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Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
Since its publication twenty-five years ago, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men has been recognized as a classic, an indispensable contribution to our understanding of the causes of the American Civil War. A key work in establishing political ideology as a major concern of modern American historians, it remains the only full-scale evaluation of the ideas of the early Republican party. Now with a new introduction, Eric Foner puts his argument into the context of contemporary scholarship, reassessing the concept of free labor in the light of the last twenty-five years of writing on such issues as work, gender, economic change, and political thought.
A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, finding these concepts most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. Through a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine the nation's destiny.
In his new introductory essay, Foner presents a greatly altered view of the subject. Only entrepreneurs and farmers were actually "free men" in the sense used in the ideology of the period. Actually, by the time the Civil War was initiated, half the workers in the North were wage-earners, not independent workers. And this did not account for women and blacks, who had little freedom in choosing what work they did. He goes onto show that even after the Civil War these guarantees for "free soil, free labor, free men" did not really apply for most Americans, and especially not for blacks.
Demonstrating the profoundly successful fusion of value and interest within Republican ideology prior to the Civil War, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men remains a classic of modern American historical writing. Eloquent and influential, it shows how this ideology provided the moral consensus which allowed the North, for the first time in history, to mobilize an entire society in modern warfare.
A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, finding these concepts most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. Through a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine the nation's destiny.
In his new introductory essay, Foner presents a greatly altered view of the subject. Only entrepreneurs and farmers were actually "free men" in the sense used in the ideology of the period. Actually, by the time the Civil War was initiated, half the workers in the North were wage-earners, not independent workers. And this did not account for women and blacks, who had little freedom in choosing what work they did. He goes onto show that even after the Civil War these guarantees for "free soil, free labor, free men" did not really apply for most Americans, and especially not for blacks.
Demonstrating the profoundly successful fusion of value and interest within Republican ideology prior to the Civil War, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men remains a classic of modern American historical writing. Eloquent and influential, it shows how this ideology provided the moral consensus which allowed the North, for the first time in history, to mobilize an entire society in modern warfare.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1971
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About the author
Eric Foner
189 books670 followersEric Foner is DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. and Ph.D. In his teaching and scholarship, Foner focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and nineteenth-century America. His Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877, won the Bancroft, Parkman, and Los Angeles Times Book prizes and remains the standard history of the period. His latest book published in 2010 is The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery.
In 2006 Foner received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia University. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society of American Historians.
In 2006 Foner received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching at Columbia University. He has served as president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association, and the Society of American Historians.
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July 13, 2010
So many grotesque, Flannery O’Connor-ish names in this! Real people were helplessly christened, or intentionally styled themselves E. Rockwood Hoar, Abijah Mann, Hannibal Hamlin, Thurlow Weed, Orestes Brownson, Azariah Flagg, Galusha Grow, Ichabod Codding and, my personal and everlasting favorite, Godlove Orth. Say that in a seductive tone. Godlove. And when you step back, “Abraham Lincoln” is mighty strange too, that nineteenth century joining of an Old Testament patriarch or holy warrior to a humble Anglo-Saxon surname (the houses were of logs, the shirts of homespun fiber, but the English was of the finest weave, the product of meager, roughly-printed, but essentially Olympian Bard-and-Bible libraries, little windowsills of classics). I, Macabeeus Bradley, do solemnly swear…
This book is dryly titled and written but it tells a thrilling story: the radicalization of a people. Foner details the slow fusion of Northern antislavery constituencies into an effective organization, the Republican Party. The party’s “fundamental achievement” in the pre-war years was
Grant’s Personal Memoirs, a superb command history of the war, is also, upon reflection, a testament of the working of that “potent political force” among the sentimentally but not yet politically antislavery North. Grant was one of the millions who had for years subordinated their discomfort with slavery to national unity and party harmony, but who were drawn to the Republicans as they began to see that unity and harmony would mean little if slaveholders dominated the government and polluted the vast Western reaches with an institution whose political economy and social system were radically repugnant to their own idea of America’s future. Grant, a border state resident with slaveholding in-laws (and who briefly owned a slave himself), went from voting Democratic in 1856, to forestall secession, to supporting Lincoln in 1860, and acting as drillmaster to the Republicans’ torchlight-parading semi-militia, the “Wide Awakes.”
It fits Grant’s modest style that in memoirs written as a former president and commander of a conquering host he should figure as the cautious Everyman, a latecomer to revolution, a mote of the diverse mass mobilized under the Republican banner. There were the radicals, whose strident moralism and belief in an actively anti-slavery federal government had kept them wandering in the wilderness of third party schemes since the 1840s; the moderates, with Lincoln the typical specimen, a motley of ex-Whigs and disaffected Democrats who abhorred slavery but had believed in the possibility of sectional compromise until the Kansas-Nebraska controversy revealed southern interests profoundly contemptuous of the democratic process and bent on expansion into the west; and the conservatives from southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, Grant’s prewar milieu, areas marked by the racism of emigrants from the slave states—and then the Old Line Whigs and former Know-Nothings in the east who in last minutes before their absorption had sought to defuse the national obsession with slavery and unite the sections through immigrant bashing and a war on liquor.
That’s quite a mixed bag. And who knows what difficulties they would have had governing in peacetime, without the unifier of war. Still, Republican control of the national government was a repudiation of the southern way of life as a basis for America’s development, and a pronouncement of doom upon slavery, however long emancipation took. Interference with slavery in the states where it already existed wasn’t even on the table, but, Foner says, that didn’t—couldn’t—mollify the slave-owners, for “to agree to the containment of slavery, the South would have had to abandon its whole ideology, which had come to view the institution as a positive good, the basis of an enlightened form of social organization.” The abolitionist Elizur Wright prophesied, “Woe to the slave power under a Republican President if it strikes the first blow,” and I’ve always thought the Secessionists pretty stupid for shooting first, a treason which opened the way to what they most feared, emancipation by executive fiat, and which radicalized the strongly unionist Republican conservatives and Northern Democrats—who had opposed anti-slavery agitation as disunity. But Foner’s analysis of the expansionism and religiosity, of the giddily prospective imperial designs inherent in both free soil and slave power ideology made vivid the passions involved, made it understandable that the slaveholders would seek to redress a political reverse by other means, in war. Grant called secession "plainly suicidal"--which is something to think about.
The rebels wagered and lost, but were invited into American nostalgia. As Rebecca Solnit wrote about the tamed Indians in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, those America vanquishes are consoled with incorporation into the national myth. The Indians and the Rebels figure as the Noble Foes whose scrappy, individualistic valor resisted a phalanx of federal robots, whose Simpler Way of Life the urbanized, debt-ridden wage slaves fantasize about in darkened theaters. My girlfriend’s brother-in-law is an officer in the Marines. We drink and he tells his stories. One of his men, not white, and a very recent immigrant, just got a tattoo—a bulldog waving the Confederate battle flag, the stars-and-bars. Questioned, this drone of the leviathan state, of the empire whose consolidation required the defeat of the South, admitted he wasn’t entirely sure what the flag meant, but knew it was tough-looking, the sign of a rebel.
This book is dryly titled and written but it tells a thrilling story: the radicalization of a people. Foner details the slow fusion of Northern antislavery constituencies into an effective organization, the Republican Party. The party’s “fundamental achievement” in the pre-war years was
the creation and articulation of an ideology which blended personal and sectional interest with morality so perfectly that it became the most potent political force in the nation.
Grant’s Personal Memoirs, a superb command history of the war, is also, upon reflection, a testament of the working of that “potent political force” among the sentimentally but not yet politically antislavery North. Grant was one of the millions who had for years subordinated their discomfort with slavery to national unity and party harmony, but who were drawn to the Republicans as they began to see that unity and harmony would mean little if slaveholders dominated the government and polluted the vast Western reaches with an institution whose political economy and social system were radically repugnant to their own idea of America’s future. Grant, a border state resident with slaveholding in-laws (and who briefly owned a slave himself), went from voting Democratic in 1856, to forestall secession, to supporting Lincoln in 1860, and acting as drillmaster to the Republicans’ torchlight-parading semi-militia, the “Wide Awakes.”
