Sectional Politics
and the Rise of the
Republican Party

Heated debate over slavery’s fate in the lands acquired by the United States in the Mexican War marked the unraveling of compromise on the peculiar institution. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 only intensified sectional tensions. The nation’s political parties reflected these divides as they rapidly became less “national” in character. By 1854 the Democrats had lost support in the North, but the party remained prominent in the South. The Whig Party collapsed, opening the door for a new political coalition. Some former Whigs joined the American, or Know-Nothing, Party, which found short-term success capitalizing on nativist sentiment. But it was the Republican Party that emerged as the voice of the antislavery North.

Founded in 1854, the Republican Party appealed to antislavery Whigs and former members of the Free Soil Party. The Free Soil Party’s calls for “free soil, free labor, and free men” symbolized the desires of most white Northerners to keep western lands free from slavery and therefore open to free white settlement. Republicans expanded on this agenda as they tried to develop a program that would appeal to a majority of the nation. Yet the divide between regional sections and national political parties only widened in the late 1850s. By the election of 1860, many Southerners had concluded that they could not remain in the union if the Republican Abraham Lincoln won the presidency.

The following documents trace the rise of the Republican Party during the 1850s. As you examine these sources, consider the ways that Republicans tried to make their party and their ideals appeal to the widest possible audience.