Political Realignment Leading up to the Civil War: A Case Study

by Scottie O.

April 7, 2024

Fundamental to Geese’s conception of politics is the concept of “political realignment”. While it is used commonly in academic political science settings, it has not found much of a home in Marxist discourse. A lot of the time it is not well defined or described, and is generally just thrown around to describe perhaps a ‘fundamental change’ in politics. Here I intend to take a look at the concept—focus on it—through the lens of a case study of the political realignment that took place in American politics between the years 1844 and 1856. We will not only take a look at what ‘political realignment’ means, but also at the complementary concept of what we call ‘super-politics.’ Super-politics, briefly put, refers to the totalizing reference point at the heart of any given political order and which every other political agent is articulated through. All political intervention finds its meaning through the logic of this super-politics, which is similar to the American concept of the “party system.”However, ‘party system’ only refers to the institutional construction of the political order as it manifests in the halls of power; how these two concepts, super-politics and party systems, relate is that what calls forth a new party system is the emergence of a new super-political order: the party system is the institutional expression of dominant super-poltics. A new set of circumstances alters the landscapes of politics, and only afterwards does it crystalize into a new party system. Super-politics is in effect, the system which imbues meaning into the actions and words of political actors, it is the system of ‘meaning’ in politics as it emerges through unique and definite historical moments.

 Party systems always lag behind the super-political winds. Super-political shifts do not necessitate a ‘system’ of parties to emerge in order that they be defined and cordoned off from the previous ‘era,’ but transformation of the party system is a necessary consequence of super-political shifts, however late they may come after the emergence of new circumstances. A great example being the neoliberal order emerging under the party system spawned by the New Deal. It is a raging debate as to whether the emergence of neoliberalism constituted the rise of a new party system (and by extension, in our circles, a new super-politics), since the political questions being answered by the neoliberals (small government, minimal spending, the defeat of post-war New Deal liberalism) constituted through the debate spawned by the New Deal, but they are also actively transcending that order in doing so. But it seems that at least the Republican party has been able to “dialectically transcend” the debate which has for the last 90 years, leading to the rise of figures such as Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy as the faces of the future Republican Party. It seems to have become aware of its role in history and has seemed to act accordingly, while the Democrats are caught with their tails between their legs and have no idea as to the nature of their historical role.

In this investigation I hope to illustrate a similar phenomenon of political disarticulation and rearticulation for the purpose of better understanding the present, although the scope of this article is extremely preliminary and limited. I hope, with the aid of more research, to be able to derive more complete insights in the future, and formulate a more comprehensive account of how the concept of super-politics relates to other concepts such as Gramsci’s concept of the ‘hegemonic formation’ or his theory of “interregnum.” For now, I hope to leave the reader with an elementary understanding of the political shifts which led up to the Civil War for the purposes of initiating a study of hegemony in our context—a study of the forces which have come and gone and have articulated the will of the millions that we can, as for now, only hope to lead.

Characteristic of political realignments is, of course, the redefinition of the prerogatives of political parties, and/or the wholesale collapse of political parties and/or the creation of new ones, but as we have said, these are not the events that ‘usher in’ a new order—the collapse of political parties is but an expression of the greater super-political shift that has already occurred. ‘Super-politics’ conceptually implies that “political frontiers” are not articulated by the will of social agents, but that political frontiers are constituted historically and concretely, beyond the will of anyone or anything. Articulation by a political agent does not construct the ‘political frontier’, that ‘articulation’ needs to be instead a means of navigating within the ‘bounds’ of a political frontier that is already present in a way which builds an ethico-political sphere of a political project (a party). Articulation as a practical activity is not then “articulation” as we may commonly understand it, but rather a playing of interlocking stresses which locates particular stresses to accentuate in order to “rearticulate” the field of politics. The point being that ‘super-politics’ in its conceptual construction rejects any notion of the ‘realm of the political’ being constituted by will; the general make-up of political life is not voluntaristically constructed by any particular group, it is constituted by forces in a sense higher than any political party—the “march of events.”

In this case, we are taking a look at a political world which was defined first by partisan (party) allegiances, turning into one defined by sectional (regional) allegiances. Positions on the expansion of slavery became the determinant factor in the realignment, leading directly to the collapse of the Whigs and the emergence of the Republicans, all as the result of the emergence of new facts of social life. In 1844, both the Democratic and Whig parties had Southern sections and Northern sections, slaveholders and non-slave holders, men for slavery and men opposed; however, by 1856, the Whigs no longer existed, and the parties that did exist were now defined wholly by their sectional (North vs. South vs. West) positions on the question of slavery expansion. Why was this not the case in 1843, but was the case in 1856? Our retracing of events will provide the answer, and hopefully a clarified view of the meaning of ‘realignment’ and ‘super-politics.’

