Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-m9kch Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-25T04:36:16.328Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ideology of the Ante-bellum Northern Democrats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Bruce Collins
Bruce Collins
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Why did large numbers of Northerners vote for the Democrats on the eve of the Civil War? This is a question which the most recent studies of Northern ante-bellum politics leave unanswered. Professor Formisano's pains-taking study of Michigan's party politics amply shows the eclectic character of the Republicans' appeal. Republicans combined a stern mixture of moral purpose and narrow puritanism with a powerful critique of the South. Republicanism emerges from Professor Foner's influential study as a species of stalwart, visionary parochialism quite irresistible to the northern electorate. It represented the self-satisfied affirmation that the proper maintenance of existing Protestant and entrepreneurial values in the socially harmonious North was essential to America's future growth. It also rested upon a belief in the need to resist Southern attempts to push slavery into the western territories. This belief stemmed from a defensive, slightly paranoid interpretation of the operation of federal politics. Congress and the federal administration in Democratic hands were, according to the Republicans, the merest tools of “ the Dominant Class in the Republic, ” the Southern slaveowners. Thus high faith in free society and deep fear of Southern expansion co-existed uneasily together. Republicans, in Eric Foner's view, articulated an ideology which merged together an over-arching notion of the good society (a basically non-class society, in which the ladder of status was short and its ascent easy, and in which the fundamental interests of labourers, farmers and small entrepreneurs were identical) with an immediate call to political action.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , April 1977 , pp. 103 - 121
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (London, 1970), pp. 301–17Google Scholar; Formisano, Ronald P., The Birth of Mass Political Parties, Michigan, 1827–1861 (Princeton, 1971), pp. 323–31Google Scholar. See also Brock, William R., Conflict and Transformation: The United States, 1844–1877 (Harmondsworth, Middx., 1973), pp. 58, 134–35, 396Google Scholar.

2 The phrase was used by Senator Seward as the title of an election speech delivered in 1856; Baker, George E., ed., The Works of William H. Seward (Boston, 1884), 4, 253–75Google Scholar.

3 This general criticism of those who see voting behaviour as largely shaped by ethno-religious affiliations is too complex a question to take up here. I hope to go further into this problem in a subsequent paper. But see Foner, Eric, “ The Causes of the American Civil War: Recent Interpretations and New Directions, ” Civil War History, 20 (1974), 199–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Silbey, Joel H., ed., The Transformation of American Politics, 1840–1860 (Englewood Cliffs, 1967), p. 33Google Scholar; Sutherland, Keith, “ The Structure of Congress as a Factor in the Legislative Crisis of 1860, ” Mid-America, 51 (1969), 247Google Scholar; Montgomery, David, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862–1872 (New York, 1967), p. 48Google Scholar.

5 Plamenatz, John, Ideology (London, 1971), esp. pp. 93–96, 99–100Google Scholar.

6 Even Southern writers lauded the virtues of yeoman farming, while also regretting the decline of the “ cavalier ” element in Southern society. Taylor, William R., Cavalier and Yankee: The Old South and American National Character (New York, 1969), pp. 315–24Google Scholar.

7 “ The ‘ House Divided ’ Speech ” in Johannsen, Robert W., ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (New York, 1965), pp. 14–18Google Scholar.

8 Silbey, Joel H., The Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior 1841–1852 (Pittsburgh, 1967), pp. 74, 134Google Scholar. Jaffa, Harry V., Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Seattle: 1973), pp. 68–69Google Scholar. Dalzell, Robert F. Jr, Daniel Webster and the Trial of American Nationalism, 1843–1852 (Boston, 1973), p. 35Google Scholar; Parish, Peter J., “ Daniel Webster, New England, and the West, ” Journal of American History, 54 (1967–1968), 546CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Horton, R. G., The Life and Public Services of James Buchanan (New York, 1856), pp. 351–52Google Scholar.

10 Jaffa, , Crisis of the House Divided, pp. 75, 58Google Scholar; Johannsen, Robert W., ed., The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (Urbana, Ill., 1961), pp. 472–73Google Scholar.

11 Potter, David M. (completed and ed. by Fehrenbacher, Don E.), The Impending Crisis, 1846–1861 (New York, 1976), Ch. 7Google Scholar.

