Abstract

This essay addresses two problems. The first is the political impact of the abolitionist movement (or reputed lack thereof) on the collapse and realignment of parties within the free states that preceded the Civil War. The second is the political claims made by contemporary right wing fundamentalists that the abolitionist movement supplies them with religious, moral, and historical precedents for their political activism today. What puts these problems together on a common ground is centrality of religious activism in defining American politics. This essay, therefore, urges above all, that political historians take religion extremely seriously. The burden of the essay's specific argument is to link the evolution of abolitionist activism to the evolution of the Whig Party in the free states, 1840-1856, arguing that the history of the former is central to understanding the history of the latter. In the process of developing these claims, the essay also contests vigorously contemporary right wing assertions that abolitionism is the moral and spiritual progenitor of today's "pro-life" and "family values" crusades.

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