The Rise of the Republican Party and the Election of 1860

lesson 4b the republican party and disunion the major questions we're going to talk

about in this lecture we're going to talk about what led to the rise of the republican party

um we're going to talk about how the political events during the sectional crisis reinforce this idea of a slave

power conspiracy and then finally we're going to talk about what allowed lincoln and the

republicans to win the election of 1860. so first as a brit a bit of brief introduction

in our last lecture we talked about how territorial expansion introduced a new set of factors

into the american political discourse at that time that would prove to be divisive

and controversial in the years to come there is a massive acquisition of new territory not only in texas but as well

as in the southwest from mexico um and the question at the time was would this territory be become free or

slave uh states um and what would the outcome of that debate mean for the future of america as

a whole another issue was would native peoples and mexican citizens who lived on that

land be allowed to maintain their cultural uniqueness or would they be forced to

assimilate there's a bunch of different pressing issues

another big issue was of course the sectional crisis and the book does a pretty good job of explaining that all

of the different events that kind of led up to that or were part of that the kansas and nebraska act compromise

of 1850 bleeding kansas uh etc so um as well as what led to the death of the wig party so i'm not going to go into

too much detail on those things except for how some of those individual events connect to our main topic of today which

is the rise of the republican party so that brings us to the rise of the republican party the republican party

formed in 1854 in rapone wisconsin and basically the republicans formed uh

as a way to kind of unite a bunch of disparate groups uh who were exposed to the extension of slavery

right so it's important to understand before we talk begin that this party is exclusively organized around this idea

of anti-slavery right so some of the groups who uh coalesced

to form this uh new party um the uh wigs uh or the uh northern whigs people like lincoln who were exposed to

the extension of slavery uh into the territories um who uh actually left the wig party after the wig party collapsed

as a result of the kansas and nebraska act um so the northern whigs were part of

this group who uh formed to join the republicans another group were abolitionists

people who wanted immediate emancipation right as well as granting african-americans

legal and economic equality people like frederick douglass there on the left next to him

william lloyd garrison sarah grimke there in the middle john brown as well as harriet beecher

stowe another group who kind of joined this fray were other

anti-slavery advocates right people who we've kind of mentioned several different times

already in this class uh one of which uh the colonizationists right people who didn't

want who wanted to end slavery because they thought it was bad for white slave owners

and these uh colonizationists also felt that african-americans once they were freed from slavery should not be allowed

to live in the country so their idea was to colonize them send them back to africa to live in a country

liberia which was established by the american colonization society earlier uh in the

19th century so again these colonizationists don't necessarily have any special love for

african americans but they are opposed to slavery kind of like the free soilers who we talked about in the last lecture

right free soilers were against slavery but because they felt that uh if slavery was expanded into the territories it

would mean fewer opportunities for white men right fewer

farming or unfair competition for farmers and unfair competition for white wage

laborers right their logo slogan again free soil for free labor for free men

okay so that was how the republican party formed but what was their political platform right what kind of

things did they believe in what kind of things did they stand for well the first element of their platform

was the slave power conspiracy right and we talked about this in the last lecture and we're going to get a little bit more

into this so i'm not going to belabor that point right here a second thing that they believed in in

addition to this idea that southerners were trying to rig the federal government

in their favor in favor of slavery um expanding it all over the country trying to undermine republicanism

the second part of their platform is this idea of the containment of slavery there's this underlying belief among

anti-slavery advocates at this time that slavery needed to expand in order to be able to survive so if you stop its

expansion slavery could would eventually die out so you can kind of see this organizing

principle is around this idea of corrupted national political power as a result of the slave

power conspiracy as well as the containment of slavery right

so on most other issues uh the party was internally divided right they were divided about the idea

of black equality people like the abolitionists of course believed in it uh colonizationists obviously did not

believe in it they were divided about african-american suffrage as well as

granting them citizenship there was also these internal debates about whether slavery degraded the white people who

participated in it as slave owners or as overseers versus whether slavery degraded the african americans who were

being enslaved right so this is one of the popular debates uh at that time so um other than

the slave power conspiracy and the containment of slavery um they really can't uh all get on board

uh with the same kind of with other political uh

ideas so that brings us to our next point when we talk about southern domination over

the federal government right and now we're going to get into some of the things that were going on during the

