Birth of the Republicans: A History of the Republican Party
Try and Try Again
Americans remember Abraham Lincoln as one of the most influential presidents in U.S. history. Most forget he hadn’t won an election in more than ten years when the Republicans nominated him for president. He was elected to the Illinois legislature four times, serving from 1834 to 1841. Later, he served one term in the U.S. Congress, from 1847 to 1849. That was basically the extent of his government experience.
So why did the Republicans nominate him in 1860? Because Lincoln and his friends came well prepared to capture the nomination. Just as important, Honest Abe had a nationwide reputation on the key issue of his day: slavery.
The Brand New Party
The Republican Party was born through meetings in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Michigan in 1853 and 1854. Its founders were linked by their opposition to slavery and to 1854’s slavery-extending Kansas-Nebraska Act. Sponsored by Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the act allowed for the possibility of slavery as far north as Nebraska.
Arguments over the spread of slavery were a major source of tension between “free” and “slave” states. A precarious political balance existed between the two sides, and neither wanted to end up outnumbered when western territories – slave or free – became states in the Union. Douglas hoped the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave the territories’ residents the right to decide the slavery question, would release the tension. It only increased it.
In 1858, Lincoln, running as a Republican, tried to unseat Douglas. He lost, but gained acclaim through a series of seven debates. Douglas tried to label Lincoln a proponent of racial equality – a radical notion then, even in free states. But Lincoln denied it: “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” Nor did Lincoln advocate abolishing slavery. He merely argued for containing it.
The Election of 1860
When the election of 1860 rolled around, Lincoln was a recent election loser, but a shrewd politician. The Republican Party, meanwhile, had become a major contender. In 1856, its first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, won 11 states and 33 percent of the popular vote. Knowing that the nation was divided, Lincoln summed up his strategy in seven words: “hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks.”
The strategy worked, largely because the Democrats couldn’t come up with a consensus candidate of their own. Northern Democrats convened and nominated Stephen Douglas, who wasn’t sufficiently pro-slavery for southern Democrats. They convened separately and nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. A third party, the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John Bell of Tennessee.
On election day, Lincoln took the North, along with California and Oregon. Breckinridge took the South, while Bell took Texas and a few border states. Douglas managed only Missouri, though he finished second to Lincoln in the popular vote. Less than 3 percent of southerners supported the tall Republican, but he grabbed a decisive majority in the Electoral College. Before inauguration, seven southern states seceded from the Union. Shots were fired in April, and America’s Civil War began.
