CHAPTER XII[ToC]
BLACK REPUBLICANISM
The passing of the Whig party after its defeat in the election of 1852, must be counted among the most momentous facts in our political history. Whatever were its errors, whatever its shortcomings, it was at least a national organization, with a membership that embraced anti-slavery Northerners and slave-holding Southerners, Easterners and Westerners. As events proved, there was no national organization to take its place. One of the two political ties had snapped that had held together North and South. The Democratic party alone could lay claim to a national organization and membership.
Party has been an important factor in maintaining national unity. The dangers to the Union from rapid territorial expansion have not always been realized. The attachment of new Western communities to the Union has too often been taken as a matter of course. Even when the danger of separation was small, the isolation and provincialism of the new West was a real menace to national welfare. Social institutions did their part in integrating East and West; but the politically integrating force was supplied by party. Through their membership in national party organizations, the most remote Western pioneers were energized to think and act on national issues.[[507]] In much the same way, the great party organizations retarded the growth of sectionalism at the South. The very fact that party ties held long after social institutions had been broken asunder, proves their superior cohesion and nationalizing power. The inertia of parties during the prolonged slavery controversy was an element of strength. Because these formal organizations did not lend themselves readily to radical policies, they provided a frame-work, within which adjustments of differences were effected without danger to the Union. Had Abolitionists of the radical type taken possession of the organization of either party, can it be doubted that the Union would have been imperiled much earlier than it was, and very probably when it could not have withstood the shock?
No one who views history calmly will maintain, that it would have been well for either the radical or the conservative to have been dominant permanently. If the radical were always able to give application to his passing, restless humors, society would lose its coherence. If the conservative always had his way, civilization would stagnate. It was a fortunate circumstance that neither the Whig nor the Democratic party was composed wholly either of radicals or conservatives. Party action was thus a resultant. If it was neither so radical as the most radical could desire, nor so conservative as the ultra-conservative wished, at least it safeguarded the Union and secured the political achievements of the past. Moreover, the two great party organizations had done much to assimilate the foreign elements injected into our population. No doubt the politician who cultivated "the Irish vote" or "the German vote," was obeying no higher law than his own interests; but his activities did much to promote that fusion of heterogeneous elements which has been one of the most extraordinary phenomena of American society. With the disappearance of the Whig party, one of the two great agencies in the disciplining and educating of the immigrant was lost.
For a time the Native American party seemed likely to take the place of the moribund Whig party. Many Whigs whose loyalty had grown cold but who would not go over to the enemy, took refuge in the new party. But Native Americanism had no enduring strength. Its tenets and its methods were in flat contradiction to true American precedents. Greeley was right when he said of the new party, "It would seem as devoid of the elements of persistence as an anti-cholera or an anti-potato-rot party would be." By its avowed hostility to Catholics and foreigners, by its insistence upon America for Americans, and by its secrecy, it forfeited all real claims to succeed the Whig party as a national organization.
After the downfall of the Whig party, then, the Democratic party stood alone as a truly national party, preserving the integrity of its national organization and the bulk of its legitimate members. But the events of President Pierce's administration threatened to be its undoing. If the Kansas-Nebraska bill served to unite outwardly the Northern and Southern wings of the party, it served also to crystallize those anti-slavery elements which had hitherto been held in solution. An anti-Nebraska coalition was the outcome. Out of this opposition sprang eventually the Republican party, which was, therefore, in its inception, national neither in its organization nor in its membership.
For "Know-Nothingism," as Native Americanism was derisively called, Douglas had exhibited the liveliest antipathy. Shortly after the triumph of the Know-Nothings in the municipal elections of Philadelphia, he was called upon to give the Independence Day address in the historic Independence Square.[[508]] With an audacity rarely equalled, he seized the occasion to defend the great principle of self-government as incorporated in the Nebraska bill, just become law, and to beard Know-Nothingism in its den. Under guise of defending national institutions and American principles, he turned his oration into what was virtually the first campaign speech of the year in behalf of Democracy. Never before were the advantages of a party name so apparent. Under his skillful touch the cause of popular government, democracy, religious and civil liberty, became confounded with the cause of Democracy, the only party of the nation which stood opposed to "the allied forces of Abolitionism, Whigism, Nativeism, and religious intolerance, under whatever name or on whatever field they may present themselves."[[509]]
There can be no doubt that Douglas voiced his inmost feeling, when he declared that "to proscribe a man in this country on account of his birthplace or religious faith is revolting to our sense of justice and right."[[510]] In his defense of religious toleration he rose to heights of real eloquence.
Douglas paid dearly for this assault upon Know-Nothingism. The order had organized lodges also in the Northwest, and when Douglas returned to his own constituency after the adjournment of Congress, he found the enemy in possession of his own redoubts. With some show of reason, he afterward attributed the demonstration against him in Chicago to the machinations of the Know-Nothings. His experience with the mob left no manner of doubt in his mind that Know-Nothingism, and not hostility to his Kansas-Nebraska policy, was responsible for his failure to command a hearing.[[511]]