sectional crisis that really boosted the republican party to the point where it could actually be a

viable political party and win uh a national election the first thing you have is the

three-fifths compromise right we mentioned before this artificial connected to

the slave power conspiracy it artificially inflates the population of southern states

so when we talk about the brass tax how does the three-fist compromise translate into more political power for the south

well for one look at the presidency right the three-fifths compromise gave 30 more electoral college votes to

southern states at that time than northern states based on their population because remember we're

talking about people who are considered human beings and citizens right men women children right but the slave

population in the south was not considered to be human right for the most part they were considered looked

upon as chattel right no different in the eyes of southern slave owners than uh you know a cow or a horse or any

other kind of livestock that they would have on their plantations

so the three-fist compromise gives the south 30 more electoral college votes and if you look at this image that i

created here all right um one thing to consider is that every president who was re-elected before lincoln was re-elected

in 1864 was a slave holder all right so um we're talking about uh washington

uh jefferson madison monroe jackson um as well as let's see who else we got

here uh that's it right those are the only ones who were re-elected right but they

were all uh slave owners uh not only that consider that consider this through 1860 10 out of the 15

presidents of the united states were slave owners right this group right up here 80 or 66 percent then you have two

of the other 15 franklin pierce and james buchanan who we mentioned were dove faces meaning that they voted along

with the south when it came to issues of slavery in other words 12 out of the first 15

presidents of the united states lincoln of course was the 16th president so we're not counting him in this 12 out of

the first 15 presidents were pro-slavery right 80 of the presidents so basically in this

case if you think about slavery it was kind of a litmus test for political candidates right that if there was a

president a politician who was not very popular uh or well who didn't believe in slavery or was not a slave owner

people tended to look upon them with a manner of suspicion in the south and because

the south had such a large amount of power with these 30 extra electoral college

votes they had a considerable say in which candidates were nominated for president as well as which pres

candidates won presidential elections so that's one way the three-fifths compromise equated to more political

power from the south another way of course is in the house of representatives

so in the house of representatives the three-fifths compromise gave the south 20 more

congressional representatives in the house than their population

should have given them right not only that but two-thirds of the speakers of the house up through

1860 had been slave holders you see some of those folks here henry clay on the left james k polk there in the middle

uh as well as charles dickinson there on the right so

you have the house of representatives as rigged as a result of the three-fifths compromise

another thing uh was the balance in the senate as we mentioned before since 1820 you had an emphasis on maintaining this

balance between free states and slave states leading to the south having 50 percent

of the senate seats for the united states despite having only 30 percent of the eligible voting

population right so half of the centers senators but only 30 percent of the voting population

another thing that people looked upon at this time was the supreme court right more evidence of a slave power

conspiracy four of the first five supreme court chief justices were slave owners right

three of them uh were from the south one of them um was from the north the one from the

north was the first chief justice of the supreme court john jay

and not only that but you also see there on the right roger tawny right who was the author of

the famous dred scott decision which we'll talk about here in a moment who died in office in 1864

right so remember with the supreme court who are the people who are nominating justices for the supreme court those are

u.s presidents 80 of which were pro-slavery so as a result of that and the fact that they have to be uh

confirmed with uh over 50 of the vote in the senate which at this time is a 50-50 split with slave states

you can kind of see how that would trend toward slave owners people who are pro-slavery

being put in the position of being supreme court chief justice so all of these kind of factors come

together to reinforce this belief throughout the north of a slave power conspiracy right and when

republican candidates get out there on the political stump and they're campaigning

when they talk about the slave power conspiracy and point these things out it's going to increase the national

popularity of the republican party especially when northerners look around and they see the kind of laws that were

being passed the kind of supreme court decisions that were being handed down by this entrenched political power

so with that in mind let's talk about a few examples of these laws and court decisions

so we moved down to point two here federal laws to protect slavery the first of these was the gag rule which

was in effect from 1836 through 1844 so the gag rule was a house of

representatives resolution that prevented the house from holding any hearings or debating any

bills on legislation uh that would have to do with slavery right especially when it came to either restrictions or

expansion anything having to do with slavery uh what fell under the auspices of this gag rule so

and the way that bills are passed right is you have different committees right and when legislation is proposed inside

of a committee that committee the committee members from both parties debate it they reach some sort of an

