USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. V > Part 2
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THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
The essential fallacy and futility of minor parties can be perceived in their very nature and purpose. They are designed to serve some special interest, either temporary or local. No governmental policy worthy of the name can be based upon such issues. It must be comprehensive of all parts of the nation and of perma- nent or at least enduring application. For example, the construction of a Pacific railroad or an Isthmian canal was a great project, worthy of advocacy in a national party platform. But it would manifestly have been absurd to found a political party upon such an issue. The same may be said of the various issues of the present day. They are of indisputable importance, but to base a party upon any one of them alone would be futile and absurd. They must be dealt with by a party which takes a comprehensive view of them all and which will not dispose of them in accordance with some special, local, or temporary interest, but will act in conformity with the general and permanent interests of the whole nation.
With this conception of the party and of the citizen's duty to the party before us, this history of the Repub- lican party is presented in confidence that its facts of record will demonstrate the fitness of that organization, as one of the two great dominant parties, to be entrusted, as it has so greatly been, with the duties, powers, and responsibilities of American government whenever and so often as it receives the mandate of the electorate. Its very name is auspicious. There were others before it, two of them, that bore the same name-applied to them without special significance, as has been the case
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
with many other party designations. Jefferson called his party the Republican, in contradistinction to the Federalist, though indeed the names would have been far more logically and fittingly applied if they had been exchanged. Again the name was used for a few years by the party opposed to Jacksonian Democracy, until it was merged with the Whigs. Neither of those short- lived organizations had in its purpose or in its achieve- ments anything particularly to justify its use of the name. That was reserved for the present party, which has now endured through a triumphant career twice as long as the united ages of its two predecessors.
Republican : The Party of the Republic. Republic : The Res Publica, the Common Wealth. The deriva- tion of the name denotes its purport. It means a party not of a class or of a section or of a period, but of the general and lasting good of the whole people. It means a party which knows no sectional divisions on geo- graphical lines, but has regard for North and South, for East and West, alike. It means a party which recog- nizes no distinctions of caste or class or social rank, but serves equally the interests of rich and poor, of employer and employe, of capital and labor, of domestic industry and external commerce; acting always upon the impregnable principle that the whole is greater than any of its parts, and that to promote the welfare of the whole nation is the best possible means of promoting the welfare of all the parts. It means a party which aims at once at progress in the arts of civilization and in all the beneficent conditions and circumstances of human life, individual and social, and
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THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
at the conservation of those fundamental rights of person and of property which are essential to the dura- bility of all government and even civilization itself.
These are the things for which a party called Repub- lican must unceasingly stand, if it is to be worthy of its name. It is for the reader of these pages to judge, from the record, how faithfully and efficiently the present Republican party has stood for them for now more than threescore years, how truly it stands for them to-day, and how trustworthy is its promise to stand for them in the future.
THE FORMATIVE PERIOD CHAPTER I ORIGIN
T HE Republican party was organized in 1854. That was the time of the third great crisis in the domestic history of the nation. The first had occurred in the very establishment of our constitutional system. The second had its culmination in the Missouri Compromise of 1820, when, by giving formal recogni- tion and assent to sectional lines, it was hoped to allay the rising menace of sectionalism against nationality. For a generation that compromise endured, though the inexorable logic of events was steadily working against its perpetuity. Its principle had been to divide the United States west of the Mississippi River on the geo- graphical line of 36° 30' north latitude, with free terri- tory at the north and slave territory at the south, and to admit a State from one side concurrently with a State from the other, so as to keep the balance even between the two at Washington. That seemed like an extension of the provision of the Ordinance of 1787, which made the Northwest Territory-afterward Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin-free soil, while leaving the southwest-Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Gulf States-to slavery.
Before a dozen years had passed, however, it became
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REUBEN EATON FENTON
Reuben Eaton Fenton, 25th governor (1865-1868) ; born in Carroll, Chautauqua county, N. Y., July 4, 1819; studied law; engaged in mercantile pursuits; elected supervisor of the town of Carroll, 1843; governor of New York, 1865-1868; elected to congress and served from March 4, 1853 to March 3, 1855; reelected and served from March 4, 1857 to December 10, 1864, when he resigned, having been elected governor; electd to the United States senate and served from March 4, 1869 to March 3, 1875; appointed chairman of the United State commission to the international monetary conference in 1878; died at James- town, N. Y., August 25, 1885.
CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW
Chauncey Mitchell Depew, senator; born Peekskill, N. Y., April 23, 1834; graduated from Yale, 1856; member state assembly, 1861-1862; secretary of state of New York, 1863; appointed and confirmed U. S. minister to Japan but declined ; defeated for lieutenant governor on liberal republican ticket, 1862; regent of the university of the state of New York, 1887- 1904; declined election as U. S. senator, 1885; declined appoint- ment as secretary of state in cabinet of President Harrison; delegate at large to republican national conventions of 1888, 1892, 1896, 1900; placed Benjamin Harrison and Levi P. Morton in nomination for the presidency; U. S. senator, 1895-1911; distinguished as an after dinner speaker.
