groupings as had two parties that preceded it, the Federalists and the Whigs. The name of the party
may have been new. The party itself was old.
Strange though it seems both versions are true. Both inform the Republican Party to this day.
Version One took place against a background of seventy years of compromises between the North and the South over slavery.
The first compromise was the Constitution itself, ratified in 1788. To placate the South, the Constitution stipulated that
in determining the population of each state—an important exercise, since it was on the basis of its population that a state
would be allotted members in the House of Representatives—slaves would be counted right along with white people. (Each slave
would count for only three-fifths of a white person. But to the South three-fifths was better than nothing.) To placate the
North, the Constitution stipulated that while the import of slaves would remain legal until the end of 1807, as of that date
Congress would have the right to bring the slave trade from Africa to an end. (Congress did just that as soon as the stated
interval had elapsed.) The next compromise, the Missouri Compromise, took place in 1820. It brought Missouri into the Union
as a slave state. But it also brought in Maine, which until then had been part of Massachusetts, as a state in its own right,
preserving a balance between the North and South at twelve states apiece. Thirty years later came the Compromise of 1850.
It permitted California into the Union as a free state. But it made a number of concessions to the South, including rigorous
provisions for the return of runaway slaves and the settlement of a border dispute between New Mexico, a free state, and Texas,
a slave state, under which Texas received $10 million in compensation from the federal government.
While these compromises were taking place, the North was prospering, its economy expanding, its men of affairs growing rich
on manufacturing, banking, and shipping. About the same as that of the South when the Constitution was ratified, the population
of the North grew so much more quickly that by 1820 it was almost 20 percent larger than that of the South, by 1850 almost
60 percent larger. The very prosperity of the North seemed a condemnation of slavery—look, the North said in effect, at all
that we have achieved without it. Why should we go on making one compromise with the South after another?
The final compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, took place in 1854.
The act arose from the ambitions of Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic senator from Illinois, who wanted to be president.
Douglas believed that by opening the territory west of the Missouri to settlement he could ingratiate himself with western
farmers, who would move into the territory, and with moneyed interests in the East, who would build railroads across it. Yet
Douglas faced a dilemma. If he brought Kansas and Nebraska into the union as free states he would infuriate the South. Yet
if he brought them in as slave states he would anger the very farmers and bankers whose support he wanted to win. Douglas’s
solution? To sidestep the issue. The new legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, he proposed, would decide the question of slavery
for themselves. Even before Douglas’s fellow Democrat, President Franklin Pierce, signed the act into law on May 30, 1854,
northerners and southerners, both eager to claim the two new states for their own sides, began pouring into Kansas and Nebraska.
Almost immediately, fighting between the northerners and southerners broke out.
The nation erupted. In the North, the region that concerns us here, patience with the seven decades of compromises over slavery
finally snapped. Preachers denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in every pulpit from Maine to Illinois. Torchlight parades were
held. Newspapers coupled lurid accounts of the fighting in Kansas and Nebraska with diatribes
may have been new. The party itself was old.
Strange though it seems both versions are true. Both inform the Republican Party to this day.
Version One took place against a background of seventy years of compromises between the North and the South over slavery.
The first compromise was the Constitution itself, ratified in 1788. To placate the South, the Constitution stipulated that
in determining the population of each state—an important exercise, since it was on the basis of its population that a state
would be allotted members in the House of Representatives—slaves would be counted right along with white people. (Each slave
would count for only three-fifths of a white person. But to the South three-fifths was better than nothing.) To placate the
North, the Constitution stipulated that while the import of slaves would remain legal until the end of 1807, as of that date
Congress would have the right to bring the slave trade from Africa to an end. (Congress did just that as soon as the stated
interval had elapsed.) The next compromise, the Missouri Compromise, took place in 1820. It brought Missouri into the Union
as a slave state. But it also brought in Maine, which until then had been part of Massachusetts, as a state in its own right,
preserving a balance between the North and South at twelve states apiece. Thirty years later came the Compromise of 1850.
It permitted California into the Union as a free state. But it made a number of concessions to the South, including rigorous
provisions for the return of runaway slaves and the settlement of a border dispute between New Mexico, a free state, and Texas,
a slave state, under which Texas received $10 million in compensation from the federal government.
While these compromises were taking place, the North was prospering, its economy expanding, its men of affairs growing rich
on manufacturing, banking, and shipping. About the same as that of the South when the Constitution was ratified, the population
of the North grew so much more quickly that by 1820 it was almost 20 percent larger than that of the South, by 1850 almost
60 percent larger. The very prosperity of the North seemed a condemnation of slavery—look, the North said in effect, at all
that we have achieved without it. Why should we go on making one compromise with the South after another?
The final compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, took place in 1854.
The act arose from the ambitions of Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic senator from Illinois, who wanted to be president.
Douglas believed that by opening the territory west of the Missouri to settlement he could ingratiate himself with western
farmers, who would move into the territory, and with moneyed interests in the East, who would build railroads across it. Yet
Douglas faced a dilemma. If he brought Kansas and Nebraska into the union as free states he would infuriate the South. Yet
if he brought them in as slave states he would anger the very farmers and bankers whose support he wanted to win. Douglas’s
solution? To sidestep the issue. The new legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, he proposed, would decide the question of slavery
for themselves. Even before Douglas’s fellow Democrat, President Franklin Pierce, signed the act into law on May 30, 1854,
northerners and southerners, both eager to claim the two new states for their own sides, began pouring into Kansas and Nebraska.
Almost immediately, fighting between the northerners and southerners broke out.
The nation erupted. In the North, the region that concerns us here, patience with the seven decades of compromises over slavery
finally snapped. Preachers denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act in every pulpit from Maine to Illinois. Torchlight parades were
held. Newspapers coupled lurid accounts of the fighting in Kansas and Nebraska with diatribes
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