1918 KANSAS AND KANSANS | Chapter 33 | Part 1 |
The principal difference between the two great political parties prior to 1850 was one of interpretation of the Federal Constitution. The Democratic party had contended for a strict construction, counting the constitution a compact between sovereign States, insisting that the government formed under it was limited to those functions explicitly authorized by its terms. The Whigs believed that by the adoption of the constitution the States were merged into a nation with the right to do any and all things necessary for its growth and maintenance whether directly specified in that instrument or not. They were known as loose constructionists, and were favorable to protective tariffs, internal improvements, and national bank currency, and they came finally to insist that the Federal Government could and should control slavery in the Territories. They were the successors of the Federalists, from whom they inherited their principles and tendencies, which had been formulated chiefly by Alexander Hamilton.
Neither of these parties was sectional, and up to 1850 the Whigs did not constitute an anti-slavery party, nor the Democrats a Pro-Slavery party. In 1848, for President the Whigs nominated Zachary Taylor, of Louisiana, a slaveholder, and did not adopt a platform. The Democrats nominated Lewis Cass, of Michigan, on a strict construction platform. The Whigs were successful, but in 1850, Henry Clay, their leader, proposed a compromise of the conflicting claims growing out of slavery and related questions. The principles of this compromise were enacted into laws, that having the greatest influence on the future of the country being the Fugitive Slave Law, which was much more stringent than any former statute on the subject. Fugitive slaves were to be by Federal officials restored, wherever found, to their owners without trial by jury, and all citizens were expected to aid in such restoration. The people of the North objected to being set to slave hunting for Southern masters, and some States enacted what was known as personal liberty laws, designed to protect free negroes and fugitive slaves; and the Underground Railroad, over which fugitive slaves were assisted to reach Canada, became a well-organized and efficient institution.
The Fugitive Slave Law killed the Whig party. Its dissolution furnished the material for numerous small groups, none of them of enough importance to be called a national party. The Northern Whigs called themselves Anti-Nebraska Men, as they opposed the first attempts to organize a Nebraska Territory west of Missouri and Iowa. The Barnburners became the Free-Soil Democrats. All shades of political opinion were represented by groups, down to Hunkers and Know-Nothings. As the slavery conflict developed there came a gradual realignment of parties, most of these minority groups going over to the Anti-Nebraska Men, who, in 1855, had called themselves the Republican party, and in 1856 a National Republican party was organized. The new party was in fact successor to the Federalist and Whig parties, and it inherited their loose construction principles, the policies of protective tariff, internal improvements, national bank currency, and it added the burning issue of opposition to the extension of slavery.
In 1856 the National Convention of the Republican party was held at Philadelphia, on the 17th of June. Most political elements in the United States opposed to the Democratic party were represented in the Convention. The National issue at that time was Kansas. The Republican party championed the Kansas cause, and free Kansas was its platform. The nature of the contest in Kansas Territory was such that it appealed to all anti-slavery people without regard to their former political affiliations. The issue thus made appealed to the people generally in the Free States. John C. Fremont was nominated as the candidate of the party for President. So vital were the principles declared by the Republican party that it came near electing its candidate for President in its first national campaign. The Free-State men of Kansas who took part in this campaign exerted a wonderful influence. In this matter James H. Lane did more than any other Kansan.
The wonderful showing made at the polls by the Republican party in 1856, made it certain that the party thus formed of the anti-slavery elements of the country, would become a permanent political party in America. That it may be known to just what extent Kansas entered into the platform of this party in 1856, it is believed necessary to here set out that platform complete:
Kansas also furnished a part of the Democratic platform in 1856. The National Convention of the Democratic party was held at Cincinnati on the 2d of June. The course of the party in Kansas could not be endorsed before the country, and the Democratic party was compelled to adopt generalities rather than point to its course in Kansas Territory.
The contrast between the evasive, time-serving paragraph in the Democratic platform, and the stirring and magnificent appeal to moral sentiment of the country to be found in the Republican platform, has seldom been equaled in party declarations in the United States. The assertion of Abelard Guthrie that the Republican party was the result of the efforts to combat the course of the Democratic party in regard to Nebraska Territory, later Kansas Territory, is well established. The national character of Kansas history is in no other way so well proven as in a study of the political conditions in America from 1845 to 1860. The great questions of the day in all that period touched Kansas, and for nearly ten years of that time, Kansas was the paramount question in American politics. And the Civil War resulted from the success of the Free-State men in Kansas. There the two national parties were struggling - one for the supremacy of Freedom, the other for Slavery. When Freedom won, Slavery endeavored to destroy the Union. The same struggle that had raged in Kansas was transferred to the whole country, with the life of the Union at stake. And the Kansas principles triumphed in the nation. Kansas has a national history - no other State has such a history.
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A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans , written and compiled by William E. Connelley, transcribed by Carolyn Ward, 1998.