The story as I tell it is heavily inspired by the narrative of Michael F. Holt's The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Expansion, and the Coming of the Civil War by Michael F. Holt. This book has been indispensable to my research and I have found it difficult to locate a book of similar quality and clarity on the topic. I encourage everyone who comes across this article to get a copy of Holt’s book and read it for themselves. With an expression of genuine debt to the work of Holt, what follows is the story of the political realignment which led to the Civil War.

II

In March 1820, the Missouri Compromise was signed into law, which most notably, and most consequentially, prohibited the expansion of slavery north of a line running directly west from Missouri’s southern border to the western border of the Louisiana territory. Missouri was admitted as a slave state, and by way of compromise, Maine was admitted as a free state. As we likely all know, the compromise was struck in order to  maintain the balance in the Senate of political representation of free and slave states.

 In other words, the admission of Maine was the price the South was forced to pay for the admission of Missouri as a slave state. But it was this which ensured the deal would be accepted by both sides. Yet, thirty or so years later, the South looked at the Missouri Compromise with near-universal contempt. This shift of perspective more than anything else indicates the radical changes that occurred in American politics during this period. 

This shift began in 1844 during the debate in Congress over whether or not to annex the newly-independent Republic of Texas. Central to the debate was the fact that Texas, if admitted, would be admitted as a slave state, and would affect the balance in the Senate between the free and slave states. Against annexation for different reasons were Democrat President Martin Van Buren, also the former president, and eminent Whig Henry Clay, who wrote on the very same day their letters in opposition to annexation. Clay wrote that the annexation of Texas would undermine the sectional comity the Union was built upon, while Van Buren, who was likely aware of the threat Clay was alluding to, was writing rather to protect his electoral popularity in the North—a motivation which will prove central to the developments in the coming years, and is a recurring rule in American politics more generally. 

In June of the same year, the issue came to a vote. The Whigs, long-time opponents of territorial expansion, stayed true to their principles and voted against annexation. They were also joined by eight “Van Burenite” Senators, who regardless of their personal convictions on the matter of slavery (many were morally abhorred), understood the necessity of doing so, since their electorate would not vote for politicians who aided the expansion of slavery into the West, for it was them and their families who would populate the West and did not want to see that impeded by the development of slave economies in lands they wished to settle. Together, their votes defeated the annexation bill. This had immediate consequences: 1844 was also an election year, and Martin Van Buren was the expected Democratic nominee for the presidency.  His opponents within the party, however, blocked his nomination due to his position on Texas, and instead nominated Mississippi planter James K. Polk, on an explicitly pro-annexation platform—giving clue to the sectional divide which existed within the party, but that had not yet torn the party asunder.

After months of deliberation the House moved to annex Texas in 1845 with an amendment by Tennessee Whig Milton Brown which admitted Texas as a state with voting privileges in Congress, and with recognized ability to break up the state into five states, having the potential to add up to 10 senators to the South’s coalition. Once again the prerogatives of elected office, of maintaining popular support, reared their head: Milton Brown, while certainly pro-slavery, made a calculated political move for his party by allowing southern Whigs to campaign on the back of his amendment, by framing themselves as perhaps even stauncher defenders of slavery than the Democrats. The bill passed 120-98. The minority consisted of 26 “furious” northern Democrats and 72 Whigs. In the majority was 112 Democrats along with 8 southern Whigs. Ninety percent of Whigs opposed the bill, and eighty-one percent of Democrats supported the bill. The fact that the parties were split based on geographical locations showed that the sectional realignment was already in embryo.

Once the bill reached the Senate, Thomas Benton, an anti-slavery Missouri Democrat, amended the bill so as to give president Polk two options in regards to Texas annexation. He could annex the territory under the terms set by the House bill, or he could renegotiate the terms of annexation with Texas authorities. Benton and the Van Buren Democrats hoped that Polk upon taking office would take the latter option since, if the annexation was renegotiated, Brown’s amendment designed to maximize gain for southern political power would be rendered null and the size of Texas would be reduced upon admission. In fact, and most importantly, Polk had promised these Democrats that he would take the latter option to renegotiate with Texas authorities and modify the terms of annexation. Without this promise, northern Democrats would not have supported the bill and it would not have been passed by the Senate. The annexation resolution was passed by the Senate 27-25. Every Democrat and three southern Whigs voted for the bill, while thirteen northern and twelve southern Whigs opposed it. When the bill arrived back in the House of Representatives, every single Democrat voted in favor, along with one southern Whig, against every other Whig in the House.

