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The Democratic-Republicans before the Civil War: Political Ideology and Economic Change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

John Ashworth
John Ashworth
Affiliation:
Lecturer in the School of English and American Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ. He would like to thank the British Academy for the generous support which they provided whilst the research for this article was being undertaken and also Michael J. Heale, Roger Thompson and Eric Ashworth for their comments on earlier drafts.
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Extract

When James K. Polk entered the White House in March 1845 all but a small minority of politicians acted and voted in accordance with the stated principles of one of two major parties. These parties were emphatically national in scope; each won support from all sections of the Union. Sixteen years later when it was the turn of Abraham Lincoln to enter the White House the situation was dramatically altered. Seven states from the Deep South had left the Union, four of the Upper South states were soon to follow. As the firing began at Fort Sumter, northerners of all parties rallied to the defence of the Union. A party system genuinely national in scope had been supplanted by sectional conflict that was about to erupt into Civil War.

A key stage in this process occurred when northern Democrats challenged what seemed to be the increasingly evident southern dominance of their party. For many Democrats disillusionment did not come until close to the end of the decade. These Democrats remained within their party and supported Douglas in 1860. They were nevertheless by this time bitter in their denunciations of the South and the resolute defenders of the Union in the aftermath of secession.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , December 1986 , pp. 375 - 390
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1986

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References

1 The depth of partisan commitment in the 1840s is suggested by Alexander, Thomas, Sectional Stress and Party Strength: A Study of Roll-Call Voting in the United States House of Representatives, 1836–1860 (Nashville, 1967)Google Scholar; Silbey, Joel H., The Shrine of Party: Congressional Voting Behavior, 1841–1852 (Pittsburgh, 1967)Google Scholar.

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7 Butler quoted in McGee, Patricia E., “Issues and Factions: New York State Politics from the Panic of 1837 to the election of 1848” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, St. John's University, 1969), 183Google Scholar.

8 The only work which deals systematically with Democratic-Republican ideology is Foner, Free Soil (though there are many hints in the works cited in notes 4 and 5). Unlike Professor Foner, however, I am concerned above all with the processes of change from the second party system (on which we are in sharp disagreement) to the 1850s. Note that Foner does not explain the correlation between radicalism and antislavery within the Democratic party. Despite this I am greatly indebted to his study.

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12 There is no doubt that the Democratic-Republicans were sincerely convinced that the federal government was being “prostituted to slavery.” See Palmer, George T. (ed.), Letters from Lyman Trumbull to John M. Palmer, 1854–1854 (Springfield, 1924), 5Google Scholar. For an identical public utterance see Speech of Senator Trumbull at Chicago (n.p., n.d.), 4–5.

13 For an analysis of party ideologies in the late Jacksonian era (including a comparison of radical with conservative Democrats) see Ashworth, John, “Agrarians” and “Aristocrats”: Party Political Ideology in the United States, 1837–1846 (London, 1983)Google Scholar.

14 Evening Post, 15 December 1858.

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17 It is also mistaken to argue, as Eric Foner does, that the politics of the Jacksonian era were “non-ideological.” Foner, , Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War (New York, 1980), 39Google Scholar.

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19 Foner, , Free Soil, 267Google Scholar; Ashworth, “Agrarians” and “Aristocrats,” 221–3, and also Ashworth, , “The Jacksonian as Leveller,” Journal of American Studies, 14 (1980), 407–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perkins quoted in Muller, Ernest P., “Preston King, A Political Biography” (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia, 1957), 379–80Google Scholar; Speech of Trumbull at Chicago, 9; Congressional Globe, 29 Congress, 2 Session, Appendix, 217–18; Weston, George M., The Poor Whites of the South (Washington, D.C., 1856), 7Google Scholar. See also Morrison, , Democratic Politics and Sectionalism, 69–74Google Scholar.

20 Message of Lott Morrill, 19; Message of Bingham, in Fuller, (ed.), Messages of Govs of Michigan, 2, 288–92, 315Google Scholar. For additional instances of Democratic-Republican hostility to banks and paper money see Governor Kirkwood, in Shambaugh, (ed.), Messages of Govs of Iowa, 2, 361–3Google Scholar; Address of His Excellency Nathaniel P. Banks, to the Two Branches of the Legislature of Massachusetts, Jan. 7, 1858 (Boston, 1858), 13–14Google Scholar; “Message of the Governor of Ohio, to the Fifty Third General Assembly at the Regular Session, Commencing Jan. 4 1858,” in Message and Report Made to the General Assembly and Governor of the State of Ohio for the year 1857, Part 1 (Columbus, Ohio, 1858), 356–8Google Scholar.