It fits Grant’s modest style that in memoirs written as a former president and commander of a conquering host he should figure as the cautious Everyman, a latecomer to revolution, a mote of the diverse mass mobilized under the Republican banner. There were the radicals, whose strident moralism and belief in an actively anti-slavery federal government had kept them wandering in the wilderness of third party schemes since the 1840s; the moderates, with Lincoln the typical specimen, a motley of ex-Whigs and disaffected Democrats who abhorred slavery but had believed in the possibility of sectional compromise until the Kansas-Nebraska controversy revealed southern interests profoundly contemptuous of the democratic process and bent on expansion into the west; and the conservatives from southern portions of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, Grant’s prewar milieu, areas marked by the racism of emigrants from the slave states—and then the Old Line Whigs and former Know-Nothings in the east who in last minutes before their absorption had sought to defuse the national obsession with slavery and unite the sections through immigrant bashing and a war on liquor.
That’s quite a mixed bag. And who knows what difficulties they would have had governing in peacetime, without the unifier of war. Still, Republican control of the national government was a repudiation of the southern way of life as a basis for America’s development, and a pronouncement of doom upon slavery, however long emancipation took. Interference with slavery in the states where it already existed wasn’t even on the table, but, Foner says, that didn’t—couldn’t—mollify the slave-owners, for “to agree to the containment of slavery, the South would have had to abandon its whole ideology, which had come to view the institution as a positive good, the basis of an enlightened form of social organization.” The abolitionist Elizur Wright prophesied, “Woe to the slave power under a Republican President if it strikes the first blow,” and I’ve always thought the Secessionists pretty stupid for shooting first, a treason which opened the way to what they most feared, emancipation by executive fiat, and which radicalized the strongly unionist Republican conservatives and Northern Democrats—who had opposed anti-slavery agitation as disunity. But Foner’s analysis of the expansionism and religiosity, of the giddily prospective imperial designs inherent in both free soil and slave power ideology made vivid the passions involved, made it understandable that the slaveholders would seek to redress a political reverse by other means, in war. Grant called secession "plainly suicidal"--which is something to think about.
The rebels wagered and lost, but were invited into American nostalgia. As Rebecca Solnit wrote about the tamed Indians in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, those America vanquishes are consoled with incorporation into the national myth. The Indians and the Rebels figure as the Noble Foes whose scrappy, individualistic valor resisted a phalanx of federal robots, whose Simpler Way of Life the urbanized, debt-ridden wage slaves fantasize about in darkened theaters. My girlfriend’s brother-in-law is an officer in the Marines. We drink and he tells his stories. One of his men, not white, and a very recent immigrant, just got a tattoo—a bulldog waving the Confederate battle flag, the stars-and-bars. Questioned, this drone of the leviathan state, of the empire whose consolidation required the defeat of the South, admitted he wasn’t entirely sure what the flag meant, but knew it was tough-looking, the sign of a rebel.
June 25, 2014
All the more impressive for having been initially released as a PhD dissertation, this is one of the most comprehensive and insightful treatments of a specific ideology that I've read. While it requires some fairly advanced knowledge of the issues of the antebellum political system (issues like the Wilmot Proviso, party factions like Barnburner Democrats, and key figures like Horace Greeley get dropped into the analysis with cursory to no effort made to explain their context), Foner manages to pull together a large amount of primary source material to explain just what ideological positions and political tactics took the Republican Party from marginal upstarts to the nation's dominant political party in less than a decade. While his decision to structure the book one theme at a time instead of purely chronologically means that the narrative jumps around a bit, ultimately it's a highly effective way to tie together all the threads of thought from the various movements and issues that dominated the national agenda in the 1840s and 50s - how the country would expand, who would get to settle in the new territories, and what kind of life they would be able to live.
My copy begins with a fascinating essay written by Foner for the book's 25th anniversary that delves more deeply than the original book did into how the free labor plank of the Republican platform related to industrial capitalism and the beliefs of the Founding Fathers. Catchphrases like "Free labor" have always meant different things to different people (he mentions the modern Orwellianism of "right to work" laws), but at the time of the Republican ascendancy, when the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution were making it clearer than ever that the US had broken decisively with its agrarian origins, the slogan implied to many people that the American promise of labor freedom meant working with and through industrial capitalism instead of against it. Instead of Thomas Jefferson's ideal of "every man a yeoman farmer", "every man a shopkeeper or factory laborer" was a much more attractive vision for the rapidly growing population of the North. Foner discusses the limitations of the ideal - the "freedom" to engage in wage labor often meant settling for dangerous, degrading, and poorly remunerated factory jobs; women were excluded almost entirely; arguments that white laborers shouldn't have to compete with black slave labor were often extremely racist - but in an era where the democratic, egalitarian, populist sentiments of Jacksonian democracy still remained powerful, "free labor" was quite congenial to the white working majority. He doesn't mention Karl Marx's "Address from the International Workingmen's Association" correspondence with Lincoln through Ambassador Charles Francis Adams, but even a socialist like Marx saw "free labor" as a powerful tool to help emancipate the working class from oppression.
The heart of the book is the sections where Foner traces the genesis of the party to the inability of existing parties to address the question of slavery. The Democrats were particularly wracked by the issue, even going so far as to split in two for the 1860 Presidential election and remain the underdog for most of the rest of the 19th century, but parties like the Whigs withered completely as other issues of the day like economic development were subordinated to the larger questions of abolition and national unity. The Republican Party that competed in unsuccessfully in 1856, more successfully in 1858, and triumphantly in 1860 was composed of several heterogenous groups of political refugees, and Foner constructs ideological and organizational genealogies for each:
- the Free Soil Party (an extremely influential single-issue anti-slavery party focused on slavery's negative economic impact on white workers, they invented the eponymous slogan of the book)
- the Liberty Party (a related but much smaller single-issue party that focused more on the immorality of slavery than its economic effects)
- many Whig Party members (the Henry Clay-led stereotypically pro-industry, pro-banking, pro-tariff "big government" party that broke up over its inability to unify on the slavery issue, Lincoln and many other Republican leaders were originally Whigs)
- the Know-Nothing Party (AKA the American Party, an anti-immigrant pro-WASP racist party that was officially neutral on slavery, but the anti-slavery wing liked how abolition helped white workers by reducing competition from slave labor)
- disaffected Northern Democrats (they hated how plantation aristocrats dominated the Southern wing of the party and were uneasy at slavery's relationship to their supposed Jacksonian ideals, even if they weren't quite comfortable with how Whig-dominated the Republicans were)
Each of these groups brought something different to the table, and it's interesting watching the Republican leadership trying to cobble together a coherent party platform out of all these antagonistic blocs. By far the most vigorous and essential to the Republicans' success were the radical abolitionists, and by far the best weapons in their arsenal were abolition and Unionism. Then as now, the American public had an almost religious reverence for what they believed the "will of the Founding Fathers" to be, and one successful tactic the Republicans hit on was to claim that the Constitution was actually completely neutral on the subject of slavery, yet was being hijacked by the Slave Power to pass things like the Fugitive Slave Act or get slavery extended to the Western territories. In contrast to people like William Lloyd Garrison who claimed that the Constitution was a "pact with hell" for either mostly punting on the question of federal involvement with the "peculiar institution" or actively abetting it, and who therefore remained fringe figures, Republicans figured out that it was much easier to convince people that the Constitution was perfectly fine as is and that all they were trying to do was restore its original vision.
Southerners played right into their hands by forcing repeated showdowns over how to deal with each new territorial acquisition, using the Kansas-Nebraska Act to renege on the Missouri Compromise, or trying to get federal judges to overturn Northern "personal liberty" emancipation laws for escaped slaves via terrible Supreme Court decisions such as Dred Scott. Much like with "free labor", "free soil" was a powerful rallying cry for Northerners who were tired of the increasingly frequent standoffs forced by the delicate balance of power in the Senate between free and slave states, and hoped to use the newly acquired territories to break the political stalemate. However, even given the advantage of those provocations, the Republicans still had to fight off defectors within their ranks who started to flirt with states' rights from the opposite direction. Many otherwise orthodox Republicans gave extremely impassioned speeches in the 1850s about the rights of free states to nullify pro-slavery federal laws like the Fugitive Slave Act, only to change their tune when, thanks to the influence of the more moderate and conservative factions, they discovered that abolition and pro-Unionism was a better sell in most of the North.