“Despite the obvious sectional connotation of extending slavery by annexing Texas, partisan loyalties still outweighed naked sectional allegiance. An apparent verification of Van Buren’s prediction that ‘party attachment could be a complete antidote to sectional prejudices,’ this achievement would quickly evaporate.” (p. 15)

But on his final day in office, President and Virginia planter John Tyler dispatched a courier to Texas offering annexation under the terms presented by the Brown-amended House bill. Polk, upon taking office the next day, opted to follow through with Tyler’s plan rather than recall the courier. Polk then declared the Rio Grande the western border of Texas and announced that he would deploy troops in order to protect the claim. The Van Buren Democrats were betrayed. They would never forgive Polk, and their view of the southern section of their party would never again be the same.

By completing Tyler’s equally shortsighted initiative, Polk pried open the lid of Pandora’s box. He had created Van Buren’s nightmare, “a war” that the Whigs could “charge with plausibility if not truth” that Democrats “waged for the extension of slavery.”

Within the year Texas was admitted as a state and, by April 1846, the United States and Mexico were at war. While Polk did not wage the war for the express purpose of extending slavery, many of his Democratic allies did, and, regardless of Polk’s intentions, Northerners viewed it as a war solely waged to that end. This meant that Northern Democrats faced a conundrum—if the Whigs portrayed them as supporters of a war to extend slavery, they would face an electoral disaster. They did not want to be seen as the party holding their voters back from moving west. Seeing this, a group of northern Democratic Congressmen met and decided that the first among themselves to get the floor would push forward a proposal which would ban slavery from any territory seized from Mexico. The first among them to get the floor was David Wilmot, who put forth the amendment on August 8. When put to a vote, every single Northerner in the House of Representatives, bar four Democrats, supported the bill amended by Wilmot, and every single Southerner opposed it, regardless of party affiliation. It passed 134 to 91. The Senate took no action on the bill, and Congress adjourned before any could be taken. The Wilmot Proviso would never pass, but for the next five years, whenever the proviso reemerged, it produced the same sectional voting pattern, throwing partisan allegiance out the window. It would gain support in the northern-dominated House before being shot down by the Senate, which contained a few northern Democrats that could be readily relied upon to side with the South. This issue had the ability to split both parties down the center. By 1849, fifteen northern state legislatures instructed their Senators (who at the time were selected by state legislatures) to enact the proviso upon any new territory the United States may seize from Mexico, while, by that point, Southerners had many times vowed to secede should the proviso be enacted.

Looking at the House vote on Texas annexation in February 1845, and comparing it to the vote involving the Wilmot Proviso in August 1846 we see that both northern Democrats and southern Whigs made dramatic shifts in their voting patterns. What explains this shift? More than anything, it is the fact that these men have to be elected for office, and cannot afford to act against their voters’ interests. Southern Whigs could go against Texas annexation since it was always a Whig principle to be against expansion; once the question of slavery arose in the annexed territories however, they could not betray the South on the matter or they would lose their office. Northern Democrats also faced the same problem: they could not vote with the rest of their party unless they wanted to be viewed as supporting the growth of southern political power and the expansion of slavery and consequently lose their seats. This, combined with Polk’s betrayal the year before, alienated many northern Democrats from the southern section of their party.

Focusing on the South for a moment, we will be able to locate some key dynamics which led to the sectional crisis. The South had always had a smaller population than the north, and therefore relied on the Senate to maintain a sort of political parity with the north, since they were always outnumbered in the House. In order to maintain this parity, it was imperative that the south create territory from which more slave states would be carved—a reserve pool of potential senate representation. Many Southerners looked south to Cuba or Central America, since the arid west was not particularly viable, and the Missouri Compromise line prevented them from accessing the fertile lands of the upper Louisiana territory. If they could not find land from which to carve up slave states, the maintenance of that sectional comity in the Senate would soon become impossible to maintain.

