Adios, Republican Party? (part 1)
The Republican Party is now a RINO: "Republican in Name Only"
We always need to start with a little history, this time American.
Would slavery expand in the 1840s?
In 1847, the Mexican-American War, which had begun over U.S. annexation of the Republic of Texas and a rejected U.S. offer to purchase New Mexico and California for over $45 million, ended in total defeat for Mexico, with the U.S. defeating the main Mexican army and capturing Mexico City. In early 1848, the United States and Mexico agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, wherein Mexico conceded 54% of its territory to the United States: not only the entire Republic of Texas (which included segments of present-day Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Wyoming), but also an enormous section of land (about two-thirds of the size of the Louisiana Purchase) referred to as the Mexican Cession, for which the U.S. paid $15 million and assumed $3.5 million of Mexican debt to the U.S. In other words, the Mexican-American War cut the price of the Mexican Cession by about two-thirds. Good deal?
Included in the Mexican Cession were all of present-day California, Nevada and Utah, most of Arizona, the western half of New Mexico (the eastern half was in Texas), the western quarter of Colorado (with another quarter in Texas), and the southwest corner of Wyoming (with another small chunk in Texas).
To discourage further American emigration from the farms of west Arkansas and west Louisiana into the farms of east Texas, in 1829 Mexico had officially abolished slavery in Texas. That became a huge motivator in the efforts of Texas leaders to join the U.S. as a slave state, and the U.S. annexed it as a slave state in 1845. But western Texas was still mostly wild and Native American country, with significant conflict, and the majority of the Mexican Cession was wilderness. Because there was no farmland, there was significant sentiment in the U.S. that all the rest of the Mexican Cession should be free of slavery. A measure to codify the Mexican Cession as entirely free territory called the Wilmot Proviso (which also would have nullified the Missouri Compromise by making Missouri’s southern border into the line between free and slave states, thereby forcing Missouri to become free) passed the U.S. House in both 1846 and 1847 but did not pass the U.S. Senate. A separate effort was made to amend the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to include it, but that failed as well.
And the failure of the Wilmot Proviso to pass became a major issue in the presidential election of 1848. Both of the main candidates for President: the Whig candidate Zachary Taylor (an apolitical war hero and slaveholder) and the Democrat candidate Lewis Cass (also a slaveholder, despite being a senator from the free state of Michigan) both said that they would enforce the Wilmot Proviso were it to be adopted, but neither actually supported it; in fact, Cass was an enthusiastic supporter of “popular sovereignty” on slavery, where only the people living in a territory had a vote.
The anti-slavery forces, both Whig and Democrat, knew that they’d lost the battle to stop slavery in the Mexican Cession. So they decided to form a third party: the Free Soil Party, with only one goal: preventing slavery in the Mexican Cession. Several prominent representatives, such as former Whigs Charles Sumner from Massachusetts and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio and former Democrat John Hale of New Hampshire helped organize it, although the majority of members were either (1) so-called “Conscience Whigs” or (2) “Barnburners” from New York State, the name given to the anti-slavery Democrats from there. And for President, the Free Soil Party ran a Barnburner, former president Martin Van Buren, who was not only anti-slavery but hated both the idea of “popular sovereignty” and the idea of Cass (who had cost him the 1844 presidential nomination for the Democrats over Texas annexation) as president.
The Free Soil Party got over 10% of the popular vote in the election of 1848, the most successful third party in U.S. history up to that time. But it lost, and the Whig Taylor won, the second (and last) Whig to be elected president. After the election, there were many questions over which party had been more hurt by the Free Soil Party, and that question is still debated among historians, but the answer will never be known for certain. One thing that is certain, however, is that Van Buren’s candidacy drew enough votes in New York to throw the state to Taylor, and that was the determining factor in the Electoral College. After Cass lost, many of the Barnburners (including Van Buren) left the Free Soil Party and returned to the Democrats.
But, to the surprise of everyone, Taylor actually was truly apolitical despite being a slaveholder, leading to a near-paralysis in Congress as the Whigs turned out to have an slight anti-slavery majority — and also to much actual or threatened physical violence, including pro-slavery Democratic Mississippi senator Henry Foote drawing a gun on anti-slavery Democratic Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton on the Senate floor (which cost Benton his seat in Congress, since Missouri was a slave state, and led Foote to run (successfully) for governor of Mississippi, defeating Jefferson Davis).
