The South noted this, and it regarded, not the platform, but the record of the Republican party and of the statesmen the party was following.
Long before 1860, that great American scholar, George Ticknor, saw the dilemma in which the North was involving itself by its concern over slavery in the South, and he thus stated it, in a letter to his friend, William Ellery Channing, April 30, 1842:[76]
"On the subject of our relations with the South and its slavery, we must—as I have always thought—do one of two things; either keep honestly the bargain of the Constitution as it shall be interpreted by the authorities—of which the Supreme Court of the United States is the chief and safest—or declare honestly that we can no longer in our conscience consent to keep it, and break it."
The North had failed to "keep honestly the bargain of the Constitution" by faithfully delivering fugitive slaves and leaving the question of slavery to be dealt with by the States in which it existed, and was now, in 1860, upon the other horn of the dilemma—repudiating and denouncing a decision of the Supreme Court, which, as Mr. Ticknor had said, was the "chief and safest authority." But during that campaign of 1860 very many, perhaps a majority of the Republican voters, failed to realize what their party was standing for. Indeed, down to this day the members of that organization, taught as they have been, indignantly deny that a vote for Lincoln and Hamlin in 1860 looked to an interference with slavery in the States.
But now Professor Emerson David Fite, of Yale University, sees in 1911 what was the underlying hope, and consequently the ultimate aim, of the Republican party in 1860, exactly as the South saw it then. In a powerful summing up of more evidence than there is room to recite here, he says: "The testimony of the Democracy and of the leaders of the Republican party accords well with the evidence of daily events in revealing Republican aggression. The party hoped to destroy slavery, and this was something new in a large political organization."[77]
That this party, when it should ultimately come into full power, would, to carry out the purpose which Professor Fite now sees, ignore the Federal Constitution was, in 1860, evident to Southerners from the following facts:
In 1841 the governor of Virginia demanded of the governor of New York the extradition of two men indicted in Virginia for enticing away slaves from their masters. Governor Seward, of New York, refused the demand, on the ground that no such offence existed in New York. This case did not go to the courts, but in 1860 the governor of Kentucky made a similar demand in a like case on the governor of Ohio, who placed his refusal on the same grounds as had Governor Seward in the former case. The Supreme Court of the United States in this case decided that the governor of Ohio, in refusing to deliver up the fugitive, was violating the Constitution. The court further said:
"If the governor of Ohio refuses to discharge this duty there is no power delegated to the general government, either through the judicial department or any other department, to use any coercive means to compel him."[78]
If these two governors had defied the Federal Constitution, so had eleven State legislatures. From 1854 to 1860, inclusive, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, had all passed new "personal liberty laws" to abrogate the new fugitive slave law of 1850.
Of these laws Professor Alexander Johnston said: