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| Sean Southard Class of 2015 |
Under the guidance of university professors, undergraduate students of history discover monographs that weave together intellectual history with historical actors of a given time. Rather than attributing social change to the energies of vast cultural forces, the authors of these books allow the people of the past to speak to the present about the issues they confronted and the crises they faced. In Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War, Eric Foner examined the internal and external factors that shaped the initial ideas of the early Republican Party. In a 1995 introductory essay to his 1970 work, Foner described the book’s two-tiered argument: that the northern United States and early Republican Party espoused a “free labor ideology” and that this ideology allowed for easier social and economic mobility than what was available in the South. This ideology became what Foner called “the most potent political force in the nation.”
Eric Foner is a distinguished historian of the middle nineteenth century and is a Professor at Columbia University. His monographs on President Abraham Lincoln and Reconstruction have received critical recognition and he received the Bancroft Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for his scholarship. Free Soil is the first of his published works and, as Foner explained in the introduction, the manuscript of his master’s thesis while he was attended graduate school. He searched through the middle nineteenth century with a fine-toothed comb and used an array of speeches and newspaper clippings to bolster his argument that the Republican Party was intellectually diverse. Foner confirmed his academic reputation throughout the text due to the quality of his historical research and analysis.
Foner walked the reader through the circumstances surrounding the formation of the Republican Party and the anti-slavery interest groups that it comprised. The diverse ideas that created the intellectual fabric of the Republicans came from members of the dying Whig Party, the Liberty Party, and a few anti-slavery Democrats. Foner attributed the Whig Party’s demise to its empty response to the slavery question and the perception of a “Slave Power” controlling the national government. The idea that southern planters were not only the masters of slaves in the South, but masters of the national government, amounted to a conspiracy against the free labor ideas of the North. The Roger B. Taney Court’s 1852 Dred Scott decision bolstered these fears, that the defining feature of northern society – the free labor ideology – was threatened. Indeed, when northerners looked to the South they searched in vain for traces of “economic development, social mobility, and political democracy.” When the Whigs refused to take a position on the non-extension of slavery into the western territories, the party committed political suicide. In addition to the non-extension of slavery into the western territories of the United States, Republicans argued on behalf of “labor” and small capitalists. Worker issues emerged because of these labor policies, but for the time these ideas formed a political platform that sought to increase the standard of living in the United States through economic polices that encouraged further development of a market economy.
The example of anti-slavery leader Salmon P. Chase provided an opportunity for Foner to demonstrate how the anti-slavery movement gained the status of constitutional theory. A Democrat from Cincinnati, Chase established the intellectual foundation of the anti-slavery movement and northern leaders absorbed his ideas into their arguments against the peculiar institution of slavery and the pro-slavery disciples of the southern states. These northern leaders tended to be anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats, but mostly consisted of Republicans who gravitated towards Chase’s arguments. Although no one can dispute the importance of Abraham Lincoln’s leadership during this critical period in United States history, Foner detailed how Chase’s intellectual leadership influenced Lincoln and the United States through his political apparatus and legal thought. In the introduction, Foner called for historians to conduct a study of Chase. Fortunately for students interested in Chase and his legacy, Harold M. Hyman published an in-depth analysis of those subjects in 1997.
Foner emphasized that the Republican position of anti-slavery did not equate with decent treatment of African-Americans. He pointed to numerous studies that proved racism was ubiquitous in the United States during that time. While Democrats elevated racist sentiment to the political attack against Republicans and accused anti-slavery leaders of advocating for the equity of black men under law, northern men wrote to Chase to request that he dismiss these accusations before such rumors damaged the anti-slavery movement. Prominent Missouri Republican and anti-slavery activist Francis P. Blair denied these claims with references to “pure blood” and colonization plans that relocated blacks to South America as agents of an imperial commercial vision. This last example served as evidence of the racism that existed in the Republican Party. Attached to this racism was a disbelief in the idea whites and blacks could coexist equally and peacefully together.
Free Soil served as a solid foundation that detailed the differences in constitutional, economic, and moral visions that clashed at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. He concluded by highlighting this point: that the United States Civil War was a contest between Republican free labor ideology and southern ideologies. Slavery was at the root of this contest. Free Soil is the work of a practiced scholar of nineteenth century United States history and ought to be required reading for serious students interested in a comprehensive analysis of this critical juncture in United States history.
Sean Southard is a senior McConnell Scholar majoring in political science and history. He is from Owensboro, Ky.