Then Taylor died (with a significant number of unproven rumors that he’d been poisoned by unhappy southerners). He had largely ignored his vice-president, Millard Fillmore, who had been a Whig representative to Congress from New York who had chosen not to run for re-election, even though Fillmore was a former chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee. But upon becoming President, Fillmore supported a Democrat-brokered pro-southern compromise to resolve the crisis on Congress, known as the Compromise of 1850.
The Compromise of 1850 included five separate bills, but the most important measures were statehood for California as a free state, the adoption of popular sovereignty to determine slavery in the new territories, and a vastly-strengthened Fugitive Slave Act. Democrats from all regions and Southern Whigs supported this compromise, but the Whig Party never recovered. Although it ran a Presidential candidate in 1852 (another nonpartisan war hero from the south, Winifred Scott), the Northern Whigs who had defected to the Free Soil Party never returned, and the reunified Democratic Party won the election behind the “doughface” former senator from New Hampshire, Franklin Pierce. [“Doughface”, as applied to Pierce, had two meanings, both derogatory: a coward, and a Northerner with Southern sympathies; however, especially after the death of his son Benjamin (who has opposed going to D.C.) in a train wreck while traveling to D.C., “drunkard” or, as his enemies sarcastically put it, “the hero of many a well-fought bottle”, would also have been accurate.]
Just to make sure of the Whig Party’s demise, Pierce and Congress (with support from Democrats and Southern Whigs only) passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which expressly repealed the Missouri Compromise by opening both Kansas and Nebraska to “popular sovereignty” votes on slavery. However, not only did the Whigs finally disband as a result, as expected, but so did northern support for Democrats, and they were wiped out in the North in the midterm elections of 1854.
A New Second Party?
So what party would replace the Whigs? No one knew for certain. Many former Northern Whigs ran under the banner of the Opposition Party. But there were two main contenders. One was the Free Soil Party; the other was the Native American Party, later known as the American Party — but known to history as the “Know-Nothing Party”, because when it was first formed, members were supposed to say that they knew nothing about the party.
The American Party was set up to oppose immigration into the United States, especially immigration of Catholics, and to only promote native-born Americans to political office. In its philosophy, it was generally populist and Protestant, including support for the temperance movement and the early labor movement, but it expressly took no position on slavery, which meant that many non-Catholics who were lower middle class or unskilled workers joined up throughout the country. And in 1854, the American Party swamped the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts, leading to Massachusetts congressman Nathaniel Banks, a member, being elected as Speaker of the House — but the American Party was even stronger in the border states and the deep South, reflecting the prevailing attitude toward the foreign “underclasses”, including the Africans. Even governor and former senator Henry Foote of Mississippi joined.
However, although most of the people at the forefront of the anti-Nebraska movement were Northern Whigs and Free Soil party members, there weren’t enough of them. They’d also need to attract some of the Barnburners and other northern Democrats opposed to slavery to join them to build a majority, which meant that they couldn’t just appeal to ex-Whigs, since southern Whigs would side with the Democrats to maintain the “Slave Power”.
What these leaders wanted was a return to Jeffersonian principles, and they came up with a way to signal that to northern voters. When Jefferson and Madison had started their own party in opposition to the Federalists, they called it the Democratic-Republican Party, but it was popularly known as the Republicans. Then Andrew Jackson decided to turn everything into a popularity contest without principles, and when he became president, he changed the name of the party that he led to the Democratic Party and changed its orientation to populist. So the leaders of the anti-Nebraska movement, including former Democrats like Thomas Hart Benton’s son-in-law, former California senator John C. Frémont, decided to name the new party after Jefferson’s: the Republican Party, showing a return to pre-Jacksonian principles.
The significance of the Republican name
Per Wikipedia on 17 August 2022, “republicanism” in the United States was different than “classical republicanism” in Europe. In its basic form, republicanism just refers to a government not led by a monarch, but Americans added various values drawn from the Enlightenment into the mix:
It stresses liberty and inalienable individual rights as central values; recognizes the sovereignty of the people as the source of all authority in law; rejects monarchy, aristocracy, and hereditary political power; expects citizens to be virtuous and faithful in their performance of civic duties; and vilifies corruption. American republicanism was articulated and first practised by the Founding Fathers in the 18th century. For them, "republicanism represented more than a particular form of government. It was a way of life, a core ideology, an uncompromising commitment to liberty, and a total rejection of aristocracy". . . .
In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville warned about the "tyranny of the majority" in a democracy, and suggested the courts should try to reverse the efforts of the majority of terminating the rights of an unpopular minority. Republicanism is derived from republic, but the two words have different meanings. A republic is a form of government (one without a hereditary ruling class), while republicanism refers to the values of the citizens in a republic.
