In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

175 ChAPter 15 the Republican phenomenon But for the pioneer work of the abolitionists there would have been no Republican Party. —leVi CoffiN Just how did an unknown politician like Abraham lincoln, who had won only brief terms in the illinois legislature and the u.s. House of Representatives, attain the presidency of the united states in 1860? lincoln was able to catch the rising tide of antislavery sentiment initiated in 1840 by Birney and the liberty party, which was carried on by the free soil and Republican parties for two decades, and in 1860 he won a plurality in an election split among four candidates. fortunately for the Republicans, the pro-slavery reaction to the antislavery movement resulted in two new parties, the southern Democrats and the Constitutional union party, splitting the vote and creating conditions that made possible lincoln’s election. Although they had garnered only just over 62,000 votes in the 1844 election, the liberty party showing proved that political abolitionism was increasing the nation’s awareness of the need for reform. the efforts of the abolitionists and their new political base had spurred the slave power to increase their hydra-headed thrusts to spread the evil practice everywhere, and the reaction from the North, while not immediately overwhelming, would grow gradually over the next three presidential election cycles. the steady acceptance of the antislavery philosophy of Birney and the pioneer antislavery liberty party by American voters is illustrated by the growth of the vote from Birney’s minuscule 7,453 in 1840 and 62,103 in 1844 to lincoln’s 1,866,352 in 1860. in between were Martin Van Buren, with 291,263 votes on the free soil ticket in 1848; another free soiler, John 176| Chapter 15 p. Hale, with 155,900 votes in 1852 (the Compromise of 1850 having mollified some voters); and the first Republican candidate, John C. fremont, with 1,391,555 votes in 1856. A case can be made that lincoln was influenced by Birney’s antislavery positions and his courageous stand through their common associate, salmon p. Chase. According to lincoln historian John Niven, “Chase had provided much of the intellectual and constitutional underpinnings of the free soil movement that eventually provided the ideology of the new Republican party.”1 Chase and Birney had collaborated in legal battles against slavery in Cincinnati, and lincoln doubtless knew of Birney’s abolitionist political activities, because Abe campaigned for Henry Clay in 1844 when Birney was the liberty party standard-bearer. Birney’s influence clearly seems to have been carried through Chase generally to the Republican party and specifically to lincoln. Birney had articulated the “higher law” theory of the constitutional protection of liberty for all in a speech to the judiciary committee of the New york legislature on 5 March 1840. “in one sense there are laws by which even the makers of the Constitution as well as the legislators are bound—those rules of right existing in the public mind prior to the Constitution,” Birney recorded in his diary.2 it was a restatement of a fundamental moral principle with roots in english law that had been used by the founders in drafting the American Constitution. Chase followed with a similar statement about eighteen months later. this idea was embraced two decades later by lincoln and repeated by Chase when they both were contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. Chase had made a similar argument in an address to the liberty party convention 9 December 1841 in Columbus, ohio.3 “in particular, Chase made the argument that lincoln and others adopted, linking the anti-slavery natural rights philosophy as expressed in the Declaration of independence to the Constitution,” notes Niven, observing, “lincoln had been attracted to Chase’s courageous battle for human rights in the ohio of the 1830s through the 1850s. lincoln shared with Chase a deep-rooted opposition to slavery.”4 Also, John quincy Adams had cited a somewhat similar “natural law” of the Declaration of independence in the appeal of the Amistad slave ship mutiny case in November 1840.5 it must have provided Birney great satisfaction to preside over the southern and Western liberty Convention in Cincinnati in June 1845. Here he stood boldly in front of two thousand sweating, cheering delegates, a chairman who had been threatened with death and run out of the same town nearly a decade previously. Although earlier he had been a pariah in Cincinnati, now an enthusiastic throng was...

Share