What effect did the issue of slavery have on political parties in the 1850s?

Answer 1

~Today, you are taught that slavery was a burning issue in the mid-nineteenth century. At the time, however, it was not - at least not to the extent that "history" books would have one believe.

Slavery was an issue during the Philadelphia (Constitutional) Convention. The issue was resolved by guaranteeing the right to own slave by constitutional fiat. The right is protected at Article I, sections 2 and 9, Article IV, section 2 and by Amendments IV, V, IX and X. The only way slavery could be abolished was by state law or by Constitutional Amendment.

Before 1861, no attempt was made to abolish slavery by constitutional amendment. There was insufficient support in the North for ratification of such and amendment and the southern states would not have had to even vote to defeat it. By 1837, the northern states (unless one considers Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri and the District of Columbia to be northern) had individually abolished slavery by state law (and a careful reading of New Jersey's abolition legislation shows us that slavery remained legal even in states wherein it had been "abolished"). By constitutional mandate, slaves traveling in or through "free" states remained legal chattel (by the Full Faith and Credit Clause, the slave's status was determined by his state of legal domicile, regardless of where he or she might wander). The Constitution required that escaped slaves be returned to their rightful owners (Art IV, sec 2) and the bruhaha over the "Fugitive Slave Act" was much ado about nothing since it simply put federal teeth into the constitutional mandate.

In March, 1861, the Republican dominated northern majority in Congress passed the Corwin Amendment. If ratified, Corwin would have become Amendment XIII and would have prohibited any future amendment to abolish slavery. The southern states seceded rather than to stick around and ratify Corwin. Anyone who believes the southern states seceded to protect the right to own slaves either knows nothing of US history or the US Constitution, or is simply a fool. Why would a state secede to get or keep that which was already guaranteed? Why secede rather than to stick around and ratify Corwin, which would have protected the right into perpetuity? The icing on the cake came in 1864. An attempt was made to introduce a constitutional amendment for abolition in Congress. With the CSA states absent (they no longer belonged to the federal confederacy and had no vote in any case), Congress was unable to muster the votes to pass the act, let alone submit it to the ratification process.

The war did not end slavery. It could not. Regardless of the outcome of the war, the constitution would survive intact. Slavery was abolished after the war by the coerced ratification of Amendment XIII. Ah, what of the Emancipation Proclamation, you ask? The EP was illegal and unconstitutional (violative of the previously mentioned provisions as well as Lincoln's oath of office). Lincoln acknowledged throughout his campaign and in his First Inaugural Address that he had not the power to end slavery (nor the desire, at least where it existed). In any case, the EP was redundant. Congress had already purported to do the same thing by the equally illegal and unconstitutional Confiscation Acts, passed over Lincoln's reluctant signature months earlier.

The EP and the Acts were not humanitarian or moral gestures. They were, and were intended as, weapons of war. The goal was not to free the slaves (slaves remained in legal bondage in all regions not specifically mentioned in the act - including Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and large tracts of Virginia and Louisiana; when West Virginia was illegally and unconstitutionally admitted into the union, it was admitted as a slave state). Imagine the turmoil and havoc that would ensue if several million angry, destitute, penniless, uneducated people with no means of support and no marketable job skills were loosed on southern society. Sens Trumbull and Sumner surely did (and their words on the subject more than any other explain the real purpose intended by the Acts and the EP). It was hoped that southern troops would desert in large numbers to hurry home to protect their families, homes and property from marauding bands of freed slaves. Since a slave owner could retain his human chattel (under the terms of the Acts and the EP) simply by renouncing the CSA and swearing allegiance to the USA, it was hoped that the officer corps would abandon the cause in order to retain the slaves which represented a large part of their fortunes and the very foundation of their livelihoods. Since interest in the war was waning in the north and enlistments were down and desertions were up, the freed slaves opened up a whole new source of cannon fodder (both by enlistment and by conscription). After the war, the underlying reasons for the EP and the Acts remained. Ratification of Amendment XIII was coerced from the southern states during the "readmission" process (if it was illegal to secede, how could they be "readmitted" and why was it necessary? Suffice it to say that the right of secession was implicit in the constitution and is the very core principle espoused in the Declaration of Independence, but that is another harangue). Amendment XIII so destroyed the southern economy, so bankrupted the southern aristocracy and so erased the southern social fabric and way of life that it insured that the south would not soon rise again.

The Dred Scott case was correctly decided by the Tanney Court and the Missouri Compromise was indeed unconstitutional. The dicta in the decision is unfortunate, but the holding rests on solid constitutional foundation. As noted, the Fugitive Slave Act simply legislated that which the Constitution mandated. Abolitionists constituted a small minority, albeit a vocal one. The crux of the dissension between regions of the Federal Confederation was economic. Remember, in the 1850's, most people still realized that the central government was a federal government, not a national one, and that the states were independent nation-states that had confederated into an alliance but had not forged a single nation and the members had neither surrendered their sovereign autonomy (other than as to those limited and expressly delineated areas set forth in the constitution) nor the right to leave the confederation. The war changed all that of course and the national government that the Founding Fathers had tried so hard to avoid and prevent came into being when the USA war of aggression, conquest and annexation caused the governments of the people, by the people, for the people of the CSA to perish from the earth.

The north dominated all aspects of the federal government, as the election of 1860 so plainly proved. The south had lost any meaningful voice in the alliance. Northern industrialists and bankers had insured that the south could not industrialize or diversify its economy (the southern goods were needed in the northern factories). The south paid 75% of federal taxes, but 75% of federal spending occurred in the north. Tariff laws, passed by the northern dominated Congress, all but closed foreign markets to southern goods and allowed northern mercantile interests to set rock bottom prices on those goods. By denying self-determination in the territories upon admission and the grant of statehood, the northern interests could guarantee their continued stranglehold on federal legislation and could even further mute the already unheard southern voice in Washington.

Will you find this in your history text? Probably not. "History" after all, is the myths and legends written by the victors. However, if one reads a wide range of period sources, such and newspapers, editorials, magazine articles, books, and most significantly, congressional and legislative debates and political speeches, the "truth" begins to emerge. Read the abolitionists. They were a tiny segment of the entire puzzle but, like today's abortion and capital punishment politicos, they did manage to get elected on single issue platforms. More importantly, read the words of the mainstream pundits of the day - including those of Lincoln himself. (It may surprise you to discover that Robert E Lee condemned slavery more than Lincoln did.)

Obviously, you are not going to get a complete or accurate answer on this site. If you are really interested, you've got some reading to do.