Per Wikipedia on 20 August 2022, “classical liberalism” was defined as follows:
Classical liberalism is a political ideology and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with an emphasis on limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech. It was developed in the early 19th century, building on ideas from the previous century as a response to urbanization and to the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America.
The overlap between the two definitions with regard to economic and political freedoms and individual rights and liberties should be obvious, but before going farther into this, let’s understand why the foundation of the Republican Party, which is the conservative party in the United States, was built on a type of liberalism.
At its core, conservatism is all about promoting traditional institutions and practices. But the United States was founded specifically to challenge the traditional institutions and practices in the rest of the world at the time of its founding, which included monarchy, class hierarchy, and slavery — although the well-paid morons behind the 1619 Project, including the once-respectable New York Times, still try to con you into believing otherwise, which brings to mind a quote that appears to have been said first in 1886 by humorist John Billings (spelling corrected):
“I honestly believe it is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.”
So the United States as a country was formed in the 1770s and 1780s on liberal principles — which makes defending those principles in the United States into a conservative idea, because those are the traditional values of the country. That’s how classical liberalism became a conservative idea in the U.S.
Most importantly, the Republican Party’s core organizational idea was that it would be against slavery, and all the members of the Free Soil Party joined it. The organizers believed that slaveowners thought of themselves as the new American aristocracy, in the English model, and wanted to emphasize just how un-American such aristocratic pretentious were. Was it true? Unquestionably so. The southerners, like the European aristocrats, believed that menial labor was beneath their station in life, and they referred to the workers in the factories of the north as “wage slaves”, to emphasis their superiority.
But the world was changing away from that viewpoint, as the Industrial Revolution was now creating goods in abundance. The one advantage that the South had was that it could grow cotton in abundance, and the cotton gin had turned cotton into a miracle fiber, but the mills in England and the North turned that cotton into garments of a quality and variety that had never before been seen in world history. So there may have been a historical inevitability underlying the shift away from the South, but it hadn’t taken place as of 1854.
Is the cane mightier than the sword?
And so the battle for the successor to the Whigs became a showdown between the xenophobic populists in the American (Know-Nothing) Party and the classical liberals in the Republican Party. The odds at the start had to favor the American Party. For one thing, the Free Soil Party had only drawn a little over 5% of the vote in the presidential election of 1852, virtually all drawn from former Whigs. The Democrats had been a populist party ever since Andrew Jackson, showing the enduring popularity of populism. Millard Fillmore, the last Whig president, was secretly a member of the American Party (although, like most party members, he didn’t admit to it — despite being the party’s presidential candidate in 1856), and the remnants of the Whig Party endorsed the American Party ticket instead of running a separate candidate. And even the newly-admitted “free state” of California was dominated by pro-slavery politicians, who had ousted Fremont as senator and intended to bring a “popular sovereignty” referendum in favor of slavery.
But then came the decisive event, although it wasn’t seen to be decisive at the time, on 22 May 1856, less than six months before the 1856 presidential election. The result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act had been an open civil war in Kansas between the “border ruffians”, who largely poured into Kansas from neighboring Missouri and who were ardently pro-slavery, and the “free staters”, many of whom came from New England (such as John Brown, originally from Connecticut) and were equally ardently anti-slavery.
The two sides established separate state capitals in towns along the Kansas River that are just a few miles apart and are in the same county of Kansas (Douglas County, named for Democratic Party leader Stephen Douglas, who had brokered both the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act): Lecompton (for the pro-slavery forces) and Lawrence (for the anti-slavery forces), although nearby Topeka (also on the Kansas River) was also used by the anti-slavery forces.
And the battle between the two sides immediately moved to Congress, as each group wanted Kansas admitted to the Union: the Democrats and southerners as a slave state, and the Anti-Nebraska side as a free state. And one of the original Free Soil Party members who had since joined the Republican Party, Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, made a two-day speech condemning “the rape of a virgin territory, compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery”. He also attacked South Carolina senator Andrew Butler, who he accused of being in love with “the harlot, slavery”, adding that Butler “touches nothing which he does not disfigure with error, sometimes of principle, sometimes of fact. He cannot open his mouth, but out there flies a blunder.”