“...establishing slavery in the territories where it did not yet exist served as a threshold political defense of slavery where it did” (p. 29)

The Whig party in the South largely represented large planters, who were thoroughly established and had no intention of going west—most recognized that they would be unable to establish themselves in its climate and were initially much less enthusiastic about expanding slavery into the territories. However, three factors contributed to their eventual shift in thinking: the first, mentioned above, was that the political power of the south rested on slavery’s expansion into the territories. The second was the fact that slaves were an expensive investment, and anything which might degrade the value of that investment (i.e., prohibition of slavery in the west) would inevitably clash with the financial interests of large planters. And, thirdly, and most importantly in the construction of popular sentiment, the prohibition of slavery in the west was simply insulting to the south. Slavery was not only a financial institution but a cultural one tied to Southern self-identity and tradition. Why, they thought, should Northerners be able to walk into the territories with their property, but not Southerners? It was an insult to their honor and was perceived as an attempt by the north to reduce the south to a land of second class citizens (ironic!).

Wilmot’s proviso did not primarily stymie slavery extension. It threatened their manhood, their rights, and their political liberty. Southern Whigs, no less than southern Democrats, utterly refused to submit to this abominable affront to personal and sectional honor. […] Many Southerners, certainly a vast majority of southern Whigs, cared far more about defending their section’s equal rights on the territorial issue than about extending slavery into any new territories.

To counter the proviso, alternative proposals were put forth. John Calhoun insisted that “slavery followed the flag,” that the right to own slaves was enshrined in the Constitution, and hence could not be prohibited by any authority. Most Democrats, however, preferred the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” which held that the inhabitants of the territories would decide for themselves whether they would be admitted as free or slave states. This also functioned as a way to bridge the gap between the Northern and Southern sections of the party. Northern Democrats could convince their constituents that popular sovereignty  would prevent the spread of slavery as effectively as the proviso, since non-slave holders would move into the territories sooner than slave holders, who had not only themselves and their families to move but also their slaves. Southern Democrats on the other hand could gloat that sectional honor had been maintained and that the compromise would give slave holding Southerners equal access to the West. Democrats could run a two-faced campaign on the basis of popular sovereignty precisely because of the ambiguity the doctrine offered in regards to when the decision on slavery would actually happen. On both sides, radicals stuck to their guns: Calhoun’s men denounced any approach that even allowed the possibility of banning slavery as unconstitutional, while Van Buren men stuck faithfully to the original proviso.

Representing the “popular sovereignty” wing of the party, at the Democratic convention of 1848, Lewis Cass, a Democrat from Michigan,denounced the Wilmot proviso as unconstitutional and announced that he would veto it should Congress pass it. From this point onward, northern Democrats openly split in their votes regarding slavery extension. Both Van Buren’s pro-proviso men and Yancey’s pro-slavery men stormed out of the convention when Cass won the nomination.

A year earlier, future Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens and his colleague John Burrien developed a plan that would save the Whig party from sectional strife. In an attempt to render null the divisive legislation tearing apart their party, they proposed that no territory be seized from Mexico at all. However, when the war ended in March 1848 the Whigs lost their main campaign points and were forced to run Zachary Taylor essentially without a platform. True to his Whig principles, Taylor would not veto any legislation passed by Congress unless it was explicitly unconstitutional, and was thus palatable to the North since they could rely on their Congressional majority not being checked by a reactionary executive. Southern Whigs on the other hand argued that a fellow Southerner would never sign a bill containing the hated proviso. This strategy worked, and Taylor won the election that year; however, his victory did not mend a divided party which by necessity had to run a two-faced campaign in order to win. If the treaty had not been signed and Stephens’ and Burrien’s slogan of “no territory” survived, the party could have been able to run a campaign which was consistent in its messaging.

In 1848, meanwhile, Cass had turned into a rising star and was nominated at the convention. This met sharp opposition in the north, and in June 1848, as a result of Cass’ nomination, the Free-Soil party was formed—largely by northern Democrats who were dissatisfied with Cass, along with a small number of Whigs who could see the writing on the wall for their party. They nominated Martin Van Buren as their candidate. His campaign, contrary to Whig fears, hurt the Democrats more than it did the Whigs, since anti-slavery Whigs absolutely refused to vote for Van Buren, largely for his earlier pro-slavery stance—while at the same time Southern Whigs were able to discredit Cass by pointing out that Van Buren (a former Democrat) had once been pro-slavery, but was now at the head of an explicitly anti-slavery and anti-southern party. Would he, too, betray the South on the question of slavery? 