12 Johannsen, , ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 130Google Scholar.

13 Jones, Maldwyn A., American Immigration (Chicago, 1960), pp. 147–48, 158Google Scholar. For general points in this paragraph, see Silbey, , The Transformation of American Politics, pp. 1–34Google Scholar; Lannie, Vincent P., “ Alienation in America: The Immigrant Catholic and Public Education in Pre-Civil War America,” Review of Politics, 32 (1970), 503–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Foner, (Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, p. 165)Google Scholar suggests that perhaps one-quarter of the Republican vote in 1856 came from Democrats. Yet these Democrats' defection may have resulted as much from nativist sympathies as from hostility to slavery. Potter, The Impending Crisis, Ch. 10. Shortridge, Ray M., “ The Voter Realignment in the Midwest During the 1850s,” American Politics Quarterly, 4 (1976), 205–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Horton, , James Buchanan, p. 370Google Scholar. In his study of the ideology of fifteen working men in the late 1950s, Robert Lane found that “ freedom ” meant for these men, eleven of whom were Catholics, firstly the freedom to choose their religion. Lane, Robert E., Political Ideology: Why the American Common Man Believes What He Does (New York, 1962), pp. 6, 22–23Google Scholar. See also: Rowland, Dunbar, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers and Speeches (Jackson, Miss.: 1923), 2, 474Google Scholar.

16 Fehrenbacher, Don E., Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s (Stanford, 1962), pp. 128–42Google Scholar. Bestor, Arthur, “ State Sovereignty and Slavery: A Reinterpretation of Proslavery Constitutional Doctrine, 1846–1860,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 54 (1961), 117–80Google Scholar.

17 Johannsen, , ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 127, 288Google Scholar; Fowler, H., Report of the Debates and Proceedings of the Convention for the Revision of the Constitution of the State of Indiana, 1850 (Indianapolis, 1850), 2, 1420–21Google Scholar.

18 “ Report of the Secretary of the Treasury Department for the year ending 30 June 1856,” US Congress, House Executive Documents, No. 2 (34 Congress, 3 session, Washington, DC, 1856), p. 26Google Scholar; Fowler, , Report of the Debates and Proceedings, 2, 1014Google Scholar; Taylor, , Cavalier and Yankee, pp. 146–62Google Scholar; Genovese, Eugene D., The World The Slaveholders Made (London, 1970), pp. 123, 165–74, 184–90Google Scholar; Memphis Appeal, 27 september, 8, 11, 12 November 1857; Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, pp. 27–29Google Scholar. The encouragement given to western migration and settlement by the Republicans was based as much on a commitment to economic laissez-faire as on simple admiration for agrarian values. Western agriculture provided opportunities for those badly off in the cities. Thus during the financial panic of 1857 the Republican press in New York city urged the indigent to seek employment in the west. New York Times, 6, 21 october, 11 12, 18 November, 5 December 1857. And Republican newspapers in the West took up the same theme: e.g. (Terre Haute, Ind.) Daily Wabash Express, 10, 12 November 1857.

19 Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, p. 304Google Scholar. Chicago Tribune, 23 June 1858.

20 Carey, H. C., The Past, the Present and the Future (Philadelphia, 1848), pp. 298–99, 302–5, 313, 458–60, 463–64Google Scholar; Letters to the President, on the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the Union, and its Effects (Philadelphia, 1858), pp. 46, 73, 79, 87, 107, 109–10, 168Google Scholar; Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, pp. 36–38Google Scholar.

21 Stewart, Robert, The Politics of Protection. Lord Derby and the Protectionist Party 1841–1852 (Cambridge, 1971), pp. 216–20Google Scholar.

22 Shade, William G., Banks or No Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832–1865 (Detroit, 1972), pp. 144, 172–74Google Scholar; Hammond, Bray, Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War (Princeton, 1967), pp. 623–27Google Scholar.

23 On Democratic attitudes to banking problems described in this and the following paragraphs, see: Shade, , Banks or No Banks, pp. 112–13, 119, 134–36, 145–46, 149–55, 167, 169–71, 173Google Scholar; Ershkowitz, Herbert and Shade, William G., “ Consensus or Conflict? Political Behavior in the State Legislatures During the Jacksonian Era,” Journal of American History, 58 (1971), 591–621CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharp, James Roger, The Jacksonians versus the Banks (New York, 1970), pp. 133–47, 152–59, 285–305, 321–29Google Scholar; Erickson, Erling A., Banking in Frontier Iowa 1836–1865 (Ames, Iowa, 1971), p. 84Google Scholar. Figures on the currency in 1860 are in Department of Commerce, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1922 (Washington, DC, 1923), pp. 510, 512, 187Google Scholar. For the relative importance of different denominations of bank-notes, see Tables dated 31 Oct. 1858, in Nathaniel P. Banks papers, Library of Congress. The validity of generalizing from the proportion of small-notes to the total currency in Massachusetts is supported by the example of Pennsylvania: Legislative Documents: Miscellaneous Documents, Read in The Legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, During the Session which Commenced at Harrisburg, on the Fifth Day of January, 1858 (Harrisburg, 1858), pp. 208, 212Google Scholar. See also, Colwell, Stephen A., The Ways and Means of Payment (Philadelphia, 1859), pp. 479, 504–7Google Scholar.