To that end, Foner does go into the demographic aspect of who in the North supported abolition and who didn't, in slightly greater detail than James McPherson did in his otherwise peerless Battle Cry of Freedom. The parts of Northern states that were settled by Germans or Yankees (generally the northern parts - even to this day many downstate or rural areas of the Northern states are culturally and demographically similar to the South) hated slavery, while big cities were mostly apathetic. Small towns were often the most fervently Republican, while cities remained more Democratic thanks to their efforts to appeal to immigrants. The nativist and temperance movements, previously powerful and independent, eventually became subsumed into the broader Republican coalition, much to their chagrin. There were forceful debates over exactly how far to entrench opposition to slavery in the party platform - was endorsing popular sovereignty sufficient, or was the risk of allowing slavery in the territories too great, and therefore outright abolitionism the only acceptable option? Once the Republicans had recaptured control of the government from the Slave Power, could it confine slavery to the South and allow it to wither away somehow, or would more extreme measures be needed?
The radical faction was helped once again by the South's intransigence and threats of secession, and though its preferred candidates like Salmon Chase or William Seward proved unacceptable to the party at large, a moderate former Whig like Abraham Lincoln had to endorse radical principles like slavery's "ultimate extinction" sufficiently in speeches like the famous "House Divided" one to gain the 1860 Presidential nomination. Different arguments were used to support the Republican message in different parts of the North, and one of Lincoln's hidden strengths was that as "everyone's second choice" his candidacy could be rendered palatable to just about every Northern demographic, particularly given his unrelenting emphasis on keeping the Union together at all costs. The Republicans' emphasis on national unity, the evils of slavery, and the power of free labor to help the workingman gave them a greater and greater advantage in the North, and in 1860, Lincoln and the Republican Party won convincingly in the Senate, House, and Presidential races.
It's important to keep in mind that the rhetoric about "free men" was directed more at white Americans than blacks - even Lincoln was forced to claim in his debates with Douglas that he wasn't in favor of making blacks socially or politically equal: "I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects - certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." (This distinction between natural rights and social or civil rights would cause free blacks many problems in later years, from the famous Reconstruction-era Slaughterhouse cases and Plessy v. Ferguson all the way until the civil rights acts and cases of the 1960s). Though many Republicans abhorred the idea of living alongside blacks, and opposed black suffrage or allowing blacks to serve on juries, they made many converts by arguing that the institution of slavery drove down wages for white workers, as well as encouraging undesirable patterns of aristocratic government in Southern states that harmed poor blacks and whites alike. While most Americans agreed that whether settlement in the new Western territories would be slave or free was of vital importance, many "racially progressive" politicians openly hoped that blacks would be excluded from the new lands altogether, or perhaps colonized in Africa or Latin America as a further tentacle of Manifest Destiny. Often the question of who's on the side of progress means picking the lesser of two evils, and Southerners could see that whatever their Northern counterparts agreed with them on in regards to racial superiority, the Republicans' fundamental opposition to slavery meant that ultimately no compromise was possible.
In contrast to his discussion of pre-war Northern Republicans, Foner talks much less about the ideological currents of the South or the Democrats, or about how the Republican ideology survived past the war into Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. This is a pity for several reasons. There's a lot to be said about how much of Southern opposition to the North was due to their conception of themselves as a unique region of the country, with their own ethnic heritage and distinct culture, and how with the South out of the government during the war, many important initiatives were passed - good ones like the Morrill Land Grant College Act, the Homestead Act, and the National Banking Act, along with more mixed ones like the Pacific Railroad Act. Additionally, I would have liked for more info on how the Democratic Party managed to survive splitting in two in 1860 and remaining the usually weaker party for the next few decades instead of simply dissolving. Finally, further discussion on how the "free labor" plank of their platform endured the increasing amount of labor violence in the later part of the 19th century would be very interesting, since labor biographies such as Ray Ginger's The Bending Cross focus more on key characters like Eugene Debs than the philosophical systems they were fighting. All told, however, this is an excellent survey of its topic.
My copy begins with a fascinating essay written by Foner for the book's 25th anniversary that delves more deeply than the original book did into how the free labor plank of the Republican platform related to industrial capitalism and the beliefs of the Founding Fathers. Catchphrases like "Free labor" have always meant different things to different people (he mentions the modern Orwellianism of "right to work" laws), but at the time of the Republican ascendancy, when the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution were making it clearer than ever that the US had broken decisively with its agrarian origins, the slogan implied to many people that the American promise of labor freedom meant working with and through industrial capitalism instead of against it. Instead of Thomas Jefferson's ideal of "every man a yeoman farmer", "every man a shopkeeper or factory laborer" was a much more attractive vision for the rapidly growing population of the North. Foner discusses the limitations of the ideal - the "freedom" to engage in wage labor often meant settling for dangerous, degrading, and poorly remunerated factory jobs; women were excluded almost entirely; arguments that white laborers shouldn't have to compete with black slave labor were often extremely racist - but in an era where the democratic, egalitarian, populist sentiments of Jacksonian democracy still remained powerful, "free labor" was quite congenial to the white working majority. He doesn't mention Karl Marx's "Address from the International Workingmen's Association" correspondence with Lincoln through Ambassador Charles Francis Adams, but even a socialist like Marx saw "free labor" as a powerful tool to help emancipate the working class from oppression.
The heart of the book is the sections where Foner traces the genesis of the party to the inability of existing parties to address the question of slavery. The Democrats were particularly wracked by the issue, even going so far as to split in two for the 1860 Presidential election and remain the underdog for most of the rest of the 19th century, but parties like the Whigs withered completely as other issues of the day like economic development were subordinated to the larger questions of abolition and national unity. The Republican Party that competed in unsuccessfully in 1856, more successfully in 1858, and triumphantly in 1860 was composed of several heterogenous groups of political refugees, and Foner constructs ideological and organizational genealogies for each:
- the Free Soil Party (an extremely influential single-issue anti-slavery party focused on slavery's negative economic impact on white workers, they invented the eponymous slogan of the book)
- the Liberty Party (a related but much smaller single-issue party that focused more on the immorality of slavery than its economic effects)
- many Whig Party members (the Henry Clay-led stereotypically pro-industry, pro-banking, pro-tariff "big government" party that broke up over its inability to unify on the slavery issue, Lincoln and many other Republican leaders were originally Whigs)
- the Know-Nothing Party (AKA the American Party, an anti-immigrant pro-WASP racist party that was officially neutral on slavery, but the anti-slavery wing liked how abolition helped white workers by reducing competition from slave labor)
- disaffected Northern Democrats (they hated how plantation aristocrats dominated the Southern wing of the party and were uneasy at slavery's relationship to their supposed Jacksonian ideals, even if they weren't quite comfortable with how Whig-dominated the Republicans were)
Each of these groups brought something different to the table, and it's interesting watching the Republican leadership trying to cobble together a coherent party platform out of all these antagonistic blocs. By far the most vigorous and essential to the Republicans' success were the radical abolitionists, and by far the best weapons in their arsenal were abolition and Unionism. Then as now, the American public had an almost religious reverence for what they believed the "will of the Founding Fathers" to be, and one successful tactic the Republicans hit on was to claim that the Constitution was actually completely neutral on the subject of slavery, yet was being hijacked by the Slave Power to pass things like the Fugitive Slave Act or get slavery extended to the Western territories. In contrast to people like William Lloyd Garrison who claimed that the Constitution was a "pact with hell" for either mostly punting on the question of federal involvement with the "peculiar institution" or actively abetting it, and who therefore remained fringe figures, Republicans figured out that it was much easier to convince people that the Constitution was perfectly fine as is and that all they were trying to do was restore its original vision.
Southerners played right into their hands by forcing repeated showdowns over how to deal with each new territorial acquisition, using the Kansas-Nebraska Act to renege on the Missouri Compromise, or trying to get federal judges to overturn Northern "personal liberty" emancipation laws for escaped slaves via terrible Supreme Court decisions such as Dred Scott. Much like with "free labor", "free soil" was a powerful rallying cry for Northerners who were tired of the increasingly frequent standoffs forced by the delicate balance of power in the Senate between free and slave states, and hoped to use the newly acquired territories to break the political stalemate. However, even given the advantage of those provocations, the Republicans still had to fight off defectors within their ranks who started to flirt with states' rights from the opposite direction. Many otherwise orthodox Republicans gave extremely impassioned speeches in the 1850s about the rights of free states to nullify pro-slavery federal laws like the Fugitive Slave Act, only to change their tune when, thanks to the influence of the more moderate and conservative factions, they discovered that abolition and pro-Unionism was a better sell in most of the North.