Consequently, Zachary Taylor won the 1848 Presidential election. Seeing that popular sovereignty was not a winning strategy in 1848, many Democrats abandoned the doctrine in favor of Calhoun’s more hardline approach. Calhoun’s 1849 Southern Address summated his and many other Southerner’s line of thought going into the 1850s. Southern Whigs, upon hearing the contents of the address, refused to sign the document, and subsequently were painted by southern Democrats as “traitors to the South.” Whigs feared for their party as a national entity—both northern Whigs and Democrats were determined to impose the proviso in order to quell the Free-Soil threat; and, if a few southern Whigs joined them, they actually had a chance of enacting it. If they got it passed, Taylor would more likely than not sign the bill, killing the Southern Whigs; while if Taylor vetoed the bill, northern Whigs would be finished. Their hope was to settle the matter before Taylor was sworn in in March. Another solution to the crisis was to split the entire Mexican Cession between Texas and California, leaving no territory for the proviso to affect and thus rendering it superfluous. Taylor himself followed a similar reasoning—his plan was to have Texas, New Mexico, and California all incorporated as states so that, once again, no territory would be left for the proviso to affect. Taylor asked the residents of New Mexico to draft up a petition for statehood as a free state, yet they did not exactly follow his reasoning , and instead petitioned to be incorporated as a territory. The battle in Congress that Taylor hoped to avoid became inevitable, and, when Free-Soilers found out about Taylor’s plan, they treated it as an attack on their party’s central platform and were outraged. The fight had begun.

III

That same year, 1849, the Democratic Georgia legislature passed resolutions calling on the Governor to call a secession convention should either: a) the proviso be put into law, b) California be admitted as a free state, or c) a new fugitive slave law not be created. This made it quite clear “where the heart of the South lay” even in 1849. The consequences followed quickly. Northern Whigs used the South’s threat of secession to further justify the doctrine of popular sovereignty as an absolutely necessary measure to preserve the Union.. The Whigs, meanwhile, refused to outright denounce the proviso, which led Alexander Stephens and four other Southern Whigs to storm out of the party caucus. Southern Whigs were stuck: their Democratic counterparts were pushing to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific Coast, while Taylor's plan to divide the cession into organized territories would make the party look weak on the Southern question. They decided they could allow California’s admission as a free state, so long as the South received a few more concessions. With the northern Democrats now advocating the extension of popular sovereignty to the territories and southern Whigs now content with California’s admission, the pro-compromise bloc responsible for the Compromise of 1850 emerges. On one side, this coalition faced the Free-Soil party and the northern Whigs, who opposed making any concessions to the slave-holding South and wholeheartedly supported the proviso. On the other side, the compromise forces faced the southern Democrats, who opposed California’s admission as a free state under any circumstance.

A select senate committee reported on three bills: the new fugitive slave law, a bill outlawing public slave auctions, and an “omnibus” which contained in it all matters relating to the Mexican Cession. By bundling all matters pertaining to the Cession, the dispute over the New Mexico-Texas boundary became the pivot issue and the object of intense debate. Any Southerner who accepted a reduction in the size of Texas would be viewed as a traitor to his section, while any Northerner who accepted a reduction of the size of New Mexico, or bent on the question of popular sovereignty, would be considered a traitor to his.

While this debate was raging in the Senate and the House in early 1850, the Governor of Texas sent a surveyor out to the west in order to solidify Texas’ claim to everything east of the Rio Grande. When he reached Santa Fe, however, he was turned away by a U.S. military commander who argued that Santa Fe was the property of the United States, not the state of Texas. When the Governor was informed about this, he called a special session of the Texas state legislature to consider whether or not to use the Texas state militia to take Santa Fe by force. When the news of this tension reached the East Coast, Southerners vowed to send troops to support Texas should a fight break out. Taylor upon hearing the news reaffirmed the United States’ claim to Santa Fe, and rumors circulated that he was going to reinforce Santa Fe or even take to the field himself. Seeking to uncover his intentions, a delegation of southern Whigs went to the White House. The historical record does not contain what was said in that meeting, but it is known that, when the delegation emerged, Alexander Stephens swore to initiate impeachment proceedings against Taylor if he sent reinforcements to Santa Fe. 

That July however, Taylor indulged in too much iced milk and fruit at a Fourth of July Celebration and became ill. After just a few days, he passed away, and the presidency was taken over by New Yorker and Vice President Millard Fillmore. During Taylor’s presidency, Fillmore was kept largely in the dark, especially in relation to the affair at Santa Fe. After learning about the situation, however , he moved resolutely into the pro-compromise camp. He filled his cabinet with moderates and spent the next few weeks following his inauguration attempting to get northern Whigs to withdraw their opposition to the compromise bill. 

