republican party platform position on slavery in 1860 presidential election
United States presidential election, 1860 The 1860 Republican National Convention nominated Lincoln, a moderate former Congressman from Illinois, as its standard-bearer. The Republican Party platform promised not to interfere with slavery in the states, but opposed the further extension of slavery into the territories. The first 1860 Democratic National Convention adjourned without agreeing on a nominee, but a second convention nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for president. Douglas's support for the concept of popular sovereignty, which called for each individual territory to decide on the status of slavery, alienated many Southern Democrats. The Southern Democrats, with the support of President Buchanan, held their own convention and nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for president. The 1860 Constitutional Union Convention nominated a ticket led by former Senator John Bell of Tennessee.
Republican Party (United States) Founded in the Northern states in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, modernizers, ex Whigs and ex Free Soilers, the Republican Party quickly became the principal opposition to the dominant Democratic Party and the briefly popular Know Nothing Party. The main cause was opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise by which slavery was kept out of Kansas. The Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil. The first public meeting of the general "anti-Nebraska" movement where the name "Republican" was suggested for a new anti-slavery party was held on March 20, 1854, in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin.[22] The name was partly chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jefferson's Republican Party.[23]
If the South Had Won the Civil War The Confederacy was also faced with the issue of slavery, very much contested despite its victory in what came to be known as "The War of the Southern Revolution." With the rest of the world abolishing slavery, Confederates started feeling that they were out of step. Virginia abolished slavery in its territory, followed by Kentucky and North Carolina, and later Maryland and Tennessee. A new political force named the Jeffersonian Party called for abolition of slavery and gained the support of such prominent persons as Stephen Dodson Ramseur, Robert E. Rodes, John Pegram and, later, Leonidas Polk. Finally, Confederate slavery was fully abolished in 1885, the Liberation Bill being adopted with little opposition under the presidency of James Longstreet. Southerners having resolved this by themselves, rather than having the decision forced upon them by a victorious hostile army, helped avoid any lingering bitterness, and no organization resembling the Ku Klux Klan arose.
Whig Party (United States) In 1854, the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which opened the new territories to slavery, was passed. Southern Whigs generally supported the Act while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed. Most remaining Northern Whigs, like Lincoln, joined the new Republican Party and strongly attacked the Act, appealing to widespread Northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. Other Whigs joined the Know Nothing Party, attracted by its nativist crusades against so-called "corrupt" Irish and German immigrants. In the South, the Whig Party vanished—but as Thomas Alexander has shown, Whiggism as a modernizing policy orientation persisted for decades.[9] Historians estimate that in the South in 1856 former Whig Fillmore retained 86 percent of the 1852 Whig voters when he ran as the American Party candidate. He won only 13% of the Northern vote, though that was just enough to tip Pennsylvania out of the Republican column. The future in the North, most observers thought at the time, was Republican. Scant prospects for the shrunken old party seemed extant and after 1856 virtually no Whig organization remained at the regional level.[15] Twenty-six states sent 150 delegates to the last national convention in September 1856. The convention met for only two days and on the second day (and only ballot) quickly nominated Fillmore for President, who had already been nominated for President by the Know Nothing Party. Andrew Jackson Donelson was nominated for Vice President. Some Whigs and others adopted the mantle of the Opposition Party for several years and enjoyed some individual electoral successes.