To that end, Foner does go into the demographic aspect of who in the North supported abolition and who didn't, in slightly greater detail than James McPherson did in his otherwise peerless Battle Cry of Freedom. The parts of Northern states that were settled by Germans or Yankees (generally the northern parts - even to this day many downstate or rural areas of the Northern states are culturally and demographically similar to the South) hated slavery, while big cities were mostly apathetic. Small towns were often the most fervently Republican, while cities remained more Democratic thanks to their efforts to appeal to immigrants. The nativist and temperance movements, previously powerful and independent, eventually became subsumed into the broader Republican coalition, much to their chagrin. There were forceful debates over exactly how far to entrench opposition to slavery in the party platform - was endorsing popular sovereignty sufficient, or was the risk of allowing slavery in the territories too great, and therefore outright abolitionism the only acceptable option? Once the Republicans had recaptured control of the government from the Slave Power, could it confine slavery to the South and allow it to wither away somehow, or would more extreme measures be needed?
The radical faction was helped once again by the South's intransigence and threats of secession, and though its preferred candidates like Salmon Chase or William Seward proved unacceptable to the party at large, a moderate former Whig like Abraham Lincoln had to endorse radical principles like slavery's "ultimate extinction" sufficiently in speeches like the famous "House Divided" one to gain the 1860 Presidential nomination. Different arguments were used to support the Republican message in different parts of the North, and one of Lincoln's hidden strengths was that as "everyone's second choice" his candidacy could be rendered palatable to just about every Northern demographic, particularly given his unrelenting emphasis on keeping the Union together at all costs. The Republicans' emphasis on national unity, the evils of slavery, and the power of free labor to help the workingman gave them a greater and greater advantage in the North, and in 1860, Lincoln and the Republican Party won convincingly in the Senate, House, and Presidential races.
It's important to keep in mind that the rhetoric about "free men" was directed more at white Americans than blacks - even Lincoln was forced to claim in his debates with Douglas that he wasn't in favor of making blacks socially or politically equal: "I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects - certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." (This distinction between natural rights and social or civil rights would cause free blacks many problems in later years, from the famous Reconstruction-era Slaughterhouse cases and Plessy v. Ferguson all the way until the civil rights acts and cases of the 1960s). Though many Republicans abhorred the idea of living alongside blacks, and opposed black suffrage or allowing blacks to serve on juries, they made many converts by arguing that the institution of slavery drove down wages for white workers, as well as encouraging undesirable patterns of aristocratic government in Southern states that harmed poor blacks and whites alike. While most Americans agreed that whether settlement in the new Western territories would be slave or free was of vital importance, many "racially progressive" politicians openly hoped that blacks would be excluded from the new lands altogether, or perhaps colonized in Africa or Latin America as a further tentacle of Manifest Destiny. Often the question of who's on the side of progress means picking the lesser of two evils, and Southerners could see that whatever their Northern counterparts agreed with them on in regards to racial superiority, the Republicans' fundamental opposition to slavery meant that ultimately no compromise was possible.
In contrast to his discussion of pre-war Northern Republicans, Foner talks much less about the ideological currents of the South or the Democrats, or about how the Republican ideology survived past the war into Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. This is a pity for several reasons. There's a lot to be said about how much of Southern opposition to the North was due to their conception of themselves as a unique region of the country, with their own ethnic heritage and distinct culture, and how with the South out of the government during the war, many important initiatives were passed - good ones like the Morrill Land Grant College Act, the Homestead Act, and the National Banking Act, along with more mixed ones like the Pacific Railroad Act. Additionally, I would have liked for more info on how the Democratic Party managed to survive splitting in two in 1860 and remaining the usually weaker party for the next few decades instead of simply dissolving. Finally, further discussion on how the "free labor" plank of their platform endured the increasing amount of labor violence in the later part of the 19th century would be very interesting, since labor biographies such as Ray Ginger's The Bending Cross focus more on key characters like Eugene Debs than the philosophical systems they were fighting. All told, however, this is an excellent survey of its topic.
June 14, 2012
Foner walks us through the rise of the Republican Party in the 1850s. It makes for very interesting reading. I will list the interesting facts that I gleaned from it:
I am a cynic, and my interpretation is this. The north went to heroic lengths to assuage the south with the compromise of 1850, and the south thanked them with the Bleeding Kansas debacle and the Dred Scott ruling. The Democratic Party was functioning as a de facto regional power, blatantly subservient to the Slave Power. The situation was clearly untenable, and the old Whig party was becoming marginalized and irrelevant as its southern members abandoned it. The northern Democrats of the Stephen Douglas variety were unpopular and increasingly irrelevant to their party's leadership.
Northern elites were understandably disturbed, and strove to build a regional party of their own. However, there were few issues on which the disparate populations of New England and the west could agree. The old Whig economic program had never been able to win elections, and defecting northern Democrats insisted on hanging on to a hatred of banking, tariffs, and fiat currency as part of their Jacksonian heritage. So that wouldn't do; the new party was silent on economic policy. Laws making life difficult for immigrants were wildly popular among New Englanders and many native westerners, but they didn't play well with the German immigrants whose support the Republicans needed to win elections in some states. So the party was largely silent on immigration. Many New Englanders wanted to unite around Temperance laws, but smarter folks saw that this was a non-starter.
They ended up emphasizing the slavery issue because a vague, cautious opposition to slavery didn't piss anyone in the north off. Hardly anyone in the north owned slaves by the 1850s. So unlike a tariff or an immigration restriction or a temperance law, it wouldn't put anybody in the north at a disadvantage.
The content of this anti-slavery position varied widely. In some cases it went along with a fully egalitarian support for the rights of black people as Americans (as we moderns desire of the period's heroes). But it was also fully compatible with racist ideology, in some cases as vicious as anything coming out of the south. The early Republicans presented slavery as degrading the standing of free labor: Foner points out that they were often ambiguous about whether this was because the slave was enslaved, or because he was black. On the whole it seems that the Republicans' anti-southern orientation pushed most of them to a more humane and decent position on the issue, but that this commitment was also rather shallow. No wonder that it eroded when Reconstruction proved difficult.
I am a cynic, and my interpretation is this. The north went to heroic lengths to assuage the south with the compromise of 1850, and the south thanked them with the Bleeding Kansas debacle and the Dred Scott ruling. The Democratic Party was functioning as a de facto regional power, blatantly subservient to the Slave Power. The situation was clearly untenable, and the old Whig party was becoming marginalized and irrelevant as its southern members abandoned it. The northern Democrats of the Stephen Douglas variety were unpopular and increasingly irrelevant to their party's leadership.
Northern elites were understandably disturbed, and strove to build a regional party of their own. However, there were few issues on which the disparate populations of New England and the west could agree. The old Whig economic program had never been able to win elections, and defecting northern Democrats insisted on hanging on to a hatred of banking, tariffs, and fiat currency as part of their Jacksonian heritage. So that wouldn't do; the new party was silent on economic policy. Laws making life difficult for immigrants were wildly popular among New Englanders and many native westerners, but they didn't play well with the German immigrants whose support the Republicans needed to win elections in some states. So the party was largely silent on immigration. Many New Englanders wanted to unite around Temperance laws, but smarter folks saw that this was a non-starter.
They ended up emphasizing the slavery issue because a vague, cautious opposition to slavery didn't piss anyone in the north off. Hardly anyone in the north owned slaves by the 1850s. So unlike a tariff or an immigration restriction or a temperance law, it wouldn't put anybody in the north at a disadvantage.
The content of this anti-slavery position varied widely. In some cases it went along with a fully egalitarian support for the rights of black people as Americans (as we moderns desire of the period's heroes). But it was also fully compatible with racist ideology, in some cases as vicious as anything coming out of the south. The early Republicans presented slavery as degrading the standing of free labor: Foner points out that they were often ambiguous about whether this was because the slave was enslaved, or because he was black. On the whole it seems that the Republicans' anti-southern orientation pushed most of them to a more humane and decent position on the issue, but that this commitment was also rather shallow. No wonder that it eroded when Reconstruction proved difficult.
December 23, 2021
As my one good classmate has stressed that Eric Foner is THAT man when it comes to this era in American history. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men tells about the radicalisation of the party. The title is straightforward on what the ideology of the Republican party was pre-civil war. I'm not a fan of American political history, yet this book was fascinating to see the petty politics of the time. There was so much information in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men and I have no interest in diving into it. If you're interested in the American Civil War/ Reconstruction Era this book is for you.
