FREE SOIL, FREE SPEECH, FREE MEN, FREMONT—THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856
The Great Republican Reform Party, Calling on Their Candidate. Lithograph (New York: Currier & Ives,
1856).
The Republican Party is shown as a
group of cranks and fanatics. Welcomed
by Frémont are an abolitionist and a free black; a temperance supporter, a
Socialist and a suffragette; a Roman Catholic priest (Frémont was charged with
being a closet Catholic), and, in the middle, a free love advocate — “We are
all Fremounters.”
Southern Chivalry – Argument versus Clubs. Lithograph, John L. Magee (Philadelphia,
1856).
While seated at his desk in the
Senate chamber franking copies of his Crime
Against Kansas speech, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was attacked
and beaten by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks. Proslavery assaults on freedom of speech in
Kansas Territory had come to the floor of the U. S. Senate.
The Fearful Issue
to be Decided in November Next! Shall
the Constitution and the Union Stand or Fall?
(n. p., 1856).
Black Republican
Imposture Exposed! Fraud Upon the
People. Fremont and his
Speculations (Washington:
Polkinhorn’s Steam Job Office, 1856).
The Democrats campaigned as the
national party and denounced Republicans as the purely northern sectional party
of abolitionists who would destroy the Union.
Their campaign tactics included personal attacks on Frémont and playing
the race card – their opponents were “Black Republicans,” a name they would use
consistently in campaigns through the Civil War and Reconstruction. But Buchanan’s total reliance upon the South
for his victory belied the national pretensions of the Democrats. American politics had become inescapably
sectional.
The New “Democratic” Doctrine.
Slavery not to be confined to the Negro Race, but to be made the
universal condition of the Laboring classes of society (Philadelphia,
1856).
In an appeal to northern laborers,
this dramatic Republican broadside linked the Democratic Party to proslavery
ideology defining all labor as servile.
This text was reprinted in handbills and pamphlets for the 1856
campaign. This message is a bold
expression of the conflicting cultures of the free states and the slave states.
The Border Ruffian Code in Kansas (New York: Greeley &
McElrath, 1856).
The Democrats had allowed proslavery
invaders from Missouri to impose draconian slave laws on the Kansas Territory,
charged this campaign pamphlet. Freedom
of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to hold a contrary opinion
were all suppressed in this legal code effectively making Kansas a slave
territory - the forced
regulation of black labor had taken precedence over the rights of free labor.
William Henry Seward, Immigrant White Free Labor, Or Imported
Black African Slave Labor. Speech of
William H. Seward, At Oswego, New York, November 3, 1856 (Washington: By
the Republican Association, 1856).
Republican antislavery was for the
benefit of white folks, not black slaves.
Distancing the Republicans from both Democrats and Know-Nothings, Seward
in this pre-election speech declared their aim to save the western territories
exclusively for free white labor, both
native-born and immigrant.
“Freedom and Slavery,
and the Coveted Territories,” wrapper illustration to Life of John Charles Fremont (New York: Greeley & McElrath,
1856).
This map was reprinted on numerous
pamphlet wrappers, Broadsides, and display banners to emphasize the stakes involved. Note the distorted scale making the free
states appear geographically eclipsed by the slave states, threatening to
consume the vast contested territories.
The accompanying text notes that there are only 347,525 slave owners,
and only 92,257 of them own ten or more slaves.
Fremont the Conservative Candidate.
Correspondence Between Hon. Hamilton Fish, U. S. Senator from New York,
and Hon. James A. Hamilton, Son of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1856).
Two prominent New York Whigs
narrowed the issues of 1856 down to resisting the extension of slavery and the
Democrats’ expansionist foreign policy, and declared their support for Fremont
and the Republicans.
Republican Bulletin, No. 4. Issued by the Fremont & Dayton Tenth
Ward Club. Twenty Reasons for Leaving
the Democratic Party. By an Old Democrat. (Philadelphia, 1856).
Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men.
Proceedings of the Democratic Republican State Convention, At Syracuse,
July 24, 1856 . . . (Albany: By Order of the Convention, 1856).
As if in reply to the above
handbill, antislavery Democrats in New York declared their party the captive of
slaveholders and endorsed Frémont, but remained loyal on other issues. “We are none the less attached to all democratic
principles and measures, and none the less ready to labor for them on all
necessary occasions.”
Col. Fremont Not a Roman Catholic (Washington?, 1856);
To
Catholic Citizens! The Pope’s Bull, and
the Words of Daniel O’Connell (New York: Joseph H. Ladd, 1856).
In an effort to chip away the
support of antislavery Know Nothings, Democrats charged that Frémont was a
closet
Catholic. The claim is refuted in this campaign
tract. The other tract is an appeal to
Catholic voters, reprinting Pope Gregory XVI’s injunction against the slave
trade, and Irish Nationalist hero Daniel O’Connell’s appeal to Irish Americans
to support the anti-slavery movement.
George Weston, The Poor Whites of the South
(Washington: Buell & Blanchard, 1856).
Weston, a Maine Democrat and
newspaper editor, marshaled statistics and observations to show how slave
society impoverished non-slave-holding white laborers, the vast majority of the
southern white population. Republicans
hoped their free labor agenda would attract the support of these white
southerners, who would eventually abolish slavery in their individual states.
Charles Sumner, The Crime Against Kansas. The Apologies for the Crime. The True Remedy (Washington: Buell &
Blanchard, 1856).
Following Sumner’s scathing
denunciation of proslavery violence in
Kansas he was the
victim of proslavery violence on the Senate floor when he was attacked and
beaten by South Carolina Representative Preston S. Brooks. Republicans were given a stunning example of
slave tyranny attacking free speech and made effective use of it in the 1856
campaign, as in this handbill, Republican
Bulletin No. 7. Tyranny of the Slave
Power (New York, 1856) and in the above political cartoon. Sumner’s speech was widely reprinted as a
campaign document, and Preston Brooks was applauded by his southern colleagues
and constituents.
Republican Campaign Edition for the Million. Containing the Republican Platform, the Lives of Fremont and
Dayton . . . (Boston & Cleveland: John P. Jewett, 1856).
Republikanische Feldzugs-Ausgabe für die Millionen Deutsche in den
Berein . . . (Boston & Cleveland: John P. Jewett, 1856).
Cheap give-away pamphlets such as
these brought the Republican message to a larger public. Much campaign material was also printed in German-language
editions to appeal to the large and important German-American community.
The Republican Campaign Songster: a Collection of Lyrics, Original and
Selected, Specially Prepared for the Friends of Freedom in the Campaign of
Fifty-Six (New York & Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1856).
Campaign songs fired the enthusiasm of
rallies and mass meetings. The songs
were usually the lyrical creations of activists, set to the tune of a
well-known song. Shown here is “For
Fremont and Freedom,” which features Fremont’s attractive and adventurous wife,
Jessie Benton Frémont, daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and an
important strategist in Frémont’s campaign. She was the first woman to play a
central role in managing a presidential campaign.
Circular. Philadelphia, November
4, 1856.
In Philadelphia the campaign was an
unsuccessful fusion effort with the American Party. This is an election ticket issued just before the vote, giving
voters the option of choosing the same electors for either Frémont or Fillmore. Voters clipped their selection and cast it
as a ballot.
After Frémont’s predictable defeat
in prosouthern anti-black Philadelphia, the Republicans were sent on an
excursion to Salt River, or political oblivion. This cartoon is part of the persistent and consistent
denunciation of Republicans as abolitionists.
Note the references to Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and
Philadelphia’s Lucretia Mott.