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THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
apparent that there was more territory for free States north of the Missouri Compromise line than for slave States south of it. So Texas was annexed and a vast region was taken from Mexico to provide material for more slave States. But this operation proved disap- pointing. Texas remained one single State instead of being divided into the five that had been expected ; California came in as a single free State instead of being divided into two, one free and one slave; and New Mexico and Arizona would obviously not be ready for statehood for many years. With Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, and other northern Territories rapidly prepar- ing for entrance into the Union, each having claims based upon fitness that could not be denied, it was evident that the Missouri Compromise could not prevent the free States from soon outnumbering the slave.
Therefore in 1854 the pro-slavery party, with its control of Congress, enacted the Kansas-Nebraska bill. That measure was a virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise in that it permitted slavery and slave States north of the line which the latter act had estab- lished. It did not, it is true, command the existence of slavery nor declare the power of Congress to require its extension in the northern Territories. But it estab- lished the principle of "squatter sovereignty," under which the residents, even temporary, of any Territory might determine whether it should be free or slave. This was in the face of the constitutional provision that Congress should make all laws for the government of Territories before their admission to the Union as
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
States, as well as in violation of the Compromise of 1820.
The result was the preciptation of the final conflict over sectionalism, with a complete breaking up of the old parties and a general political realignment. The Democratic party was rent asunder, a large proportion of its members in the north refusing to sanction the Kansas-Nebraska bill. The Whig party practically went out of existence. The Free Soil party survived in some strength, but its duration of life was very brief. It was too radical to obtain wide influence. Obviously the time was ripe for a new national organi- zation which should grapple with the great issues rising dominant above all others that had been matters of contention between Whigs and Democrats. These lat- ter issues had, indeed, existed from the beginning of the nation and were in themselves of great moment. They included questions of the tariff, banking, internal im- provements such as roads and canals, the power of the President's veto, and strict or liberal construction of the Constitution. Some of them dated from the days of Hamilton and Jefferson; some of them have persisted until the present time.
But at the middle of the last century far-seeing and thoughtful men perceived that all these were sub- ordinate, for the time, to the two supreme issues of Liberty and Union. There was little use in debating what should be the policy of the nation until it was positively and permanently determined whether there was to be one nation or two. And if it was to remain one nation, all questions of economics must be held in
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THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
abeyance to that of whether it was to be a nation of free or of slave labor. So, during the protracted debate in Congress over the Kansas-Nebraska bill, there arose an immeasurably wider and more significant discussion throughout the free States of the north as to what should be done to meet the menace of that measure.
The logic of events drew together men of three parties : Democrats, Whigs, and Free Soilers; together with many humanitarians who had not been closely affiliated with any party. Among the Democrats were Nathaniel P. Banks and George S. Boutwell of Massa- chusetts, Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, Lyman Trum- bull and John M. Palmer of Illinois, Hannibal Ham- lin of Maine, Francis P. Blair of Missouri, Montgom- ery Blair of Maryland, and Preston King and William Cullen Bryant of New York. The Whigs contributed Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, Zachariah Chandler and Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, Henry S. Lane and Schuyler Colfax of Indiana, Jacob W. Grimes of Iowa; Thomas Corwin, Benjamin F. Wade, and John Sherman of Ohio; George Ashmun of Massachusetts, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and William H. Seward, E. D. Morgan, and Horace Greeley of New York. From the ranks of the Free Soil party came Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Horace Mann, John G. Palfrey, and Charles Francis Adams of Massachu- setts ; Owen Lovejoy of Illinois; Joshua R. Giddings and Salmon P. Chase of Ohio; George W. Julian of Indiana, and David Wilmot of Pennsylvania. Cordi- ally associated with these and lending to them their incomparable intellectual and spiritual influence were
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
the writers and thinkers of the age: Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, George William Cur- tis, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Ward Beecher, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Julia Ward Howe. No other party was ever organized by so distinguished and authoritative an array of men and women as its leaders and directors.
Many of these men had been strong partisan oppo- nents of each other. Abraham Lincoln as a Whig and Lyman Trumbull as a Democrat were rivals in a contest for the Senatorship from Illinois. But all were now agreed that in the presence of issues that over- shadowed all their former party differences they must agree to hold these latter in abeyance and to unite for the settlement of the former. Yet to some extent they brought into the composition of the new party the best characteristics of the old ones. The Whigs, who formed not only a plurality but probably a considerable majority of the combination, impressed upon it their broad and liberal views of constitutional construction. The Democrats contributed a resolute loyalty to the Union, devotion to the legitimate rights of the States, and a fine conception of the equal rights of all men under the law. The Free Soilers who, more than either of the others, had been a party of one idea, infused the whole with their passionate determination that there should be no further extension of slavery.