February 9, 2016
The roots of the Civil War reach back to the birth of the nation. The Founders agreed to disagree on the issue of slavery in order to form a `more perfect Union.' By the 1860s the nation was at war with itself. Why did the South secede, and why did the North take up arms to prevent its secession? (316) In Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War, the first of Eric Foner's many influential books, he examines the two decades running up to the 1860 presidential election by taking a close look at the ideology of the Republican Party. In a time of rancorous sectional division, during which the Democratic Party was sundered north and south, with each section nominating its own presidential candidate, the Republicans drew anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats together under one banner. The party members shared a resentment of Southern political power, a devotion to the Union, moral revulsion to the peculiar institution, and a commitment to the northern social order and its development and expansion. (310-314)
During the 1850s, respected historians agree, the government of President Buchanan was under the complete control of the South which threatened the essence of the Republican view of democracy--which was majority rule. (100) "The domination of both the South and the federal government by the Slave Power violated this basic democratic belief." (101) Repeated attempts by the southern Slave Power to establish slavery in the western territories brought the sectional conflict to a crisis. The North and South represented two incompatible social systems, and expansion of the decadent South, as Seward warned, might lead to "entirely a slave-holding nation."
Several critical chapters of Foner's book delineate the radical, conservative and moderate elements within the newly-formed Republican party, and include the northern Democratic-Republicans who were alienated by the slaveocracy which by then controlled their party. The former Democrats found their party no longer a "champion of popular rights." (177) The radicals battle cry was, "Liberty and Union." This small but powerful minority was influential within the party, and brooked no compromise with the South, believing that the Founders intended that slavery would eventually cease to exist in the nation. (139-144) The conservatives wanted to preserve the Union at any cost, and were willing to make concessions to the South in order to do so. It was the moderates, including Lincoln, who "refused to abandon either of their twin goals--free soil and the Union," and drew the line at expansion of slavery into the new states. (219) It was not the moral imperative of the abolitionists which drew together the radicals and conservatives, the Whigs and Democrats, and the former Liberty, Free Soil and Know-Nothings. It was the political anti-slavery, Free Labor ideology which "blended personal and sectional interest with morality so perfectly that it became the most potent political force in the nation." (309)
Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University whose interest in the antebellum period started in college in the 1960s. Foner has authored more than a dozen books on American political history and race relations, including his latest Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction; published in 2005. Free Soil began as his doctoral dissertation under Pulitzer prizewinner, Richard Hofstadter. This scholar's scholar assumes a substantial familiarity with 19th century American history, leaving the reader to fill in the essential details of the various acts, provisos, compromises and constitutions; likewise, biographical material on important players in the antebellum milieu, like Stephen A. Douglas and William H. Seward, is also given short shrift. An introductory essay written on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Free Soil calls on recent historiography to explore the concept of "free labor" in the 19th century, a time when half of Northern Americans were wage-earners.
Free Soil is now nearly forty years old, yet remains a worthwhile read for anyone with a more than superficial interest in the Civil War and its causes. The reader comes away with a greater understanding of the role of the Republican Party in shaping the anti-slavery movement during the antebellum period.
During the 1850s, respected historians agree, the government of President Buchanan was under the complete control of the South which threatened the essence of the Republican view of democracy--which was majority rule. (100) "The domination of both the South and the federal government by the Slave Power violated this basic democratic belief." (101) Repeated attempts by the southern Slave Power to establish slavery in the western territories brought the sectional conflict to a crisis. The North and South represented two incompatible social systems, and expansion of the decadent South, as Seward warned, might lead to "entirely a slave-holding nation."
Several critical chapters of Foner's book delineate the radical, conservative and moderate elements within the newly-formed Republican party, and include the northern Democratic-Republicans who were alienated by the slaveocracy which by then controlled their party. The former Democrats found their party no longer a "champion of popular rights." (177) The radicals battle cry was, "Liberty and Union." This small but powerful minority was influential within the party, and brooked no compromise with the South, believing that the Founders intended that slavery would eventually cease to exist in the nation. (139-144) The conservatives wanted to preserve the Union at any cost, and were willing to make concessions to the South in order to do so. It was the moderates, including Lincoln, who "refused to abandon either of their twin goals--free soil and the Union," and drew the line at expansion of slavery into the new states. (219) It was not the moral imperative of the abolitionists which drew together the radicals and conservatives, the Whigs and Democrats, and the former Liberty, Free Soil and Know-Nothings. It was the political anti-slavery, Free Labor ideology which "blended personal and sectional interest with morality so perfectly that it became the most potent political force in the nation." (309)
Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University whose interest in the antebellum period started in college in the 1960s. Foner has authored more than a dozen books on American political history and race relations, including his latest Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction; published in 2005. Free Soil began as his doctoral dissertation under Pulitzer prizewinner, Richard Hofstadter. This scholar's scholar assumes a substantial familiarity with 19th century American history, leaving the reader to fill in the essential details of the various acts, provisos, compromises and constitutions; likewise, biographical material on important players in the antebellum milieu, like Stephen A. Douglas and William H. Seward, is also given short shrift. An introductory essay written on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Free Soil calls on recent historiography to explore the concept of "free labor" in the 19th century, a time when half of Northern Americans were wage-earners.
Free Soil is now nearly forty years old, yet remains a worthwhile read for anyone with a more than superficial interest in the Civil War and its causes. The reader comes away with a greater understanding of the role of the Republican Party in shaping the anti-slavery movement during the antebellum period.
October 19, 2015
Eric Foner asks in the last chapter of this book: "The decision for civil war in 1860-61 can be resolved into two questions--why did the South secede, and why did the North refuse to let the South secede?" (pg. 316) Neither question can be fully developed unless one understands the rise of the Republican party in the late 1850s. This new party was not bound together by economic concerns that had so afflicted the nation in the 1830s and early 1840s. They were instead a coalition of diverse politicians and lawmakers who held to an ideology of free soil and free men. Politicians who were once free trade, hard money, Jacksonian Democrats, integrated with men who were pro-tariff, bank promoting, Clay-loving Whigs. Radicals who supported African American civil rights and politicians who wanted to ship freed slaves out of the country allied in an antislavery cause. Despite their divergent views on economics and race, they all believed in the preeminence of free labor and insisted that slavery be barred from the new territories. This party was a coalition of Northern and Mid-Western men who wanted to put a stop to slavery's further expansion and monopoly on American government. Hatred of slavery however, didn't always mean a concern for racial equality, but it did despise the effect of slavery upon labor and the American character. To many northern American's, free labor was what would make America great. The ability for a man to move west and have his own farm and create his own industry was the engine that would build a powerful middle class. The introduction of slavery into the new territories would destroy this ideal. Foner's book is a classic and one that cannot be ignored when trying to understand the causes of the Civil War. His level of research is breath taking. Thousands of archives and primary source material were consulted for this book (he admits that some was left out in his bibliography). This book is a must read for anyone wanting to understand Civil War causation.
September 22, 2018
Important book.
October 15, 2025
Foner, of course, is a dean of American history, particularly of the mid-nineteenth century, so it is no surprise that this book is indispensable to understanding American politics leading up to the Civil War. I know of no other book that goes into such depth regarding the early Republican Party, so this book serves an incredibly important role. That this was Foner’s PHD dissertation is very impressive.
As one would expect, Foner is consistently insightful. I found his description of the role of the moderate Republicans to be particularly insightful. The insight and intelligence of the book cannot be overstated, but I do think that Foner seems a little to quick to discount or discredit the former Jacksonian Democrats’ contributions to the Republican Party. Foner expresses repeatedly that the economic, “free labor” ideology of the Republicans as a whole was a key part of their anti-slavery message, which it certainly was. But in my opinion just as important was the Republican warnings of the encroachment of the Slave Power on northern sovereignty. The former is more of a vestige of the old Whig Party, the latter is more of a vestige of the old Jacksonians. Throughout, Foner constantly highlighted the racism of the former Democrats, which is a very important and valid topic to bring up. At the same time, however, Foner acknowledges yet sweeps under the rug the nativist, anti-Catholic hysteria of many of the former Whigs. The racism of the Democrats was obviously much, much worse and more destructive than the Whig’s own bigotry, but I think it was slightly irresponsible of Foner to be so forgiving of the Whigs. That is a theme of a lot of Foner’s work on the period: praise of the Whigs and criticism of the Democrats. Almost an anti-Arthur Schlesinger Jr. I believe that historiography has underrated the Jacksonian Democrats’ role in ending slavery, and this book is a part of that.