In the style of the aristocratic south, Sen. Butler’s first cousin once removed, Preston Brooks, was a representative from South Carolina, and he and his allies concluded that, instead of Rep. Brooks challenging Sen. Sumner to a duel (as would be done among social equals), Sen. Sumner deserved the treatment that an aristocrat would give to a member of the lower classes who insulted him: a public caning. So Rep. Brooks, another South Carolina representative, Laurence Keitt, and a Virginia representative, Henry Edmundson, came into the Senate chamber and waited until they could catch Sen. Sumner almost alone in the Senate chambers, at which point Rep. Brooks approached him while holding a heavy metal-tipped walking cane, began talking to him, and, when Sen. Sumner went to stand up, began beating him over the head with the cane, knocking him to the ground and pinning him under his desk (which was bolted to the floor) while continuing to beat him. At the same time, Rep. Keitt pulled his gun, verbally threatening to shoot to kill anyone who tried to interfere, while Rep. Edmundson guarded the other side, blocking people from approaching the caning.
Sen. Sumner actually ripped his desk free of its bolting to escape, but he was blinded by the blood already pouring down into his eyes and became an easier target for Rep. Brooks, who continued to beat him, until his cane broke from the force — but then beat him with the bottom portion until Sen. Sumner collapsed, unconscious. At that point, two New York congressmen managed to break the caning up, demanding that this stop before Sen. Sumner was killed. The shattered parts of the cane were left by Rep. Brooks on the floor, where they were gathered up as victory trophies by the southern representatives, although Rep. Edmundson gave the top portion of the cane (with the metal tip) to the House Sergeant-at-Arms, a pro-slavery Democrat from Pennsylvania.
The reactions were instantaneous. Southerners made a hero of Rep. Brooks, and the slivers from his cane were revered similar to fragments of the True Cross. Rep. Brooks was tried in D.C. civil court, convicted of assault, fined $300 and booted from the House, and then immediately re-elected by an overwhelming margin. Rep. Keitt resigned from the House rather than stand trial, but he was also re-elected by an overwhelming margin.
But the reactions in the north were stunningly different. Here, in front of everyone, southerners had lived up to the allegations made by the Republicans, showing beyond question that they believed themselves to be an aristocracy above reproach. The American Party supporters might still be saying that they knew nothing, but even they had to know that their party was finished, as northerners opted for the Republicans as their defense against the Slave Power. Perhaps few Americans actually believed that immigrants of different religions and races should be treated the same as the descendants of the English were, but the South made it obvious that they thought of all northerners as the social equals of slaves, but not of them. And so northerners rushed to join the Republican Party. Even American Party stars, such as Speaker of the House Nathaniel Banks from Massachusetts, jumped to the Republicans (and Banks resigned as Speaker as a result).
The opposition to the Slave Power unifies
Really, if the caning had happened six months earlier, before so many people had committed their support for the election of 1856, the Republicans might have won a plurality and the Electoral College in 1856, but the swing was so last-minute that it swamped everyone. And some of the northern states, such as Pennsylvania, Indiana and Illinois, still had a significant pro-slavery minority — but if Pennsylvania and either of the other two had changed sides, Frémont, despite his rather slender qualifications, would have become president instead of the Pennsylvania doughface James Buchanan. The only state won by the American Party was the slave state of Maryland, one of only two slave states (the other being neighboring Delaware) where the Republicans were even on the ballot.
As it happened, Buchanan wasted no time in offending northerners with his pro-Southern bias, although his close ally and Supreme Court Chief Justice, Roger Taney from Maryland, cast the decisive blow exactly two days into the Buchanan presidency, when he wrote the majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which held that Congress could not block slavery in the territories, nor could any state block slaves from being brought in, and blacks were blocked in perpetuity from becoming citizens of the United States or of any state.
Even though one of the two dissenting Supreme Court justices resigned over Taney’s majority opinion, both Taney and Buchanan believed that they had resolved the slavery question in the South’s favor for good as the first act of Buchanan’s presidency. They were very wrong, as Dred Scott simply intensified the post-caning belief in the North that the South saw itself as the current American aristocracy and was prepared to ride roughshod over its enemies until the entire country was open to slavery. Within the next four years, even the Democrats had splintered into a northern faction and a southern faction, and the remnant of the American Party was solely a northern party (which went along with the Republicans in nominating Abraham Lincoln in 1860).
In the 1860 election, every single free state gave the Republicans a popular-vote majority and all of its electoral votes except for three: New Jersey, where strange voting patterns and some local ballot errors ended up giving Lincoln 4 of the state’s 7 electoral votes, with the other 3 going to the Democrats; and both California (4 votes) and Oregon (3 votes), where Lincoln won a narrow plurality in a three-way race. But none of those votes were required for the Republican victory, because Lincoln ended up with 180 electoral votes, but only 152 were needed to win.
That explains the creation and rise of the Republican Party, along with what it stood for. In the next column, we’ll consider its current status and future prospects.
Be seeing you.