THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

By George Washington Julian.

JULIAN was a native of Indiana who, in 1848, became a leader of the Free-Soil movement, and in the following year was elected to Congress by a coalition of Whigs and Free-Soil Democrats. In 1852 he was a candidate for Vice-President on the Free-Soil ticket. With Charles Sumner and John P. Hale he threw the Free-Soil influence into the formation of the Republican Party, and in 1856 he was a delegate to its first Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, where he was chairman of the Committee on Organization.

The platform declared it to be "both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery," and demanded the immediate admission of Kansas as a free State.

This account is taken from Julian's "Political Recollections" mainly of the period between 1852 and 1870, the last ten years of which he served as a Republican member of Congress.

WHEN President Pierce was inaugurated, on the fourth of March, 1853, the pride and power of the Democratic Party seemed to be at their flood. In his inaugural message he expressed the fervent hope that the slavery question was "forever at rest, and he doubtless fully believed that this hope would be realized. In his annual message, in December following, he lauded the compromise measures with great emphasis and declared that the repose which they had brought to the country should receive no shock during his term of office if he could avert it.

In the beginning the session gave promise of a quiet one, but on the twenty-third of January the precious repose of the country, to which the President had so lovingly referred in his message, was rudely shocked by the proposition of Senator Douglas to repeal the Missouri Compromise. This surprising demonstration from a leading friend of the Administration and a champion of the compromise measures marked a new epoch in the career of slavery, and rekindled the fires of sectional strife. After a very exciting debate in both houses, which lasted four months, the measure finally became a law on the thirtieth of May, 1854. It was a sprout from the grave of the Wilmot proviso; for if, under the Constitution, it was the duty of Congress to abandon the policy of restriction adopted in 1850, and provide that Utah and New Mexico should be received into the Union, with or without slavery, according to the choice of their people, the Missouri Compromise line should never have been established, and was a rock of offense to the slave holders. The Compromise Acts of 1850 had not abrogated that line, and related only to our Mexican acquisitions; but they had affirmed a principle, and if that principle was sound, the Missouri restriction was indefensible. The whole question of slavery was thus reopened, for the sacredness of the compact of 1820 and the wickedness of its violation depended largely upon the character of slavery itself, and our constitutional relations to it.

On all sides the situation was exceedingly critical and peculiar. The Whigs, in their now practically disbanded condition, were free to act as they saw fit, and were very indignant at this new demonstration in the interest of slavery, while they were yet in no mood to countenance any form of "abolitionism." Multitudes of Democrats were equally indignant, and were quite ready to join hands with the Whigs in branding slavery with the violation of its plighted faith. Both made the sacredness of the bargain of 1820 and the crime of its violation the sole basis of their hostility. Their hatred of slavery was geographical, spending its force north of the Missouri restriction. They talked far more eloquently about the duty of keeping covenants, and the wickedness of reviving sectional agitation, than the evils of slavery and the cold-blooded conspiracy to spread it over an empire of free soil. Their watch-word and rallying cry was "the restoration of the Missouri Compromise;" but this demand was not made merely as a preliminary to other measures, which would restore the free States to the complete assertion of their constitutional rights, but as a means of propitiating the spirit of compromise, and a convenient retreat to the adjustment acts of 1850 and the "finality" platform of 1852. In some States and localities the antislavery position of these parties was somewhat broader ; but as a general rule the ground on which they marshaled their forces was substantially what I have stated.

The position of the Free-Soilers was radically different. They opposed slavery upon principle, and irrespective of any compact or compromise. They did not demand the restoration of the Missouri Compromise; and although they rejoiced at the popular condemnation of the perfidy which had repealed it, they regarded it as a false issue. It was an instrument on which different tunes could be played. To restore this compromise would prevent the spread of slavery over soil that was free ; but it would reaffirm the binding obligation of a compact that should never have been made, and from which we were now offered a favorable opportunity of deliverance.

The situation was complicated by two other political elements. One of these was Temperance, which now, for the first time, had become a most absorbing political issue. The "Maine Law" agitation had reached the West, and the demand of the temperance leaders was "search, seizure, confiscation, and destruction of liquors kept for illegal sale."

The other element referred to made its appearance in the closing months of 1853, and took the name of the Know-Nothing Party. It was a secret oath-bound political order, and its demand was the proscription of Catholics and a probation of twenty-one years for the foreigner as a qualification for the right of suffrage. Its career was as remarkable as it was disgraceful. Thousands were made to believe that the Romish hierarchy was about to overthrow our liberties, and that the evils of "foreignism" had become so alarming as to justify the extraordinary measures by which it was proposed to counteract them. . . . It drew to itself, as the great festering center of corruption, all the known rascalities of the previous generation and assigned them to active duty in its service. It was an embodied lie of the first magnitude, a horrid conspiracy against decency, the rights of man, and the principle of human brotherhood.

Its birth, simultaneously with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, was not an accident, as any one could see who had studied the tactics of the slave-holders. It was a well-timed scheme to divide the people of the free States upon trifles and side issues, while the South remained a unit in defense of its great interest. It was the cunning attempt to balk and divert the indignation aroused by the repeal of the Missouri restriction, which else would spend its force upon the aggressions of slavery ; for by thus kindling the Protestant jealousy of our people against the Pope, and enlisting them in a crusade against the foreigner, the South could all the more successfully push forward its schemes.