That said, the book on the whole is stellar. Slavery is the most important issue in American history, and its abolition is the greatest achievement in American history, no matter how terribly we have failed in the 160 years since to atone for the horrors we forced on so many. If we do want to atone, as we should, I think we need to remember how we abolished slavery in the first place. Eric Foner does as good a job as anyone to show how we built the coalition to do that back in the 1850s. Two thumbs up. Would highly recommend.
As one would expect, Foner is consistently insightful. I found his description of the role of the moderate Republicans to be particularly insightful. The insight and intelligence of the book cannot be overstated, but I do think that Foner seems a little to quick to discount or discredit the former Jacksonian Democrats’ contributions to the Republican Party. Foner expresses repeatedly that the economic, “free labor” ideology of the Republicans as a whole was a key part of their anti-slavery message, which it certainly was. But in my opinion just as important was the Republican warnings of the encroachment of the Slave Power on northern sovereignty. The former is more of a vestige of the old Whig Party, the latter is more of a vestige of the old Jacksonians. Throughout, Foner constantly highlighted the racism of the former Democrats, which is a very important and valid topic to bring up. At the same time, however, Foner acknowledges yet sweeps under the rug the nativist, anti-Catholic hysteria of many of the former Whigs. The racism of the Democrats was obviously much, much worse and more destructive than the Whig’s own bigotry, but I think it was slightly irresponsible of Foner to be so forgiving of the Whigs. That is a theme of a lot of Foner’s work on the period: praise of the Whigs and criticism of the Democrats. Almost an anti-Arthur Schlesinger Jr. I believe that historiography has underrated the Jacksonian Democrats’ role in ending slavery, and this book is a part of that.
That said, the book on the whole is stellar. Slavery is the most important issue in American history, and its abolition is the greatest achievement in American history, no matter how terribly we have failed in the 160 years since to atone for the horrors we forced on so many. If we do want to atone, as we should, I think we need to remember how we abolished slavery in the first place. Eric Foner does as good a job as anyone to show how we built the coalition to do that back in the 1850s. Two thumbs up. Would highly recommend.
March 6, 2015
In “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men”, Eric Foner discusses the various political and social constituencies that merged under the banner of “anti-slavery” to form the Republican party in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. The book is, in a sense, a companion to Eugene Genovese’s “The Political Economy of Slavery”, in which Genovese explains the extent to which ante-bellum southern society had embraced the institution of slavery as a unique, deeply held world-view, and how the preservation of slavery became an ideology so dear to them that they would sooner abandon the Union than part with it. In Foner’s book, he essentially makes the same case about the anti-slavery worldview that emerged over the same period in the North. In essence, both Foner and Genovese resuscitate the Beardian theory of “irrepressible conflict” as the cause of the civil war, yet unlike Charles and Mary Beard, lay the source of that conflict squarely on competing worldviews over slavery.
While various groups united as Republicans under a banner of “anti-slavery”, these various anti-slavery constituencies were each motivated by different, often competing, ideological impulses – only a minority of which actually held slavery to be wrong because blacks were equal to whites. On the far extreme were abolitionists for whom slavery was a moral wrong, and who held that its abolition was the only moral response to sin. On the opposite extreme were nativist Know-Nothings whose anti-immigrant fervor made them the natural enemies of the Democratic Party; a Party that, in the North, was strongly supported by recently arrived immigrants – in other words, the Know-Nothing anti-slavery position had nothing whatsoever to do with a sense of right or wrong with respect to slaves, but rather, was a poke in the eye at a political rival. Between these two poles were radical, moderate and conservative variants anti-slavery Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats, each of whom were wary of the consolidation of political power by the slave south, and further, saw slavery as antithetical to their free labor view of a democratic America. What is fascinating is that each of these constituencies united into a cohesive political party dedicated to anti-slavery while, at the same time, never abandoning their respective fundamental ideologies that had made them abolitionists, Whigs, Democrats or nativists in the first place. To quote Foner “….the fundamental achievement of the Republican party before the Civil was [was] the creation and articulation of an ideology which blended personal and sectional interest with morality so perfectly that it became the most potent political force in the nation.”
I found this book fascinating, and highly recommend it. As I read, I found myself thinking about the political economy of my own time, and wondering whether there might not, indeed, be an opportunity to again "blend personal and sectional interest with morality" in a positive, constructive way that seems, at present, to escape everyone.
While various groups united as Republicans under a banner of “anti-slavery”, these various anti-slavery constituencies were each motivated by different, often competing, ideological impulses – only a minority of which actually held slavery to be wrong because blacks were equal to whites. On the far extreme were abolitionists for whom slavery was a moral wrong, and who held that its abolition was the only moral response to sin. On the opposite extreme were nativist Know-Nothings whose anti-immigrant fervor made them the natural enemies of the Democratic Party; a Party that, in the North, was strongly supported by recently arrived immigrants – in other words, the Know-Nothing anti-slavery position had nothing whatsoever to do with a sense of right or wrong with respect to slaves, but rather, was a poke in the eye at a political rival. Between these two poles were radical, moderate and conservative variants anti-slavery Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats, each of whom were wary of the consolidation of political power by the slave south, and further, saw slavery as antithetical to their free labor view of a democratic America. What is fascinating is that each of these constituencies united into a cohesive political party dedicated to anti-slavery while, at the same time, never abandoning their respective fundamental ideologies that had made them abolitionists, Whigs, Democrats or nativists in the first place. To quote Foner “….the fundamental achievement of the Republican party before the Civil was [was] the creation and articulation of an ideology which blended personal and sectional interest with morality so perfectly that it became the most potent political force in the nation.”
I found this book fascinating, and highly recommend it. As I read, I found myself thinking about the political economy of my own time, and wondering whether there might not, indeed, be an opportunity to again "blend personal and sectional interest with morality" in a positive, constructive way that seems, at present, to escape everyone.
February 18, 2013
This was assigned reading for my Civil War university class.
This book is a somewhat interesting, but not fun. This is the second book I have read by Foner (after "Reconstruction") and I found them similiar: good information but a slow read. I think he is simply a dry writer. He also doesn't present history chronologically which can make it difficult to relate all the parts correctly. This book is at times more political theory than history; I usually love to read history, but find political theory a chore.
The newer edition of this book adds a 39 page introduction which was an even more difficult read than the rest of the book and I did not finish that part. I did read the rest, which is broken into almost essay-like categorical chapters rather than a chronological recap of the Republican's formation and rise to power. The book covers northern and southern society; the party's relation with nativism, race, and slavery; and the various factions that made up the Republicans (radicals & abolitionists, free soilers, Whigs, and disgruntled Democrats).
Foner questions how much the Republicans had actually moderated themselves by 1860. Voting results and quotes from the public are mentioned, but the focus really seems to be how the Republican politicians not the "free men" they were championing.
This book is a somewhat interesting, but not fun. This is the second book I have read by Foner (after "Reconstruction") and I found them similiar: good information but a slow read. I think he is simply a dry writer. He also doesn't present history chronologically which can make it difficult to relate all the parts correctly. This book is at times more political theory than history; I usually love to read history, but find political theory a chore.
The newer edition of this book adds a 39 page introduction which was an even more difficult read than the rest of the book and I did not finish that part. I did read the rest, which is broken into almost essay-like categorical chapters rather than a chronological recap of the Republican's formation and rise to power. The book covers northern and southern society; the party's relation with nativism, race, and slavery; and the various factions that made up the Republicans (radicals & abolitionists, free soilers, Whigs, and disgruntled Democrats).
Foner questions how much the Republicans had actually moderated themselves by 1860. Voting results and quotes from the public are mentioned, but the focus really seems to be how the Republican politicians not the "free men" they were championing.
February 6, 2017
Okay - so I want to say this is a "heavy" book, but it's not overly academic. I will say you have to be super-interested in the topic of 1840/50s American politics and slavery. If that is something you are interested - this is the book for you. It analyzes the nascent Republican Party's various views of slavery (the raison d'etre for the party's creations) -- I like that it dedicates chapters to the folks who made up the Party, e.g., radicals, conservative, ex-Democrats. It also looks at the various ways slavery was criticized - in the 21st Century, we take a moralist approach. But the political actors and citizens who were fervent viewed it economically, politically, and socially -- in other words, the die-hard abolitionists were the minority.
My nitpick with the book (other than it can be somewhat plodding, but, like I said, you have to be interested in the subject) is that it assumes you come to this with certain knowledge. There's not a lot of explanation of who certain people are - if you don't know who William Seward is, you'll just have to figure it out as you go along. So this is a recommend for folks who want to see the diverse (as in viewpoints and approaches) anti-slavery coalition came together in the guise of a new political party and, in their second presidential race, managed to get their candidate elected.