Meanwhile, the Senate had shot down the omnibus bill. A Democrat had altered the bill so that the Texas-New Mexico border would be changed to favor Texas; anti-compromise northern Senators then removed everything from the bill regarding Texas, New Mexico, and California, leaving only the Utah territorial bill, which later that night passed the Senate. A week later Fillmore informed Congress of the letter from Texas’ governor threatening to send the state militia to Santa Fe. The next day the Whig Senator who had led the charge to the break up the omnibus bill proposed a new Texas boundary bill, which set it at its modern location, and scrounged together $5 million dollars to compensate Texas for the territorial claims it would have to rescind. It passed the Senate 30-20; the majority included Whigs who had previously opposed the compromise but now voted for the new bill in an effort to avoid a potential civil war. The Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute was now settled and with it the most contentious point obstructing the passing of a compromise bill.

Within the week California was admitted to the Union as a free state and New Mexico was organized on the basis of popular sovereignty. In August, the new fugitive slave law was passed, and in September the bill which banned the trading of slaves in Washington D.C. was as well. Nearly every Northerner and a few pro-compromise senators supported and voted in favor of California’s admission as a free state, while nearly every Southerner and a few northern Democrats passed the fugitive slave law and the New Mexico territorial bill. In regards to the latter two bills, many northern Whigs abstained from the vote, for, though they detested the bills, their goal of compromise counseled them against opposition. In order to avoid a situation where Northerners admitted California and then reduced Texas, the bills were combined when they went before the House. The combined bill, containing the whole compromise besides the fugitive slave law passed the House of Representatives 107-99 on September 6. In the majority were 22 northern Whigs who had earlier vowed not to admit territory without the proviso attached, but who succumbed to both circumstance and the pro-compromise pressure coming from Fillmore and the national Whig party.

When the bills hit Fillmore’s desk, he signed them with relief. “The long agony is over,” he remarked. Being put into law, the compromise was viewed as the final settlement over the slavery question and it was expected that the issue of slavery would never enter the House or Senate chamber ever again. Many anti-compromise southern Democrats, however, viewed the admission of California and the reduction of Texas as simply unacceptable and grounds for secession. Georgia’s governor called for a secession convention to meet, but those in favor of the Union outnumbered the secessionists 240 to 43. In Mississippi and Alabama many non-slave holding Democrats and slave holding Whigs joined local Union parties, which effectively displaced the two-party system in those states. At the same time, in most slave states, pro-compromise Whigs won the majority of elections mainly due to the disunion within the Democratic party.

Northern Whig voters, too, were upset by the compromise, since it allowed for the possible extension of slavery into the territories. Unless they denounced the bills, then, northern Whigs risked losing their base to the Free-Soil party. Consequently, they accused the Fillmore administration of betraying Whig principles, and, through the years 1850 and 1851, northern Whigs found themselves battling each other for leadership of the party. By 1852, however, criticizing the compromise turned out to be a losing strategy and most of the initially oppositional anti-compromise Whigs had switched tack to avoid losing their seats to pro-compromise Democrats. The election of 1852 became known as the Whig’s “Waterloo.” The Whig candidate,Winfield Scott, seemed to have a shaky at best commitment to the compromise, losing him southern support, while the Whig’s economic program was preempted by the economic boom brought on by the gold rush in California coupled with heavy foreign investment in railroads. Their commitment to “positive governmental promotion of economic growth” lost all traction for a country that was already economically optimistic. Meanwhile, their northern anti-slavery voters largely abstained. Although they could have voted Free-Soil, many saw the endeavor as pointless since the question of slavery had been supposedly “settled for good.”

IV

Southern Democrats were furious at California’s admission as a free state and now wondered where new slave states might be formed. This tension was only heightened by the fact that  Minnesota and Oregon were soon to be admitted as free states as well. In Utah and Mexico, there was little hope that popular sovereignty would lead to the legalization of slavery, and so the South looked to Central America and Cuba as new potential sites for slave states. They soon realized, however, that a more practical avenue for the expansion of slavery would be to simply repeal the Missouri Compromise and to push slavery into the Northwest.