This last named principle was indeed the foremost and strongest in the minds of all. There was no pur- pose to interfere with slavery where it lawfully existed or where it might be lawfully extended under the terms
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
of the Missouri Compromise. Though all believed with Lincoln that the Union could not permanently exist half slave and half free, they had sufficient faith in the superior virtues of free labor to believe that in time the problem would be solved by the irresistible force of economic laws, and that the institution of slavery would perish through its own unsoundness. They were, how- ever, inflexibly determined that slavery should not be extended into the Territories which had been dedicated to freedom. All through the spring and early summer of 1854 meetings were held and correspondence was conducted, culminating in a mass-meeting at Ripon, Wisconsin, at which it was formally resolved that if the Kansas-Nebraska bill was enacted they would "throw old party organizations to the winds and organize a new party on the sole issue of the non-extension of slavery." The chief organizer of that meeting was A. E. Bovay, who had been in correspondence upon the subject with Horace Greeley and who at that meeting proposed that the new organization be known as the Republican party.
It was of course necessary to adopt a new name. The Whigs were the most numerous members of the new body, but they could not expect the Democrats to call themselves Whigs. Neither, of course, would the Whigs consent to be called Democrats, even if that name had not belonged to the party which they were about to fight. Neither Whigs nor Democrats would be known as Free Soilers. In those circumstances the suggestion of "Republican" was most felicitous. Demo- crats remembered that it had been adopted by Jefferson.
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Whigs recalled the use of it by the founders of their own party in opposition to Jackson. Free Soilers were reminded that Jefferson, in the Ordinance of 1787 which he drafted, was the pioneer Free Soiler who made the Northwest Territory free and would have made the southwest similarly free if his will could have prevailed.
The formal adoption of the name and organization of the party were reserved to a little later date. It was on July 6, 1854. The place was a grove of giant oaks at Jackson, Michigan. There a State convention was held of Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilers opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska bill. Jacob M. Howard was chairman. A platform was adopted denouncing slavery as a "relic of barbarism," demanding that Con- gress restore and maintain the restrictions imposed upon it by the Missouri Compromise, holding in abeyance all other political issues and party differences until that paramount question should be settled, and pledging cooperation under the name of the Repub- lican party. Similar action was taken at conventions in other western States a week later. It was suggested by some that a national convention be called, but Seward and others opposed such action as premature and it was not done. But throughout the free States of the north there were nominated for Congress either avowedly Republican candidates or Whigs and Free Soilers who were ready to coalesce with the Republicans.
The result was that at the elections in the fall of 1854 the new party, not yet six months old, polled a majority of the votes in about half of the States, secured
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THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
the election of a number of United States Senators, and elected a large delegation to the House of Representa- tives. When the House thus elected met for organiza- tion in the winter of 1855 it was divided among a num- ber of factions, not one of which had a majority. But so numerous were the Republicans that with the help of some allies they were able, after a struggle which lasted from December 3, 1855, to February 2, 1856, on the 133rd ballot to elect Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachu- setts as Speaker. Banks, who had begun work as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, had been a Democrat but, as already noted, had been among the foremost organ- izers of the Republican party and thus became the first Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives. He filled that difficult place in those supremely trying times with such ability and fairness that during his entire term not one of his parliamentary rulings was disputed. After this notable victory at the polls in 1854 there was some reaction in 1855, yet there was really much growth of party strength and confident preparations were made for a national campaign in 1856.
CHAPTER II
THE FIRST CAMPAIGN
T HE Republican party was conspicuously a party of the people in both its origin and formation. Instead of being organized and promulgated from a national center, it began in local and community
meetings. During the first two years of its existence these local bodies extended themselves to State conven- tions. Finally, in its third year, it essayed a national convention and a national organization. In this move- ment Michigan, which had been the scene of the party's birth and of its first State convention, fittingly took the lead. On the recommendation of the Michigan State committee the State committees of all the States in which the party had been organized issued on January 17, 1856, a call for a national convention to be held at Pittsburgh on February 22 following. This was not to be a nominating convention, nor one with a stated pro- portionate representation like the conventions of the present time, but rather a national mass-meeting for conference and counsel. It was largely attended by representative men from every State from Maine to California. There were Whigs, Democrats, Free- Soilers, Know-Nothings, and others, all now fully merged into the Republican party and called by no other name. The permanent chairman was Francis
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THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
P. Blair of Missouri, a former Democrat who had been one of the close friends of Andrew Jackson. An address to the nation was drafted by Henry J. Ray- mond and adopted by the convention, and a committee of which George W. Julian was chairman prepared and issued a call for a national nominating convention to be held at Philadelphia on June 17, 1856, the anniver- sary of the battle of Bunker Hill.