My nitpick with the book (other than it can be somewhat plodding, but, like I said, you have to be interested in the subject) is that it assumes you come to this with certain knowledge. There's not a lot of explanation of who certain people are - if you don't know who William Seward is, you'll just have to figure it out as you go along. So this is a recommend for folks who want to see the diverse (as in viewpoints and approaches) anti-slavery coalition came together in the guise of a new political party and, in their second presidential race, managed to get their candidate elected.
August 12, 2019
This is not exactly light reading. This book explains the emergence of the Republican Party, its mid-19th Century idiology, and why the election of Lincoln as the first Republican president so threatened the South that it felt forced to secede, even before he was sworn in.
This isn't about the battles and generals of the Civil War. It stops when South Carolina decides to secede. You begin to understand how the diverse interests of the North coalesce around a single party. Not all the northerners cared about abolition, but they all believed that slavery was a threat to the country's growth and a moral wrong. Well worth reading!
This isn't about the battles and generals of the Civil War. It stops when South Carolina decides to secede. You begin to understand how the diverse interests of the North coalesce around a single party. Not all the northerners cared about abolition, but they all believed that slavery was a threat to the country's growth and a moral wrong. Well worth reading!
October 25, 2020
Masterful. Reading it is a bit like peeling an onion. Because Foner is writing half a century ago about events that were only a century old to him, there is knowledge about antebellum politics that he takes for granted that his readers intrinsically know. Still, many questions that this reader had in early chapters were somehow explicated as the book goes on.
July 8, 2012
A well researched and argued book, written with clarity, but not flair. Foner really does live up to his reputation.
May 1, 2025
Eric Foner has provided an in-depth and engaging analysis of the Northern free labor ideology and how that ideology shaped the Republican party and ultimately provoked the secession of the South, the breakup of the Union, and the breakout of the Civil War. Free labor ideology was one rooted in the idea of a country of smallholding yeoman farmers, small-scale capitalists, and free wage workers who, through the traditional Protestant American values of hard work and frugality, could eventually make it into the owning class. Equally important to these positive aspects of free labor ideology was the fact that enslaved labor and the Southern economy embodied the opposite and antithetical values leading to Foner's own version of "the irrepressible conflict" theory of Civil War causation.
Foner offers a balanced view of the Republican party pointing out that they were neither zealous abolitionists nor rabid racists. The party, in fact, contained a spectrum of views concerning slavery and race. And even the most passionate antislavery Republicans were still tinged by the racist worldview of their day. Nevertheless, they were able to coalesce around a rejection of introducing slavery in the territories and new states as an extension of their free labor conviction that the west should be settled by free white settlers.
In the end Foner concludes that Southern "secession should be viewed as a total and logical response by the South to the situation which confronted it in the election of Lincoln--logical in the sense that it was the only action consistent with its ideology." And "In the same way, the Republicans' decision to maintain the Union was inherent in their ideology" (p. 316). As his whole work is centered on the importance of ideology it is no surprise that Foner comes to such a conclusion. And while the inclusion of ideology in historical analysis is necessary and important I am left wondering if Foner's hyperfocus has left him blind to other central issues--namely that of power.
Although politicians are influenced by ideology they are also motivated by utilitarianism and the politics of power. And these two factors often lead to decisions that defy logic and behavior in keeping with ideology. One cannot help but wonder if, with the election of a Northern party to the White House, the South was simply afraid of losing power and saw secession as the only way of maintaining it as well as their way of life. Likewise, perhaps Lincoln and the Republicans refused to let the South secede because they felt it threatened their power and the power of the Union. If the Federal government let the seven seceding states of the South go without a fight what states would be next? Nevertheless Foner is an excellent historian and writer and this book is solid.
Foner offers a balanced view of the Republican party pointing out that they were neither zealous abolitionists nor rabid racists. The party, in fact, contained a spectrum of views concerning slavery and race. And even the most passionate antislavery Republicans were still tinged by the racist worldview of their day. Nevertheless, they were able to coalesce around a rejection of introducing slavery in the territories and new states as an extension of their free labor conviction that the west should be settled by free white settlers.
In the end Foner concludes that Southern "secession should be viewed as a total and logical response by the South to the situation which confronted it in the election of Lincoln--logical in the sense that it was the only action consistent with its ideology." And "In the same way, the Republicans' decision to maintain the Union was inherent in their ideology" (p. 316). As his whole work is centered on the importance of ideology it is no surprise that Foner comes to such a conclusion. And while the inclusion of ideology in historical analysis is necessary and important I am left wondering if Foner's hyperfocus has left him blind to other central issues--namely that of power.
Although politicians are influenced by ideology they are also motivated by utilitarianism and the politics of power. And these two factors often lead to decisions that defy logic and behavior in keeping with ideology. One cannot help but wonder if, with the election of a Northern party to the White House, the South was simply afraid of losing power and saw secession as the only way of maintaining it as well as their way of life. Likewise, perhaps Lincoln and the Republicans refused to let the South secede because they felt it threatened their power and the power of the Union. If the Federal government let the seven seceding states of the South go without a fight what states would be next? Nevertheless Foner is an excellent historian and writer and this book is solid.
April 7, 2025
I'm planning to read more Foner after this. "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" is a lucid, relatively concise analysis of the early GOP's ideology.
Foner argues that the Republicans, despite containing various factions, espoused a consistent ideology composed of a strong belief in freedom as embodied in the entrepreneurial smallholder. This was already beginning to fade when the industrial revolution started, but mirrored life across the small town Northeast. To own some land or work a trade as a merchant was the Republican American Dream. Social mobility and westward expansion of free labor were essential in this framework.
This conception existed in opposition to the Southern system, marked by slavery and plutocracy merged into what early Republicans called the "Slave Power." As opposed to those historians who argue that the GOP was just the rump Whig party, Foner explains how Republicans were not solely patrician Whigs, but actually included former Democrats (many sharing Jacksonian economic views), radical Republicans (who put anti-slavery issues first), and conservatives and moderates (this is where many ex-Whigs were). The factions went their separate ways when the Civil War began, but stayed together just enough for Abraham Lincoln to win in 1860 from the middle of the Republican spectrum.
Although the party united against the expansion of slavery, viewpoints differed within the coalition on how best to do so. Radicals were generally political abolitionists, while conservatives placed a higher primacy on unionism and compromise. While the anti-slavery stance was progressive, Foner also showcases how many Republicans, including former Free Soilers, still held racist views. To many, slavery was an affront more than anything to the freedom of labor. They argued that it degraded White labor, held slaves down, and diminished social mobility. For this reason, many Republicans adopted half-baked ideas of "colonization," or sending free Black Americans to other continents. Despite this, Republicans proved willing to consider at least some civil rights issues.
Republicans also divided on nativism but largely buried that issue, along with prohibition. They needed to win over immigrants in order to carry crucial states, and the economic growth they favored required immigration.
Foner's work is well-researched and clearly conveys his argument. It's well-structured and provides readers with sufficient context about each faction and the party's early base. Despite its divisions, the Republican Party held strong against slavery. I shudder to think of what would have happened had Abraham Lincoln not been able to unify the GOP...
Foner argues that the Republicans, despite containing various factions, espoused a consistent ideology composed of a strong belief in freedom as embodied in the entrepreneurial smallholder. This was already beginning to fade when the industrial revolution started, but mirrored life across the small town Northeast. To own some land or work a trade as a merchant was the Republican American Dream. Social mobility and westward expansion of free labor were essential in this framework.
This conception existed in opposition to the Southern system, marked by slavery and plutocracy merged into what early Republicans called the "Slave Power." As opposed to those historians who argue that the GOP was just the rump Whig party, Foner explains how Republicans were not solely patrician Whigs, but actually included former Democrats (many sharing Jacksonian economic views), radical Republicans (who put anti-slavery issues first), and conservatives and moderates (this is where many ex-Whigs were). The factions went their separate ways when the Civil War began, but stayed together just enough for Abraham Lincoln to win in 1860 from the middle of the Republican spectrum.
Although the party united against the expansion of slavery, viewpoints differed within the coalition on how best to do so. Radicals were generally political abolitionists, while conservatives placed a higher primacy on unionism and compromise. While the anti-slavery stance was progressive, Foner also showcases how many Republicans, including former Free Soilers, still held racist views. To many, slavery was an affront more than anything to the freedom of labor. They argued that it degraded White labor, held slaves down, and diminished social mobility. For this reason, many Republicans adopted half-baked ideas of "colonization," or sending free Black Americans to other continents. Despite this, Republicans proved willing to consider at least some civil rights issues.