The opportunity came when pressure from northern farmers and railroad developers began to push for the territory west of Missouri to be incorporated. Both of these groups wished to attain land titles, and incorporation was necessary to this end. Incorporation, however, required the consent of southern Democrats, who rejected any plan to incorporate new territories unless the prohibition of slavery was lifted. This called for either a repeal or circumvention of the Missouri Compromise. A raging feud within the Democratic party over how the party would approach it’s renegade faction that had left (Van Buren's faction) prompted Stephen Douglas to instigate a battle between the Democrats and the Whigs, so as to maintain some sort of unity in the party—he wrote up a bill which used the language of popular sovereignty to effectively repeal the Missouri Compromise, allowing him to court southern anti-compromise men into support for the bill. Northern Whigs were furious with the proposed bill, as it went simply too far for slavery expansion. On January 16, 1854, a Kentucky Whig announced that when he was afforded the chance, he would amend Douglas’ bill to repeal the compromise line outright, giving southern Whigs the opportunity to campaign as “stauncher” defenders of slavery than Democrats. 

A week later, Douglas presented a revised version of the bill which split the proposed territory in two (modern Kansas and Nebraska). This gave the impression to northerners that some sort of deal had been cut (none had, but that didn't matter), forcing Douglas to further clarify popular sovereignty in the bill and explain that the “1850 Compromise superseded the 1820 Compromise,” since it was “inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the states and territories.” The amendment put forth by the Whigs gave the southern section the ability to say that the Whigs were the ones who repealed the compromise line, while the bill as a whole could be painted by northern Whigs as a Democratic bill and used to denounce the Democrats as the party of slavery extension. 

Meanwhile, Northern Whigs viewed Douglas’ use of popular sovereignty language as a vindication of their earlier opposition to the Compromise of 1850. The bill drove a deeper wedge between them and pro-compromise Whigs, who hated the bill for reviving anti-slavery sentiment in the North and empowering both the anti-compromise Whigs and the Free-Soil party at their expense. Conservative Whigs who hoped to keep the party together devised a plan to portray the bill as entirely a Democratic bill; for this plan to work they needed the support of a few southern Whigs in shooting down the bill. There were grounds to court their support, but it disappeared the next day, on January 24, when the few remaining Free-Soilers in the chamber gave a fiery speech decrying the bill as a part of a “southern slave plot.” 

The Free-Soil party between the end of 1850 and the beginning of 1854 essentially lost their main party platform, and instead campaigned on issues surrounding alcohol consumption and state constitutional reform. When Douglas’ bill was proposed, the reigniting of anti-slavery sentiment in the North once again gave them the opportunity to campaign on the question of slavery, and they took it. The bills’ most vocal opponents were now men the South viewed as ‘fanatical abolitionists,’quashing any hope by conservative Whigs to unite the party as no Southerner could be seen in the eyes of his constituents on the same side of a question as the hated ‘abolitionists.’ The Free-Soiler’s speech’s incendiary and sectional framing of the bill led the South to unite across party lines against the “fanatical abolitionists.” On the other hand, Northern Democrats were split directly in half 44-44 by the bill, allowing it to pass the House 113 to 100. Had the Whigs been united, the bill would have failed.

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act laid to rest the prospect of annexing Cuba, along with other misguided expansionist endeavors.. The northern wing of the Democratic party was killed politically by the act’s passage, their constituents absolutely refusing to vote for the party which let the bill pass. The Whig party was completely finished. Northern Whigs, both the anti-slavery section and the pro-compromise section, saw southern Whig support for the bill as absolutely unforgivable and declared that they would never work with them ever again. Connecticut Whig Senator Truman Smith said: “I shall have nothing to do with any southern Whig who joins Stephen Douglas in introducing into Congress and into the country another controversy on the subject of slavery,” and called the southern Whigs’ votes in favor of the bill“the ultimate disruption and denationalization of the Whig party.” He declared the break “final.”

The Free-Soil party implored disaffected northern Whigs to join them in creating a new party which would be built around opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and slavery extension—the “overthrow of slave power.” Whigs, Free Soilers, and disaffected Democrats joined together in July that year to form that new party, christened the ‘Republican Party’ in the town of Jackson, Michigan. A lot of northern Whigs, outside of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, however, opted to remain in their party. They hoped that the party’s unified opposition to the bill in the north would lead to them sweeping the upcoming elections. But, by the end of 1856, the Republican Party had come out on top. “Bleeding Kansas”—the bloody confrontation between northern and southern settlers in the Kansas territory over whether Kansas was to be a free or a slave state—along with the party’s resolute opposition to slavery in the Senate, made them the main opposition party to the Democrats. As Holt put it: “Bleeding Kansas and Bleeding Sumner (the caning of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor by a South Carolina Representative) gave Republicans a nearly invincible combination of issues in 1856” to campaign on. The resolve of the Republicans were only strengthened a year later when the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that black Africans could not be granted citizenship, even though there already lived half a million free black people throughout the United States, reaffirmed again to the North that the South’s “slave conspiracy” was something that had to be dealt with decisively. The entire popular sovereignty compromise was discarded by this decision, and the Republican’s central platform—the prohibition of slavery in the territories—was now ruled as unconstitutional. The only result could be increased polarization and, eventually, civil war.

