The Democrats' Electoral Fortunes during the Lecompton Crisis

THE DEMOCRATS' ELECTORAL FORTUNES DURING THE LECOMPTON CRISIS Bruce W. Collins When James Buchanan became President in March, 1857, he told a Supreme Court justice that his purpose was to "destroy the dangerous slavery agitation . . . strengthen the Democratic party . . . and thus restore peace to our distracted country."1 By November, 1858, when the mid-term congressional elections were over in the free states, Buchanan appeared to be directionless, his policy discredited, and his party broken.2 The period from March, 1857 to November, 1858 supposedly marked a watershed in the sectional crisis leading to civil war because it witnessed a concerted effort to resolve the problem of slavery in Kansas. When Buchanan tried to bringKansas to statehood under the pro-slavery Lecompton constitution, he gave new vigor and unity to the Republicans and provoked the rebellion of Senator Stephen A. Douglas and many Northern Democrats. The seeds of the Democratic split in 1860, which opened the way for a Republican victory and subsequent secession in the Deep South, were sown in 1857-58. Blame for this turn of events has customarily been laid at Buchanan's door. Especially disastrous was his decision in November, 1857, to endorse the pro-slavery Lecompton constitution for Kansas. Recent historians of the period have suggested two important revisions to this standard view. William R. Brock and David M. Potter have hinted at the wider political context in which Buchanan's decision to endorse the Lecompton constitution was taken.3 And David Meerse has argued that factional disputes had as much to do with Democratic divisions as did disagreements over policy. Democratic congressmen seeking re-election were not defeated specifically on the basis of their position on Lecompton.4 Yet no study places 1 Roy F. Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York, 1967), 66. 2 ¡bid., 18-20, 27, 29-30, 38; Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (New York, 1950) I, 62. 3 William R. Brock, Conflict and Transformation. The United States, 1844-1877 (Harmondsworth , Middx., 1973), 156-7. David M. Potter (Completed and ed. by Don E. Fehrenbacher), ThelmpendingCrisis, 1848-1861 (New York, 1976), 297-315. Also Philips. Klein, President James Buchanan. A Biography (University Park, Pa. 1962), 297-8, 317-27. Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (Lawrence, 1975) is a briefsynthesis. 4 David E. Meerse, "The NorthernDemocratic Party and theCongressional Elections of 1858," CivilWar History, XIX (1973), 119-37. For anotherrevision ofstandard views about the Democratic split in 1857-58 see Meerse, "Origins of the Buchanan-Douglas Feud Reconsidered,"Journal of theIllinois State Historical Society, LXVII (1974), 154-74. 314 LECOMPTON CRISIS315 the congressional elections of 1858 in the longer chronological perspective of elections during the 1850's or in the wider comparative perspective of elections for state posts held in 1858. It is time the Democrats' electoral fortunes were fully re-examined during a political crisis when their party was supposedly torn asunder. The first thing to be noted about the Democratic party in 1857 was its nominal leader's initial weakness in the South. When Buchanan was nominated at the party convention in 1856, the Southern delegates "preserved their dignity and their seats, and held their hats," reserving their enthusiasm for Douglas. Indeed, Douglas's final support in 1856 included the delegates from only four free states; his mass support came from nine slave states, including the full delegations of eight.5 After the election of 1856, Southern Democrats were far from united under, or contented with, Buchanan's leadership. One source of anxiety among some Southern Democrats was Robert J. Walker, governor of Kansas Territory, who had been appointed by Buchanan to settle the dispute between free soil and pro-slavery factions in Kansas. Although he held no brief for either side, he appeared to be leaning to the free soilers during the summer of 1857. This drift exposed established leaders in a number of slave states to criticisms from within their own party for letting Buchanan condone an anti-slavery governor in Kansas.6 The correspondence of Senator R. M. T. Hunter7 and of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens and Howell Cobb revealed such fears of intra-party squabbling over the inadequacy of...