Renewed XXXI THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY The opposition of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill resulted in a general break-up of the old political parties and led to the organization of the Republican party. What were the beginnings of this great party? What were its purposes, and who were its leaders? What chain of events led to its triumph? THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY Northern sentiment against the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was wide-spread and was manifested in a variety of ways. The censure visited upon the author of the bill exceeded the bounds of moderation, and the popular displeasure was shown in so many places that Douglas said he could travel by the light of his own burning effigies from Boston to Chicago. In many places the resentment assumed the form of retaliation. The antislavery men of the North, feeling that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was an act of bad faith, retaliated by renewing their fight against the Fugitive-Slave Law. In Boston people of wealth and refinement resisted officers of the law in their attempts to retake runaway slaves. The Underground Railroad was started again with increased activity. Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Michigan passed laws the plain purpose of which was to obstruct the prosecution of the Fugitive-Slave Law. These laws, known as Personal Liberty Laws, came dangerously near nullifying the laws of the United States. They provided that state jails should not be used for detaining fugitives; that negroes who were claimed as slaves should be entitled to the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus and of trial by jury; and that the seizure of a free person with the intent of reducing him to slavery should be punished by fine and imprisonment. Still another effect of the KansasNebraska Law was to strengthen the abolition movement. "Pierce and Douglas," said Horace Greeley in May, 1854, "have made more abolitionists in three months than Garrison and Phillips could have made in half a century." Garrison himself felt that the slaveholders had won a complete triumph by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and to show his dissent and disgust he publicly burned the Fugitive-Slave Law and the Constitution of the United States at a meeting of abolitionists that was held at Framingham, on the Fourth of July, 1854. But the most important result of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was to crystallize the antislavery sentiment of the North and to organize antislavery men into a political party whose sole aim was to check the extension of slavery. The opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill were Northern Whigs, some Northern Democrats, and Free Soilers. The dissatisfied Whigs desired to reorganize the Northern wing of the existing Whig party on an anti slavery basis, but the dissatisfied Democrats and the Free Soilers desired an entirely new organization. The Whigs were most numerous, but the Democrats and Free Soilers would not consent to call themselves Whigs; so it was necessary to build up a new party. The work of organization began in the West. While the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was pending in Congress a meeting of citizens of all parties was held at Ripon, Wisconsin, and at this meeting it was suggested that The Early Organization of the Republican Party The a new party be organized on the issue of slavery extension and that the name of the new party be "Republican." "Call it Republican, no prefix, no suffix, but plain Republican," was the advice of Horace Greeley. In July, 1854, just after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, several thousand citizens of Michigan assembled in an oak grove on the outskirts of the town of Jackson and resolved that they would act faithfully in unison to oppose the extension of slavery and would be known as Republicans until the contest should be terminated. They also nominated state officers and recommended that a general convention of the free States should be called. In other States the antislavery people followed the example of Michigan in organizing a new party, and in Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine the name "Republican" was adopted. In the fall elections of 1854 the Republicans of Wisconsin and Michigan were successful, and in almost every Northern State there was evidence that the new party had a great future before it. The first concrete issue presented to the Republican party grew out of the trouble that arose in Kansas. The KansasNebraska Bill made the fertile soil of Kansas a prize to be contended for by the forces of slavery and the forces of freedom. Even before the bill became a law emigrants from the South, especially from Arkansas and Missouri, were rushing into Kansas with the purpose of making it a slave State, while emigrants from the North were hurrying to the new Territory with the purpose of making it a free State. The slave state people settled along the Missouri River and founded the towns of Atchison, Leavenworth and Lecompton. The free state people settled along the Kansas River and founded the towns of Topeka, Lawrence, and Osawatomie. In March, 1855, an election was held for a territorial legislature, and in this contest the pro-slavery people won, their victory being due largely to the votes of an organized band of Missourians who rode across the border on election day, cast their votes, and returned at once to Missouri. The antislavery men ignored this election as fraudulent and proceeded to organize a Free State party and to prepare for bringing Kansas into the Union. It re Douglas's plan of squatter sovereignty was now having its violence first practical application. Kansas was divided into two war- Kansas in Boundary KANSAS نعاس اللمالك . Leavenworth KAR Topeka age TERRITORY River 8 Lawrence ring factions, one trying to establish slavery, the other to prohibit it. The quarrel between the two factions soon resulted in violence and outrage. In May, 1856, the town of Lawrence was sacked by a mob of slave state men. In revenge John Brown, with his four sons and three other men, went along the Pottawatomie Creek at midnight and killed five slave state Brown thought he was divinely commissioned to perform this bloody deed. "It has been decreed," he said, "by Almighty God, ordained for all eternity, that I should make an example of these men." men. cans in By this time the Kansas question had been taken up by RepubliCongress. In the spring of 1856 the Free State people of Congress Kansas asked that the Territory be admitted as a State under The Attack upon Senator Sumner Republican Leaders The Candidates in 1856 the Topeka constitution. In the House, where many Republicans had already won seats, the vote was in favor of admission. In the Senate, however, where the influence of the South was still dominant, admission was refused. Yet the debate on the Kansas question in the Senate showed that the Republicans had won some seats in that body also. Among the most distinguished of the Republican Senators was Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. Sumner, in a speech (May, 1856) on the Kansas question, directed some bitter remarks against Senator Butler of South Carolina, who was absent from the Senate. Two days after this speech was delivered Preston Brooks, a representative from South Carolina and a kinsman of Butler, entered the Senate chamber and struck Sumner a heavy blow with a cane. Sumner was stunned by the blow and could make no resistance. Brooks followed up the first blow with others, and by the time the last blow was struck Sumner was bleeding profusely and was in an insensible condition. The House passed a resolution of censure upon Brooks. He immediately resigned but was almost unanimously reëlected by his district. Thus the violence that was rife in Kansas over the extension of slavery had a counterpart in the very halls of Congress. Of course the Kansas question was carried to the theater of national politics. In 1856 the Republicans met at Philadelphia in national convention and adopted a platform that declared against the spread of slavery in the Territories and demanded the immediate admission of Kansas as a free State. The Republican party was now fully organized and was receiving the support of some of the ablest men in the North. Under its banner were Charles Sumner, William H. Seward of New York, Salmon P. Chase and Benjamin Wade of Ohio, and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. The Republican candidate of 1856 was John C. Frémont, who as a young officer had rendered valuable service in the movement that led to the acquisition of California (p. 308). Frémont had been a Democrat, but his warm sympathy with the Free State party in Kansas had caused him to cast his lot with the Republicans. |