V

If one showed to an American living in 1843 what the political landscape of 1856 looked like, they would be shocked. Politics on all levels was fundamentally transformed, and the questions which for the last 30 years had occupied America’s political minds had become trivial in the face of the previously unimportant question of slavery expansion. A new ‘super-politics’ was thrust into existence through the ‘march of events.’. It was brought about by a plethora of factors; it was initially spurred on by the seizure of the Mexican Cession,which reopened the question which had been submerged for 30 years in American politics: that of slavery. Between 1845 and 1848, the United States nearly doubled in size, destabilizing the balance which had existed between the North and the South since 1820. Now it had to be determined whether this balance had a future. To make the whole West ‘free’ would be to bar many Southerners from settling in the West, and to make the West ‘slave’ would be to exclude free settlers from settling in the territories. The Free-Soil party came onto the scene as the prospect of Western settlement was threatened by the prospect of a slave economy occupying the land white northerners wished to settle. While the ultimate collapse of the Whig party came about as a combination of the process which spawned the Free-Soil party in the North and a similar process in the South where Southerners felt that they were being excluded from the West. Southern Whigs for example could not “stand in line” with their anti-slavery Northern counterparts, for if they were to do so, they would be seen as not representing the “southern way of life” and consequently would not be re-elected. The sectionally motivated actions of politicians who had to please their constituents transformed the ‘ethereal sentiment’ of public opinion into facts of political conflict. The balance of forces took up concrete form and the players took concrete positions against one another. No longer could the conflict be only inferred.

What is particularly interesting about the shift that occurred is that though the sides which emerged largely can be expressed in strictly economic terms (ie., as a conflict between agrarian slaveholders and urban bourgeoisie), there is a certain value which can be provided to us through this lens, it does not tell the whole story. If we only look at it through a lens which privileges economic position at the expense of specific political characteristics, we lose the ability to understand the unique construction of the camps which emerged during the period. These fresh political factions and groupings were as much produced out of conflicts between cultural values and perceived threats to particular ‘ways of life’ as they were from economic interest.A conception of politics which sees every instance of political development as an expression of a deterministic economic schema obscures these aspects of historical development and is unable to explain otherwise strange events. For example, it was largely non-slave owners who signed up to fight in the civil war, seeing the question as one of Southern honor and pride. It was not that they were directly threatened economically, but that, as DuBois illustrated in his concept of the “wages of whiteness,” these individuals attached to their way of life a value that was beyond purely rational economic considerations. Beyond the compulsory salvos at the dominant economism in Marxism, what is truly important in studying history in this fashion, beyond historical understanding for its own stake (being a historian), is understanding history’s implications through the lens of not just a political scientist but through the lens of a political actor; to understand the lesson it bears in regard to navigating the sea of politics—as an actor, not just an observer—as those who wish to “change the world” and not just “interpret” it. What lessons can an example such as this bear for those that approach the question this way? One lesson, at least, is a lesson about political motion, about how it evolves and changes, and how it radically and rapidly transforms. How it is constructed not by will but by objective change in the matrix of social life.

The accumulation of change over time eventually leads to fundamental transformations of  the political landscape. As change accumulates the “questions” which built the forces that make up the balance of forces sublimate the conditions of their own emergence and existence, and the political realm is remade. Parties shift—or fall apart. They take on whole new meanings as new questions and crises rise to the fore. Something as seemingly simple as a piece of legislation can fundamentally alter the balance of forces and the identities of political actors and, by extension, the entire political life of the nation.. It is often too easy to brush off these political conflicts as inconsequential in favor of the assertion that political activity at the level of national government is ‘fundamentally bourgeois’ and thus unable to play a role in radically transforming political life. But any given moment of political development is brought about through concrete political and social activity, not sheer will, and that concrete activity is tied to concrete political actors who understand themselves and their tasks in relation to the conditions that are most pressing on them at the political level. In doing so they are constantly in motion, constantly reconstituting themselves, and constantly reconstituting the nation as well. Failing to recognize the creative role that politics plays as a sphere of its own only leads to the neglect of the role of national politics in leftist struggle, and the attitude towards the prevailing political structure must be one of flexibility and openness to maneuverability rather than one-sided denunciation or abstention. A modern adage of political science: “Parties don't survive, but brands do.”