agreement about what should come out of that committee and then the whole house of representatives votes on it

so this gag rule essentially prevented these committees from being able to pass those kind of laws and if the committees

can't debate them then of course uh the senate will never receive any kind of legislation

dealing with slavery another thing to consider is that there are also a lot of calls at this time for

a federal slave code and that wound up turning into the fugitive slave act of 1850 right so again if you're a

northerner who doesn't necessarily who's not real hot on the idea of slavery you see that uh in the national political uh

in the federal government you're not even allowed to talk about slavery right or anything having to do with it and

then once that gag rule is lifted what do you have you have the passage of the fugitive slave act of 1850.

in the fugitive slave act it's important to understand obligated everybody to pitch in and help recapture escaped

slaves whether they lived in the south or whether they lived in the north and if people didn't and were convicted of

obstructing or not helping out they faced a one thousand dollar fine essentially uh the equivalent of thirty

one thousand dollars in today's money not only that but the fugitive slave act included a bunch of incentives for

judges judges were given ten dollars if they ruled in favor of a slave owner right whether a a

an accused escapee was brought before them if they awarded that person to go back to

the slave owner who claimed them they would get ten dollars if they ruled in favor of the fugitive they would only be

given five dollars so again this kind of bounty system here uh incentivizes judges uh to send people who are accused

of being escaped slaves back into slavery whether those accusations were true or not

so essentially this is seen as contrary to freedom of expression right abolitionists other people in the north

who are against slavery um are essentially now required by law to turn in escaped slaves or face the

possibility of being charged and convicted of a federal crime so that's the laws of that period now

we'll move on to the court decisions right particularly in the supreme court first one of these i want to talk about

is prig versus pennsylvania from 1842. so a woman named margaret margaret

morgan who was a former slave in maryland had lived free for years

in pennsylvania without being formally emancipated by her former owner the owner let her move right and never sent

anybody to capture her and basically did this with her owner's permission right so she moved from maryland to

pennsylvania in 1832. in 1837 her former owner died he passed away

now under the fugitive slave act of 1793 um uh her owners uh heirs his children um hired a slave

catcher uh named edward prigg to find margaret morgan and bring her back to maryland to have her re-enslaved

so when prig found morgan in pennsylvania by this time

he found her that she had several children including one who was born free in the state of

pennsylvania morgan was taken along with her children back into maryland and her children were sold away into slavery

including the child who had been born free in pennsylvania now pennsylvania state law prohibited uh

african americans from being taken out of the state and sold into slavery so uh prig was arrested um he was charged in

pennsylvania court and convicted but he appealed his conviction to the supreme court of the united states

right and the supreme court at that time was dominated by uh chief justice roger v tawney a the aforementioned tawny

who was a slave owner from the state of maryland and the tawny court ruled in favor of edward prig

and in his majority opinion tony cited the fugitive slave clause in the constitution as well as the 1793

fugitive slave act as justification to legalize what prig had did and basically what tani was saying was that

the fugitive slave clause and the constitution and the fugitive slave act of 1793 superseded any state law because

of the primacy of federal law when it came to

disputes with the states and so in this case it was basically ruling that this

pennsylvania law this personal liberty law was unconstitutional right so

margaret morgan and her children are sold into slavery a second notorious decision from this

time was uh the famous case of dred scott v sanford in 1857.

the book talks at length about this so i'm not going to really get into it but one thing i want to point out about

tony's majority opinion in this case is that it ruled that the congress of the united states had no right to regulate

slavery because doing so violated the fifth amendment uh protection against the seizure of someone's property

without compensation right so basically what this said was that the northwest ordinance

which as you know banned slavery north of the ohio river as well as the missouri compromise were essentially

unconstitutional because if a slave owner decided that they wanted to move into a state that

did not have slavery or had prohibited slavery then that would uh represent an unfair

violation of their fifth amendment rights to private property not only that but those personal liberty

laws that i mentioned before that many individual states in the north had passed

were also ruled unconstitutional uh with tani's opinion in dred scott v sanford and a lot of these personal liberty laws

involve things like uh guaranteeing a jury trial for fugitive slaves um bringing uh perjury charges against any

people who falsely uh testified against these fugitive slaves um

banning or prohibiting state officials for participating in recapturing slaves etc so all these things have been

