By Jim Burran Dalton-Whitfield Civil War 150th Anniversary Committee
Dalton Daily Citizen
DALTON —
During the spring of 1860, while the Democratic Party self-destructed in the presence of a national audience, two other political parties were holding nominating conventions of their own. One of these was the recently-organized Constitutional Union Party, comprised mainly of former Southern Whigs and other splinter groups. The other was the 6-year-old Republican Party, dedicated to preventing the westward expansion of slavery.
During the 1830s and 1840s, as a rival party to the Democrats, the Whig Party enjoyed a national following and in fact elected two presidents, William Henry Harrison in 1840 and Zachary Taylor in 1848. Whigs disdained the “common man” reputation of the Democrats and were usually persons of financial substance. But by 1852 the Whig Party had become a victim of the growing sectional dispute between North and South.
Into the breach stepped the Constitutional Union Party. Tracing its origins from 1858, it attracted former Southern Whigs and other political orphans. The Constitutional Union Party’s political strength lay in the Upper South, but pockets of support could be found elsewhere. This brand-new political organization met on May 9, 1860, at Baltimore to select its first and only presidential slate. Rather than fashioning a campaign platform, the convention simply adopted a statement pledging loyalty to the Constitution and preservation of the Union, thereby avoiding direct contact with the slavery issue.
As its presidential nominee, the convention selected the colorless and relatively unknown John Bell of Tennessee. Having served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat and then in the U.S. Senate as a Whig, Bell emerged as a leader in the new Constitutional Union Party at the time of its creation. His 1860 vice-presidential running mate was also a former Whig, the famous orator and former U. S. Senator Edward Everett of Massachusetts.
A week later, on May 16, the Republican Party opened its nominating convention in Chicago. Republican leaders could scarcely contain themselves. The once-powerful Democratic Party was in the process of splitting into Northern and Southern factions, thereby diluting the chances that either Democratic nominee could win in November. On top of that, the Constitutional Union Party had arisen as an Upper South fringe group, thus weakening Democratic power even further. Republicans sniffed an opportunity if only they could find the right candidate.
Established in 1854 with the primary aim of preventing the westward expansion of slavery, the Republicans had virtually no following below the Mason-Dixon Line. Yet their first presidential campaign in 1856 had achieved significant success in the non-slave states, thanks in part to their famous candidate John C. Fremont, “The Pathfinder.” Four years later, party officials understood that to win the presidency they must find a candidate who would be acceptable to abolitionists as well as those who simply wanted to prevent the expansion of slavery into the West.
Going into the convention, the Republican front-runner was U. S. Senator William H. Seward of New York, an abolitionist. But neither Seward nor the other leading candidates could marshal enough delegates to secure the nomination. While floor leaders jockeyed among various delegate combinations, a compromise candidate emerged in the person of Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. On the 3rd ballot the delegates lined up behind Lincoln and chose U. S. Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as his running mate.
Lincoln’s was an unlikely story. Born in 1809 to a backwoods Kentucky family, he was largely self-educated. Relocating to Illinois as a boy, Lincoln grew up at manual labor and small business enterprises until 1836, when he became a lawyer. After serving several terms in the Illinois state house as a Whig, in 1846 Lincoln was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives. This single term in Congress represented the only time he was elected to national office prior to 1860. In the meantime, he ran for the U. S. Senate twice and was defeated both times. During his 1858 senatorial campaign, Lincoln attracted national attention through a series of debates with his Democratic opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. Western expansion of slavery was the primary topic of those debates.
Now, on May 18, 1860, Lincoln became a presidential candidate in an improbable four-way race. If the Republicans could win the majority of the non-slave states, Lincoln would win the election. But if that happened, what would the South do?
This is the second in a series of articles that will appear between now and November on the presidential election of 1860, which touched off the decision by Southern states to secede from the United States.
