, however, is easier said than done, as the Fire-Eater Democrats immediately increase their demands for a declarative Congressional Amendment guaranteeing that slave-holders will be allowed to take “their property” throughout the west. When the votes for this fail to materialize, the Democrats are left with “popular sovereignty” elections as their only fallback position.

That stands until Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas introduces his 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Bill to open two new states west of the Mississippi in the Louisiana Purchase land.

Douglas oversees a Mississippi slave plantation himself and is a virulent racist with eyes on winning the next Democrat nomination for President. To succeed, he must rely on Southern support, and he crafts his 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act to improve his chances. Since both Territories fall north of the 30’36” boundary line in the 1820 Missouri Compromise, they would automatically be declared Free States by definition. To get around this, Douglas’ Bill simply drops the 30’36” precedent and replaces it with his “popsov” alternative. Thus, either or both could become Slave States if that’s what settlers decide.

Northerners fail to recognize this sleight of hand until after the 1854 bill is passed. But when they do, a firestorm of opposition results. Not only has Douglas reneged on the 1820 Compromise, but he is also accused of trying to “nationalize slavery,” even in states where it has been banned all along.

The call for a new Republican Party springs up in local grass roots meetings especially in Wisconsin and New York, while former Congressman Abraham Lincoln is convinced to re-enter national politics.

Once the Kansas Territory opens, the race is on between pro- and anti-slavery forces to emerge victorious in the first experiment in popular sovereignty elections. But this quickly turns into a fiasco, as cross border pro-slavery men from Missouri pour into Kansas, carry out a series of fraudulent balloting, install a “bogus legislature” in power, and conduct raids to drive out the anti-slavery settlers.

In response, the Free State supporters, who are actually in the majority of “real residents,” begin to fight back. The result is violence and open warfare between the two sides, highlighted by the sack of Lawrence, John Brown’s Potawatomie Massacre and a host of other eye-for-an-eye confrontations.

This violence out west reaches the floor of the Senate in 1856, as Preston Brooks of South Carolina nearly beats Charles Sumner to death with his cane in response to the Massachusetts man’s scathing speech on The Crime Against Kansas. The South hails the attack as justified and members on both sides arm themselves in the halls with pistols and knives for self-defense.

Pierce’s inability to resolve the North-South proxy war over slavery in Kansas costs him the chance to be re-nominated in 1856. Instead the Democrat Party prize goes at long last to another “Doughface,” Pennsylvanian James Buchanan. He is a man apparently well-groomed for the job by prior stints in the House and Senate, as foreign minister to Russia and Britain and as Secretary of State under Polk. But once in office he will be an abject failure.

Buchanan faces two opponents in the 1856 race, ex-President Fillmore, running on the Know Nothing ticket, and “Pathfinder” John Fremont, explorer of western lands, and the first candidate of the new Republican Party.

The Republicans are direct descendants of the 1848 Free Soilers, only greatly expanded in numbers after the 1852 collapse of the Whigs and the arrival of some Northern Democrats fed up with demands from their Fire-Eater colleagues in the South. One such drop-out who becomes a founder of the new party is Francis Preston Blair, Sr., a former member of Jackson’s “Kitchen Cabinet,” who concludes that Democrat efforts to expand slavery will eventually destroy the union.

The Republicans recognize a simple truth: that the vast majority of Northerners are against the South’s demand to spread slavery.

What most share are the tenets of anti-black racism: a conviction that Negroes are inherently inferior to white men, and a fear they are all prone to violent behavior, like Nat Turner. Many also feel animus toward the entire South, dominated by an un-American aristocratic culture that: sends bounty hunters into their towns to retrieve run-aways; rigs elections and causes bloodshed in Kansas; reneges on the 36’30” Missouri Compromise; and threatens to break up the Union, if they do not get their way.

Popular sovereignty strikes them as one more sop offered up by the Democrats to placate the Slave Power, and a prescription that will lead to more territorial turmoil in the future.

In turn, the Republican platform centers on banning the spread of slavery to the west.

Despite this appeal, strategists like Thurlow Weed are convinced that it won’t be enough to win in 1860. That’s because the proposed ban is certain to hand the South’s entire Electoral Votes to Buchanan, who is also likely to hang onto his native Pennsylvania and other states like Indiana and Illinois, where pro-Southern sentiments remain strong. Additionally, there is the third party presence of Millard Fillmore on the Know-Nothing ticket which will split opposition to the Democrats.

When Weed convinces frontrunner Henry Seward to decline the nomination, it goes to John Fremont, well-known as the “Pathfinder of the West,” but generally regarded as a political lightweight. He loses out to Buchanan, who takes only 45% of the popular count, but 174 Electoral votes, including all 140 from the solid South.

From the moment Buchanan steps into office, he is overmatched by both external events and his own blunders. The Dred Scott decision elates the South until it is largely brushed aside in the North based on dissents by two key Justices. Another bank crash damages the economy. His boast to end Mormon polygamy and “clean up Utah” falls flat.

Worst of all, he not only fails to end the conflict over slavery in Kansas, but systematically makes it worse. Thus his dedication to serving the interests of his Southern base leads him to repeated attempts to bully Congress into approving the pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution, even after two fairly held popular sovereignty votes in Kansas reject it. His support among Northern Democrats weakens throughout his term.

In the summer of 1858 the conflicts over slavery are also hashed out in a series of seven headline grabbing debates between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, each vying for the former’s Senate seat from Illinois. When Douglas accuses his opponent of favoring Blacks over Whites, Lincoln admits some racial prejudices of his own. But Lincoln forces Douglas into the trap of declaring that a popsov vote on slavery takes precedent over the Dred Scott mandate, a stance costs Douglas support from Southerners. Still it’s not enough to deny him the Senate re-election, with the Democrat controlled Illinois legislature voting him in.

In 1859 the depth of anti-black racism across the North is again evident in the Constitution that Oregon submits for statehood. It builds on the “Black Codes” passed earlier from Ohio through the Midwest to California calling for a ban on all Negroes – free or enslaved — from residing within the state boundaries. It is approved by 89% of the residents, and Congress accepts the application early in 1859.

The final straw for Buchanan comes later that year when John Brown, aided by a “Secret Six” cell of Northern abolitionists, including the Liberty Party’s Gerrit Smith, attacks and momentarily captures the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry with the intent of setting off a slave uprising across Virginia. This act, accompanied by Northern claims that Brown is a martyr to the anti-slavery cause, provides the fodder needed by the Southern Fire-Eater politicians to gain widespread support for secession.