21 Beale, Howard K. (ed.), The Diary of Gideon Welles, 3 vols. (New York, 1960), 2, 122Google Scholar; Foner, , Free Soil, 167–68Google Scholar.

22 On Democratic hostility to banks in these years see esp. Sharp, James R., The Jacksonians versus the Banks: Politics in the States after the Panic of 1837 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Shade, William G., Banks or No Banks: The Money Issue in Western Politics, 1832–1865 (Detroit, 1972)Google Scholar.

23 This description of economic changes is taken from North, Douglass C., The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (New York, 1966), 103, 130, 133, 141, 163–170, 205–214Google Scholar; Davis, Lance, Easterlin, Richard, Parker, William et al. , American Economic Growth (New York, 1972), 369–417Google Scholar; Easterlin, Richard, “Farm Production and Income in Old and New Areas at Mid-Century,” in Klingaman, David and Vedder, Richard (eds), Essays in Nineteenth Century Economic History: The Old Northwest (New York, 1975)Google Scholar. It is possible that contemporaries and, until recently, historians overestimated the superiority of the northern economy. See Wright, Gavin, The Political Economy of the Cotton South (New York, 1978)Google Scholar for a persuasive explanation of the southern economic performance. There remains no doubt, however, that the South was the leastindustrialized, least-urbanized region in the nation.

24 Willett, Thomas D., “International Specie Flows and American Monetary Stability, 1834–1860,” Journal of Economic History, 28 (1968), 28–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilkinson, Jeffrey G., American Growth and the Balance of Payments, 1820–1913 (Chapel Hill, 1964), 111Google Scholar; Message of Governor Metcalf, Ralph in Journal of the Honorable Senate of the State of New Hampshire, June Session 1856 (Concord, 1856), 20–21Google Scholar. For other examples of Democratic-Republican tolerance of banking see Message of Bissell, 23; Message of Hamlin, 28; Sharp, , Jacksonians versus Banks, 121–22, 206–07, 319, 328–29Google Scholar.

25 Shambaugh, , Messages of the Governors of Iowa, 2, 243Google Scholar; Annual Message of Alexander W. Randall, Governor of the State of Wisconsin, delivered Jan. 15 1858 (Madison, 1858), 32–3Google Scholar.

26 Evening Post, 27 April 1848, 13 May 1852; Message of Metcalf (1855), 21–22. For an example of one individual's changing views on manufacturing compare Churchill C. Cambreleng's letter to the Evening Post, 31 December 1842, with [Cambreleng], An Examination of the New Tariff Proposed by the Hon. Henry Baldwin, By One of the People (New York, 1823)Google Scholar. On each occasion Cambreleng opposed the tariff. For additional examples of Democratic-Republican support for manufactures see The Republic, 28 August 1858; Shambaugh, , Messages of the Governors of Iowa, 2, 288–9Google Scholar; Evening Post, 11 November 1846; Annual Message of Alexander W. Randall, Governor of the State of Wisconsin…1861 (Madison, 1861), 17–18Google Scholar; “Message of the Governor of Ohio,” 351.

27 Message of Bissell, 17.

28 Weston, , Poor Whites of the South, 2–5Google Scholar; Message of Lott Morrill in Journal of the Senate of Maine for … 1860 (Augusta, 1860), 39Google Scholar; Message of Hamlin, 17; Muller, “Preston King,” 422. See also Evening Post, 11 November 1846, Foner, , Free Soil, 40–72Google Scholar.

29 Though it is not possible to discuss the question here, I am of course supporting theview that abolitionism was a function of capitalist development. Clearly there was a complex series of mediations involved. See Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (Ithaca, 1975)Google Scholar; Temperley, Howard, “Capitalism, Slavery and Ideology,” Past and Present, 75 (05, 1977), 94–117CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Here I am subscribing to the Marxist view of the South as a precapitalist society. See Genovese, Eugene, The Political Economy of Slavery (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Post, Charles, “The American Road to Capitalism,” New Left Review, 133 (1982), 30–51Google Scholar; Cohen, G. A., Karl Marx's Theory of History (Oxford, 1978), 190–93Google Scholar.