ruled unconstitutional and this is going to generate a lot of criticism because taken together tani's majority opinions

in both of these cases appear to make the case that for example something like the abolition movement was illegal

right because the constitution of the united states only gave the federal government the power to protect the

property of enslavers right embodied for example by the fugitive slave act of 1850

um that was the only thing that it could do right it could only restrict slavery it

could not uh or it could only i'm sorry protect slavery it could not restrict slavery

right so any state laws that deprive slave owners of their property were essentially null and void because they

violated the supremacy clause of the constitution so again if the federal government if

the constitution only gives congress the right to protect the property of slave owners

right any law that violates that would be a violation of the supremacy

clause of the constitution and as i mentioned before anyone who violated the fugitive slave act like for example an

abolitionist who was trying to protect the runaway slave was guilty of a federal crime right and people look at

that and they see that as proof right of a slave power conspiracy right all these court cases the political

system being rigged in favor of slave owners so in conclusion we're going to talk

about uh the election of 1860 right how all this kind of culminated in the election of 1860

and this is a very consequential election right because of the way it all played out

so you have the democrat party divided divided into two they held two separate nominating conventions you see down

there on the bottom uh the northern democrat democrats nominated stephen douglas to do face

southern democrats uh selected john breckenridge right who is actually up there in the top right-hand corner

you have the constitutional union party um nominated john belf a guy from tennessee

the constitutional union party comprised former pro-slavery whigs for example southern whigs who wanted to

avoid secession over the issue of slavery and these former southern whigs after

the whig party collapsed form an alliance with uh anti-secession southern democrats um mainly people who lived in

the up country who we've talked about before as well as the know-nothings right the know-nothings we talked about

uh were uh talked about in the book were an anti-immigrant party

in the constitutional union party their platform was essentially to enforce the law of the constitution and

maintain the union they didn't take a position on slavery or the expansion of slavery into the territories again their

whole purpose for existence was maintaining the union and preventing secession

um and so basically this middle ground stance that they adopted uh moderated anybody who really had a chance to or uh

had the desire to vote for them right because they're uh alienating modern antis or moderate anti-slavery voters in

the north um who were worried that this constitutional union party wouldn't protect uh the

northern states rights to ban slavery and they also their moderate position alienated pro-slavery people from the

south who felt expansion of slavery into the west was essential for its uh for the country's survival and for the

survival of slavery so the constitutional union party uh really doesn't gain a lot of popularity

but they do manage to take some votes which we'll get to here in a second

and then finally you have the republican party right they nominate uh abraham lincoln and they adopt uh this platform

based around stopping expansion of slavery into the territories right and they do not embrace outright prohibition

because not all of those anti-slavery groups inside of their party agreed that slavery should be pro

outright eliminated and basically what adopting this one part of this platform allowed the

republicans to frame themselves as a moderate choice among all of these different groups right and not only that

but their emphasis on the slave power conspiracy combined with all of the political events that were going on

during that area that we just talked about really start to hit home with the northern population right so how does

this election play out well the election results are going to split along sectional lines

breckenridge the southern democrat wins all of those states in the deep south as well as the state of maryland

he gained 18 percent of the vote 72 electoral college votes stephen douglas won only the state of

missouri he didn't even win his home state of illinois he only got 29 percent of the vote in 12

electoral college votes and then uh bell uh the constitutional union won the upper

south states of tennessee kentucky uh virginia as well as delaware lincoln for his part won all of the

northern states as well as oregon and california giving him 39.8 of the popular vote in 180

electoral college votes right so in other words he winds up winning the election without a single

electoral vote from the south and in fact he didn't even appear on the ballot in 13 of the southern uh of the slave

holding states um so after this uh of course things start to uh break down right you also

have an imbalance now uh in the senate you have 18 free states and eight 15 slave states

because this balance between slave states and phrase uh between free states and slave states

held until 1850 when you had the admission of california um in 1850 minnesota in 1858 as well as oregon in

1859 and what this does is uh pro-slavery advocates lose their senate majority

right now they don't even have even the doe faces and this unfair balance in the senate in favor of

the slave power cannot overcome uh the power of all of these

new senators elected from these three new states six senators who were decidedly against

the institution of slavery so that's all we have for this lecture thanks for listening