Page 354 - American Stories, A History of the United States

coalitions, and employing the techniques of popular campaigning, they built up an effec-
tive party apparatus in an amazingly short time. By 1856, the new party was well estab- 14.1
lished throughout the North and was preparing to make a serious bid for the presidency.
The Republicans’ position on slavery in the territories explains their rapid and
growing appeal. Republicans viewed the unsettled West as a land of opportunities, a 14.2
place to which the ambitious and hardworking could migrate to improve their social
and economic position. But if slavery was permitted to expand, it would deny the rights
of “free labor.” Slaveholders would monopolize the best land, use their slaves to com- 14.3
pete unfairly with free white workers, and block commercial and industrial develop-
ment. They could also use their control of new western states to dominate the federal
government in the interest of the “slave power.” Republicans also pandered to racial
prejudice: They presented their policy as a way to keep African Americans out of the
territories, thus preserving the new lands for whites.
Although the Kansas-Nebraska Act raised the territorial issue and gave birth to
the Republican party, the turmoil associated with attempts to implement popular sov-
ereignty in Kansas enabled the Republicans to increase their following throughout the
North. When Kansas was organized in 1854, a bitter contest began to control the ter-
ritorial government between militant Free-Soilers from New England and the Midwest
and slaveholding settlers from Missouri. In the first territorial elections, thousands of
Missouri residents crossed the border to vote illegally. The result was a decisive victory
for the slave-state forces. The legislature not only legalized slavery but made it a crime
to speak or act against it.
Free-Soilers were already a majority of the actual residents of the territory when
this legislature denied them the right to agitate against slavery. To defend themselves
and their convictions, they took up arms and established a rival territorial government
under a constitution that outlawed slavery.
A small-scale civil war then broke out between the rival regimes, culminating in May
1856 when proslavery adherents raided the free-state capital at Lawrence. Portrayed in
Republican propaganda as “the sack of Lawrence,” this incursion resulted in substantial
property damage but no loss of life. More bloody was the reprisal by the antislavery zealot
John Brown. After the attack on Lawrence, Brown and a few followers murdered five
proslavery settlers in cold blood, in what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre.
During the next few months—until an effective territorial governor arranged a truce in
1856—a hit-and-run guerrilla war raged between free-state and slave-state factions.
The Republican press had a field day with the events in Kansas, exaggerating the
violence but correctly pointing out that the federal government was favoring a proslavery
minority over a Free-Soil majority. Since the “sack of Lawrence” occurred about the same Quick Check
time that Preston Brooks assaulted Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, the Republicans What positions did the new
launched their 1856 campaign under twin slogans: “Bleeding Kansas” and “Bleeding republican party take regarding
Sumner.” The image of an evil and aggressive “slave power,” using violence to deny con- immigration, western expansion,
stitutional rights to its opponents, aroused northern sympathies and won votes. and slavery?

Sectional Division in the election of 1856

The Republican nominating convention revealed the strictly sectional nature of
the new party. Only a handful of delegates from the slave states attended, all from
the upper South. The platform called for liberating Kansas from the slave power
and congressional prohibition of slavery in all territories. The nominee was
John C. Frémont, explorer of the West and one of the conquerors of California dur-
ing the Mexican-American War.
The Democratic convention dumped Pierce, passed over Stephen A. Douglas,
and nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, who had a long career in public
service. The platform endorsed popular sovereignty in the territories. The American
party, a Know-Nothing remnant that survived mainly as the rallying point for anti-
Democratic conservatives in the border states and the South, chose ex-President
Millard Fillmore as its standard-bearer and received the backing of those northern
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