THE CONVERGENCE OF LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS Professor of History, Indiana University. In the last speech of his career, which was read to the Senate by a friend, Calhoun declared that the strongest cord of a political nature that bound the two sections together consisted of the many ties existing between the northern and southern elements of the Whig and Democratic Parties. "Both", he asserted, "extended to every part of the Union, and strongly contributed to hold all its parts together." The discouraged old statesman then pointed out that the powerful cord furnished by the organized, nation-wide parties was snapping, as other cords had already done, under the strain of sectional agitation.1 Though recognizing the gravity of the situation portrayed by the dying Calhoun, the Union-savers of 1850, after carrying the Compromise measures, believed that they had prevented the severance of the political bonds that united the North and South. By 1860, however, the situation had become more strained than in 1850. In the campaign of 1860, there were four candidates for the presidency, not one of whom was backed by a nation-wide party. A study of the election returns reveals that Bell and Breckinridge ran almost even in the slaveholding States, with an almost negligible support in the North. Lincoln and Douglas were northern candidates. Douglas carried Missouri by a slight plurality over Bell, but in all the remaining slave-holding States his aggregate vote was but little larger than that received in Missouri alone. In no other southern State did his vote amount to half that received by either Breckinridge or Bell, while in the entire South he received an aggregate vote that was less than a third of that of either of the southern candidates. Lincoln received over 17,000 votes in Missouri, and but few over half that number in all the remaining States of the South.2 Of the four parties, two were southern while the other two were northern. The assumption that the Constitutional Union party was made up of strong unionist voters is largely errone 1 Cong. Globe, 31 Cong., 1 sess., Part I, pp. 451-543. Senate, March 4, 1850. 2 The total vote for Bell in the slaveholding States was 515,973; that for Breckinridge was 571,051. The total vote for Bell in the non-slaveholding States was 72,906; that for Breckinridge was 278,750. It should be kept in mind that 178,871 votes were cast for Breckinridge electors in Pennsylvania alone. This vote, the result of a fusion arrangement between the Northern Democratic party and the Southern Democratic party, greatly exaggerates the real strength of Breckinridge in that State, while it disguises the strength of Douglas, who, on the face of the returns, received only the support of the 16,765 Douglas Democrats who refused to accept fusion. ous. The term Union in the party name has been too strongly stressed, while the term Constitutional has been too lightly noticed. This party included the greater portion of the Whig party of the South plus a remnant of the same party of the North. It stood for a Union based on the Constitution as it was made by the "fathers". It was a party supporting the full constitutional rights of slaveholders, and it refused to take an open position on the question of slavery in the territories, because, in the nature of the case, it could not do so and maintain its existence.3 In truth we had in 1860 two elections, one in the South and one in the North. The Union was no longer bound together by nation-wide parties. This cord had finally "snapped", and the situation which Calhoun believed to be at hand a decade earlier had actually developed. The North would support Bell no more than it would support Breckinridge. The South would support neither Lincoln nor Douglas. A friend of Douglas, living in the moderate State of North Carolina, wrote to an Indiana leader: "There is no man in America, I think, who had more popularity in this State than Senator Douglas prior to his difference of opinion with Mr. Buchanan on the admission of Kansas with the Lecompton Constitution. Since that time however he has been the especial object of misrepresentation, calumny and vituperation. His warmest and best friends are assailing and denouncing him. In fact thousands of people in North Carolina who once held him in the highest veneration, as the author of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and the abrogation of the Missouri restriction [now regard him] as the blackest black Republican in the Confederacy."4 Had not each section, since the days of Jackson, been so thoroughly divided along party lines, the coming war could have been more easily foreseen. The Whig and Democratic parties had both been nation-wide parties. Each had been strong in both North and South. There was no "solid South" in the ante-bellum period. In fact, the South was a far better friend of the Whig party after 1840 than was the North. By 1860, however, the Republican party, a thoroughly sectional party, had become not only much stronger in numbers than the Whig party had ever been in 3 As a matter of fact the decision which southern citizens made in 1861 was a far more fundamental test than the decision of 1860. Party ties and party traditions determined how most southerners should vote in 1860, but when it was necessary to decide between the Union and the Confederacy, party ties were not so effective as the varying social and economic conditions of the different geographic areas. Party lines did not hold in 1861. Arthur C. Cole, The Whig Party in the South (Washington, 1913), chap. 10. 4 Captain J. L. DeCartaret to John G. Davis (Raleigh, North Carolina), Jan. 11, 1860, in unpublished correspondence of John G. Davis. Davis was a member of Congress from a district of western Indiana. He was a staunch supporter of Douglas both before and after the Lecompton controversy. 5 From 1836 to 1848. inclusive, the Whig and Democratic parties were of about equal strength in the South. In 1844, it was not the South but the North that defeated Clay. In 1848, the South and East, without the aid of a single State of the Northwest, elected Taylor. In 1852. there was a Democratic land-slide in both North and South. After 1852, the bulk of the Whig party in the South, uniting with a small remnant of the party in the North, continued a separate existence to the Civil War, under new party names. In 1860, the Constitutional Union party polled almost as great a vote in the slaveholding States as did the Southern Democratic party. (See note 2 above). |