24 Berelson, Bernard R., Lazarsfeld, Paul F., McPhee, William N., Voting (Chicago, 1954), pp. 318–23Google Scholar. Sorauf, Frank J., Party Politics in America (Boston, 1968), pp. 134–40Google Scholar. Also, see Blondel, Jean, Voters, Parties, and Leaders. The Social Fabric of British Politics (Harmondsworth, Middx., 1975), pp. 80–82Google Scholar.

25 Fowler, , Report of the Debates and Proceedings, 2, 1419, 1460Google Scholar.

26 Address of the Democratic State Central Committee to the People of Ohio (Columbus, 1857), pp. 5–6Google Scholar; Spirit of the Times (Portsmouth, Ohio), 3 11 1857Google Scholar; for the same notion of an oppressive union of bank and state, see Fowler, , Report of the Debates and Proceedings, 2, 1460Google Scholar; Atlas and Argus (Albany, New York), 13 10 1857Google Scholar.

27 Horton, , The Life and Public Services of James Buchanan, p. 300Google Scholar; Fowler, , Report of the Debates and Proceedings, 2, 1459Google Scholar. A former colleague of the President wrote to Buchanan in late 1857 urging that a specie currency be introduced. “ The poor people, the masses of the country, and the merchants and rich men are for it. The Democratic States will go for it at once, and if resisted any where it will be a perfect recipe to make Democrats.” N. P. Upham to James Buchanan, 5 Nov. 1857, “ James Buchanan Papers ” (microfilm), Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

28 Shade, , Banks or No Banks, pp. 208–10Google Scholar.

29 Weekly Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), 2, 9 09 1857Google Scholar. See also: Stark County Democrat (Canton, Ohio), 28 09 1858Google Scholar: Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct. 1857: Democratic Pharos (Logan-sport, Ind.) 16, 30 09 1857Google Scholar; Rockport Weekly Democrat (Indiana), 18 11 1857, 20 02 1858Google Scholar; Union and Advertiser (Rochester, New York), 2, 6 10, 3, 24 11 1857Google Scholar. The same rhetoric was used by Southern Democrats. In Memphis, Tennessee, for example, the Democratic newspaper depicted a clash of interests between the banks and “ the working man, the artisan and the mechanic.” “ It is labor, industry and honest integrity that constitute the poor man's capital, and often, after the employment of these for years, he wakes up some fine morning, and finds that his hard earnings have rotted in his pockets.” Memphis Appeal, 7 Oct., 1 Dec. 1857.

30 Illinois State Register, 15 Oct. 1857; F. P. Blair to Frank Blair, 13 Nov. 1857, Blair Family papers, Library of Congress. A leading Democrat in Indiana stressed to Senator Douglas the fact that the “ masses are worried out ” by small denomination notes. W. W. Wick to S. A. Douglas, 8 12 1857, “ Stephen A. Douglas Papers,” University of Chicago.

31 Fowler, , Report of the Debates and Proceedings, 2, 1010Google Scholar. Letcher, Governor of Virginia similarly argued that “ the banking influence has been sufficiently powerful to control the legislation of the State.” Richmond Enquirer, 17 05 1859Google Scholar.

32 Atlas and Argus (Albany, New York) 13 10 1857, 31 08 1858Google Scholar. Some Democrats portrayed the Republicans' espousal of higher tariffs and their pro-bank position as evidence of a new Federalist party; a Whig revival in the South, based on similar issues, was denounced by Democrats there in the same terms. Republican (Marietta, Ohio) 13 11 1857, 9 04 1858Google Scholar. Southern Argus (Norfolk, Va.) 3 12 1857Google Scholar.

33 Atlas and Argus (Albany, New York), 3, 27 07 1858Google Scholar.

34 Collins, B. W., “ The Politics of Particularism: Economic Issues in the Major Northern States of the USA, 1857–1858 ” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1975), pp. 63, 199–228Google Scholar; “ Community and Consensus in Ante-bellum America,” Historical Journal, 19 (1976), 660 (n. 84)Google Scholar.

35 For discussions of these matters, see: Lukes, Steven, Power. A Radical View (London: 1974), esp. pp. 21–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, “ Some Problems in the Analysis of Political Thought and Action,” Political Theory, 2 (1974), 277–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wall, Grenville, “ The Concept of Interest in Politics,” Politics and Society, 5 (1975), 487–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 This statement is not meant to imply that slavery could not have been introduced into that region, as the proponents of the “ natural limits ” thesis argued. It is simply a description of what happened, or failed to happen, in the 1850s. In the western slave states of Missouri and Arkansas only 13% and 2% respectively of families owned slaves. Randall, J. G. and Donald, David, The Civil War and Reconstruction (Boston, 1969), p. 68Google Scholar.

37 At twenty-year intervals, these are the percentages of the total American population living in the two Dakotas, Nebraska, Washington and the entire Mountain Region:

Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington DC, 1960), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

38 Mumford, Lewis, The City in History (Harmondsworth, Middx., 1966), p. 516Google Scholar; Soltow, Lee, Men and Wealth in the United States 1850–1870 (New Haven, 1975), pp. 127–33Google Scholar; Bogue, Allan G., Prairie to Cornbelt (Chicago, 1968 ed.), pp. 48–49, 58–59, 169–70Google Scholar; Hofstadter, Richard, The Age of Reform (London, 1962), pp. 53–56Google Scholar.

39 Hofstadter, Richard, The American Political Tradition (New York, 1973), pp. 101, 105Google Scholar; Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, pp. 316–17Google Scholar.

40 Basler, Roy P., ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln: Supplement, 1832–1865 (Westport, Conn., 1974), p. 44Google Scholar; The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 3 (New Brunswick, 1953), 459, 462, 468Google Scholar.

41 Soltow, , Men and Wealth, pp. 60–61Google Scholar. Thernstrom, Stephan, “ Urbanisation, Migration, and Social Mobility in Late Nineteenth-century America,” in Bernstein, Barton J., ed., Towards A New Past (London, 1970), pp. 160, 162–63Google Scholar.

42 Population of the United States in 1860; Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census (Washington DC, 1864), p. lxxxiiGoogle Scholar. A similar opinion was stated by a New York city journal in July 1857: “ If it were not for the tide of immigration from the Old World, we should soon be without laborers, so vulgar does Young America hold it to cultivate the soil.” Hunt's Merchants' Magazine, 37 (1857), 71.

43 Dusinberre, William, Civil War Issues in Philadelphia, 1856–1865 (Philadelphia, 1965), p. 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, pp. 173–76Google Scholar.

44 Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, pp. 61, 212–13Google Scholar.

45 Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, Liberty, and Representative Government (London, Everyman's Library, 1910), p. 183Google Scholar.

46 Stokes, Eric, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford, 1959), p. 255Google Scholar; Hyam, Ronald, Britain's Imperial Century 1815–1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion (London, 1976), pp. 70–74, 78–85Google Scholar. Also see: Horsman, Reginald, “ Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism in Great Britain before 1850,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (1976), 387–410CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Cox, Samuel S., Eight Years in Congress, from 1857–1865: Memoirs and Speeches (New York, 1865), p. 285Google Scholar. On Northerners' racism, see Berwanger, Eugene H., The Frontier Against Slavery (Urbana, 1967)Google Scholar and Litwack, Leon F., North of Slavery (Chicago, 1961)Google Scholar.

48 The actual percentages were:

The figures for 1858 include the votes given to all Democratic congressional candidates. Anti-Lecompton Democrats won 5·7% of the vote in New York, 3·3% in Pennsylvania and 48·5% in Illinois. These percentages are calculated from figures given in The Tribune Almanac and Political Register, 1856 (New York, 1856), p. 2Google Scholar, and The Tribune Almanac and Political Register, 1859 (New York, 1859), pp. 46–53, 57–61Google Scholar.

49 Formisano, , The Birth of Mass Political Parties, pp. 325–31Google Scholar; Foner, , Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, pp. 310–13Google Scholar.

50 Collins, “ The Politics of Particularism ”, pp. 37–40, 129, 174–76; Nichols, Roy F., The Disruption of American Democracy (New York, 1967), pp. 182–201, 284–86, 326–31Google Scholar; Klein, Philip S., President James Buchanan: A Biography (University Park, Penn., 1962), p. 327Google Scholar.

51 I wish to thank Professor Michael F. Holt, Dr. Nicholas Jolley, Dr. Edward Smithies, and Dr. John Turner for discussing various problems of relevance to this paper. An earlier version of this essay was read in 1975 to Dr. J. R. Pole's American studies seminar at Cambridge. I benefitted greatly from the lively discussion it provoked. I am especially grateful to Dr. Howard Temperley for the interest he took in this paper and for his help in improving an earlier draft.