Republicans – U.S. to 1877

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The country had been steadily moving toward Civil War arguably since the Missouri Compromise, which first prolonged the fight over slavery in the United States. In these chapters, Wilentz discusses how Lincoln won his party’s nomination and why his election was the breaking point for most Southerners. The Southern Democrats had been fighting a more radical Republican opponent in William Seward in the years leading up to the 1860 election. After John Brown’s raid of Harpers Ferry, the Republicans realized that radical Republicans could ruin their chance of winning an election. Seward, while not as radical as the Democrats made him out to be, seemed to be driving votes away as people attached Brown’s actions to him. This connection between Seward and Brown helped give the primary to Lincoln, who received his nomination after focusing his campaign in Chicago, near his hometown of Springfield. While other western-born candidates had won the presidency, Lincoln’s base in the lower north became even more integral to this election, since the Border States, or the Lower North, had the important swing votes from non-slaveholders who still benefited from a slave-holding economy. Lincoln was then able to win the general election mostly because the Democratic Party split during the nomination process and chose two candidates, splitting the party’s voters. Wilentz writes about Lincoln just as Davis does and backs up Mac’s point (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/lincoln-moral-idol-yet-still-a-politician/) that while “historically, we see Lincoln as the just idol,” he still had to be a politician. He was not as radical as other Republicans of the time, and he won the Presidency by playing off the split in the Democratic Party. While Lincoln did run a politician’s campaign, he was committed to his platform of halting the spread of slavery, but at the same time would not interfere with slavery in the slave states or the Fugitive Slave Law. What seemed to scare Southerners the most about Lincoln was his commitment to the law. He would not do anything outside of the powers stated in the Constitution, whether they would benefit his party’s motives or not. Therefore, the Democrats could not fight him as easily because he never said he would use his powers illegally. His pledge to this platform is where the image of a “just idol” comes from.

In his most recent post, Robbie states how the election of 1800 was a turning point in American politics because “It showed that the Republican model of government could function in America.” I agree with Robbie, but I also consider the election of 1796 to be a major turning point as well; it marked the first time a two party system existed in early American government. Throughout the early chapters of The Rise of American Democracy, Wilentz describes a constant struggle between Federalists and Republicans, the result of greater suffrage and contrasting views among the American people. A major question that emerges is whether elections for either Republican and Federalist parties were shaped more by split views between the elite and the common people, or by the conventional differences between North and South. Many government officials in both Republican and Federalist parties believed that only the wealthy and educated deserved to hold office.

Wilentz does not appear very favorable towards the Federalists; he portrays them as hypocritical and especially troublesome during the Republican presidency. For example, Federalists in New England and throughout the North were ironically the ones to propose the idea of seceding from the Union. Usually when we think about secession in America, we just assume Southerners were the ones who wanted to secede from the Union. Under John Adams, the Federalists passed the Alien and Sedition Acts to prevent Republicans from criticizing the government. However, during the War of 1812 “paradoxically, the most inflammatory criticisms of the government came from conservative New England Federalists—with no Sedition Law raining down on their heads” (Wilentz, p. 89). I felt almost as though the Federalists were against Americans forming their own identity, as they intensely opposed nationalism and the war against Great Britain.

Wilentz focuses heavily on Jefferson’s actions and character as vice president and eventually president. Already faced with the debts and taxes from Federalist enactment, Jefferson favored a more passive form of treaty involving money instead of engaging in wars that would only lead to more debt. This approach was demonstrated by his purchase of the Louisiana territory to end French threat in North America, as well as his proposition of an embargo of British and French goods in order to avoid war. Although many argue that Jefferson was extremely hypocritical, he was still able to help fuel the American economy and keep the United States out of war. “After 1801, the federal government ran a deficit in only one year before 1809 and accumulated a net surplus of more than twenty million dollars” (Wilentz, p. 65).

Tag: Republicans

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