Page 350 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Read the Document The Fugitive Slave Act (1850) 14.1

14.2

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Fugitive sLAves Southerners had long objected to northern states’ attitudes toward runaway slaves. in
fact, many northern states had passed personal liberty laws in an effort to protect free black people from being
kidnapped and to shield runaway slaves from capture by making it more difficult, as well as more expensive, for
slaveholders to recover their property. Nevertheless, for the thousands of Northerners who wanted to remain
neutral, passage of the Fugitive Slave Act quashed their comfortable middle ground.

strategy could be presented to southern voters as a good way to protect slavery and to
Northerners as a good way to contain it.
The consensus meant the two major parties had to find other issues on which to
base their distinctive appeals. Their failure to do so encouraged voter apathy and dis-
enchantment with them. When the Democrats sought to revive the Manifest Destiny
issue in 1854, they reopened the explosive issue of slavery in the territories. By this
time, the Whigs were too weak and divided to respond with a policy of their own, and
a purely sectional Free-Soil party—the Republicans—gained prominence. The collapse
of the second-party system released sectional agitation from the constraints the com-
petition of strong national parties had imposed.

The Party System in Crisis
The presidential campaign of 1852 was devoid of major issues. Whigs tried to revive
interest in nationalistic economic policies, but with business thriving under the Demo-
cratic program of limited government involvement, a protective tariff, a national bank,
and internal improvements got little support.
Another tempting issue was immigration. The massive influx from Europe upset
many Whigs, partly because most of the new arrivals were Catholics, and the Whig
following was largely evangelical Protestant. The immigrants also voted overwhelm-
ingly Democratic. The Whig leadership was divided on whether to compete with the
Democrats for the immigrant vote or restrict immigrant voting rights.
The Whigs nominated General Winfield Scott of Mexican-American War fame,
who supported the faction that resisted nativism and sought to broaden the party’s
appeal. But Scott and his supporters could not sway Catholic immigrants from their

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