This first national nominating convention of the Republican party was organized on a basis of repre- sentation of three delegates from each Congressional district and six at-large from each State. Delegates were present from every northern State, and also from the three border States of Delaware, Maryland, and Ken- tucky. The gathering was called to order by Edwin D. Morgan of New York, afterward Governor of the State and United States Senator. Robert Emmet, a nephew of the famous Irish patriot of that name, was made temporary chairman. Later in the day Henry S. Lane of Indiana was made permanent chairman. An informal ballot was taken for a candidate for President of the United States, with the very decisive result that Colonel John C. Fremont, the "Pathfinder of the Rocky Mountains" and one of the first United States Senators from California, received 359 votes; John McLean of Ohio, 190; Charles Sumner, United States Senator from Massachusetts, 2; Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, 1; and William H. Seward, Senator from New York, 1. A formal ballot resulted still more strongly in Fremont's favor and his nomination was then made unanimous amid great enthusiasm. An
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informal ballot for Vice-President gave 259 votes for Wlliam L. Dayton, who had been a Senator from New Jersey ; 110 for Abraham Lincoln, formerly Represen- tative in Congress from Illinois; 46 for Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts ; and a few for each of a dozen other men. Dayton was then formally and unani- mously nominated, completing the ticket.
Before the balloting for President there was received a message from the managers of a faction of the American or Know-Nothing party asking for a conference with a view to cooperation and union. The American party had held a convention, had nominated Millard Fillmore for President, and had refused to commit itself against the extension of slavery. There- upon a considerable faction, including most of the delegates from the New England States and some of those from Pennsylvania and the west, withdrew. Later the anti-slavery Know-Nothings had held a separate convention, adopted a platform against slavery exten- sion, and nominated Nathaniel P. Banks for President; he ultimately retired in favor of Fremont. It was this faction that sought cooperation with the Republicans. Its message was considered by the Republican conven- tion, which decided not to accept the overture for cooperation. The Republicans would have welcomed Know-Nothing support for their candidates, but they were absolutely unwilling to identify or associate themselves in any way with that party in its intolerant and proscriptive attitude toward citizens of foreign birth.
The platform which was adopted by this first Repub-
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lican national convention, and on which the ensuing campaign was fought, made no mention of the Repub- lican party by name but spoke of the "convention of delegates" and issued its call "addressed to the people of the United States, without regard to past political differences or divisions, who are opposed to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, to the policy of the present administration, to the extension of slavery into free territory ; in favor of the admission of Kansas as a free State, of restoring the action of the Federal govern- ment to the principles of Washington and Jefferson." It demanded the maintenance of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Federal Consti- tution and the preservation of the rights of the States and of the Union of the States. It took strong ground against the extension of slavery into the free Territories, against the terrorism and oppression that had been applied to Kansas in an effort to impose slavery upon that would-be State, and demanded the admission of Kansas to the Union as a free State. It denounced the notorious "Ostend manifesto" as a "highwayman's plea." Its only references to other political or economic issues were a demand for Federal aid for the building of the Pacific Railroad and for the river and harbor improvements needed by commerce.
The campaign that followed was marked with tremendous enthusiasm and excitement throughout the north and with general apathy in the south. The Democrats had nominated James Buchanan, and the remnant of the Whigs had accepted the Know-Noth- ing nomination of Fillmore. In the south the contest
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POLITICAL AND GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
was confined to these two candidates with a practical certainty that Buchanan would run far in the lead. All through the north, however, the tripartite contest was waged with a vigor never seen before, not even in the "Hard Cider" campaign for Harrison in 1840. Mass- meetings and marching clubs were everywhere, while the press and pulpit were as impassioned as the stump speakers. The Republicans were at first confident of success. But the October elections disappointed them and in November they met with defeat. Many of the old Whigs voted for Fillmore, and while they carried for him only one State-Maryland,-in New Jersey, Illinois, and California they left Fremont in a minor- ity, so that Buchanan got the Electoral votes of those States. Had the Whigs in the four States all sup- ported Fremont and so given him the votes of those States, he would have lost by but a small number in the Electoral College. As it was he was decisively beaten, with only 114 Electoral votes to Buchanan's 174. The popular vote stood: Buchanan, 1,838,169; Fremont, 1,335,264; Fillmore, 874,534. In eleven slave States no votes were cast for the Republican ticket. The party had made no attempt to form an organization there.
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