Republicans also divided on nativism but largely buried that issue, along with prohibition. They needed to win over immigrants in order to carry crucial states, and the economic growth they favored required immigration.
Foner's work is well-researched and clearly conveys his argument. It's well-structured and provides readers with sufficient context about each faction and the party's early base. Despite its divisions, the Republican Party held strong against slavery. I shudder to think of what would have happened had Abraham Lincoln not been able to unify the GOP...
July 23, 2020
"'To Chase more than any other one man belongs the credit of making the anti-slavery feeling, what it had never been before, a power in politics. It hand been the sentiment of philanthropists; he made it the inspiration of a great political party.'" (quoting the NY Tribune on Chase's death, 74)
"'We have saved this Union so often that I am afraid we will save it to death.'" (quoting Thaddeus Stevens, 142)
"Wade was the master of what one reporter called 'scorching sarcasms.' When it seemed that the Senate was more interested in discussing the acquisition of Cuba than the homestead bill, Wade told the southerners, 'The question will be, shall we give niggers to the niggerless or land to the landless?' And after a slaveholding Senator described with tenderness his relationship with an old house servant, Wade retorted, 'nobody wished to forbid him taking his old mammy with him to Kansas -- we only sought to forbid his selling her after he got there.'" (146)
"In short, none of these elements can stand separately; they dissolve into one another, and the total product emerges as an ideology. Resentment of southern political power, devotion to the Union, anti-slavery based upon the free labor argument, moral revulsion to the particular institution, racial prejudice, a commitment to the northern social order and its development and expansion -- all these elements were intertwined in the Republican world view. What they added up to was the conviction that North and South represented two social systems whose values, interests, and future prospects were in sharp, perhaps mortal, conflict with one another." (32)
"'We have saved this Union so often that I am afraid we will save it to death.'" (quoting Thaddeus Stevens, 142)
"Wade was the master of what one reporter called 'scorching sarcasms.' When it seemed that the Senate was more interested in discussing the acquisition of Cuba than the homestead bill, Wade told the southerners, 'The question will be, shall we give niggers to the niggerless or land to the landless?' And after a slaveholding Senator described with tenderness his relationship with an old house servant, Wade retorted, 'nobody wished to forbid him taking his old mammy with him to Kansas -- we only sought to forbid his selling her after he got there.'" (146)
"In short, none of these elements can stand separately; they dissolve into one another, and the total product emerges as an ideology. Resentment of southern political power, devotion to the Union, anti-slavery based upon the free labor argument, moral revulsion to the particular institution, racial prejudice, a commitment to the northern social order and its development and expansion -- all these elements were intertwined in the Republican world view. What they added up to was the conviction that North and South represented two social systems whose values, interests, and future prospects were in sharp, perhaps mortal, conflict with one another." (32)
June 18, 2023
4-4.5 stars. In this book, it's immediately clear why Foner is such an authority on 19th century American history. Although slightly dry and academically-styled (I felt it was, at least), this work is essential reading for understanding the American political economy of this period, as well as the early Republican Party and the Civil War--both of which seem to be greatly misunderstood today; most leaders were not actually abolitionists, and economic questions were far more important than many today may realize. The political battles fought between Radical Republicans and their own party's conservatives, between the North and the South, and between different regions within the North (urban v. rural, upper-North v. lower-North, etc.) all hold lessons that are still relevant to today's politics and social divides.
I look forward to reading next Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution to get further understanding of just how many considerations were involved in this time period's politics *other* than the abolition of slavery or the equality of black Americans.
I look forward to reading next Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution to get further understanding of just how many considerations were involved in this time period's politics *other* than the abolition of slavery or the equality of black Americans.
March 31, 2025
The catechism answer to “what caused the Civil War” is, of course, slavery. But that is only the starting point of historical debate. Foner affirms the “irrepressible conflict” thesis by arguing that GOP ideology, developed in the 1840s-1850s, became increasingly incompatible with slavery. He breaks down the component parts of the Northern constituencies of the GOP to explain the political complexities of the era.
The Northern ideology was predicated on free labor and the virtuous cycle of wage earners investing their savings to become employers. “Free soil” was new territory that this growing economy could expand into. The Northern system features both social and physical mobility. The North viewed the South, with its slavery, as antithetical to this vision. The North also chaffed at the politics of the Slave Power who leveraged their positions to thwart the initiatives of the majority. Foner argues that the diametrically opposed views of what constituted a vibrant and efficacious society and the conspiratorial nature of the Slave Power made the Civil War inevitable.
The Northern ideology was predicated on free labor and the virtuous cycle of wage earners investing their savings to become employers. “Free soil” was new territory that this growing economy could expand into. The Northern system features both social and physical mobility. The North viewed the South, with its slavery, as antithetical to this vision. The North also chaffed at the politics of the Slave Power who leveraged their positions to thwart the initiatives of the majority. Foner argues that the diametrically opposed views of what constituted a vibrant and efficacious society and the conspiratorial nature of the Slave Power made the Civil War inevitable.
March 31, 2022
Read the preface for 3 times, finally had the mood to read the remaining parts; and I did it at once!
Foner analysed different factions within the newly formed Republican party and layout their respective influences driving the whole party.
The Republican party formulated its anti-slavery (instead of abolition, only knew the difference between them for the 1st time!) orientation with various reasons, but the major one was the belief in the free labor thinking of the North; such belief emphasised that everyone, including black people, could strive for economic independence in the predominately agricultural society. Foner ended the book by stating that the Republicans drafted the Reconstruction based on such societal outlook - this led to the failure of Reconstruction. Look forward to reading Foner's view on Reconstruction!
Foner analysed different factions within the newly formed Republican party and layout their respective influences driving the whole party.
The Republican party formulated its anti-slavery (instead of abolition, only knew the difference between them for the 1st time!) orientation with various reasons, but the major one was the belief in the free labor thinking of the North; such belief emphasised that everyone, including black people, could strive for economic independence in the predominately agricultural society. Foner ended the book by stating that the Republicans drafted the Reconstruction based on such societal outlook - this led to the failure of Reconstruction. Look forward to reading Foner's view on Reconstruction!
November 20, 2018
The language is dated now, but the argument holds up well. Foner shows in exhaustive detail the factions and arguments within the new Republican Party of the 1850s. By the Civil War, the Republican party, even with its Radical, moderate-to-conservative, and Democratic-Republican blocs, agreed on an economically activist government with tariffs, infrastructure, and homesteading in the West. Above all, a commitment to the end of slavery united the party, although Foner shows how this desire to end slavery took racist as well as egalitarian forms.
May 17, 2021
Detailed and crystal-clear political history of the Republican party as they rose to power in the 1850s. McPherson heavily referenced this one for the epic Battle Cry of Freedom. This is more specific, academic, and detailed about the specific ideologies and political calculi of men like Seward, Chase, and Lincoln, though the latter is only dealt with lightly compared to others.
Much of the book still feels relevant - nativism hasn't gone anywhere and is dealt with at length in the last third of the book.
Much of the book still feels relevant - nativism hasn't gone anywhere and is dealt with at length in the last third of the book.
August 11, 2021
This book looks at the different ideas that helped shape the early Republican Party in the antebellum period. The overall argument is that opposition to slavery was the defining feature of the Republican ideology. Anti slavery wasn’t a moral position for every Republican, racism was strong in the party, and their free labor ideology set the stage for their failures in reconstruction, but Foner pushes back against the idea that Republicans really weren’t all that concerned with the peculiar institution. In fact, it was their formative, uniting issue.
February 6, 2023
This book was recommended to me by my historian son who studied it in his Civil War class at University. It is considered fundamental to our understanding of the causes of the American Civil War and the ideological foundations of the Republican Party.
From Goodreads -- A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, finding these concepts most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. Through a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine the nation's destiny."
From Goodreads -- A significant reevaluation of the causes of the Civil War, Foner's study looks beyond the North's opposition to slavery and its emphasis upon preserving the Union to determine the broader grounds of its willingness to undertake a war against the South in 1861. Its search is for those social concepts the North accepted as vital to its way of life, finding these concepts most clearly expressed in the ideology of the growing Republican party in the decade before the war's start. Through a careful analysis of the attitudes of leading factions in the party's formation (northern Whigs, former Democrats, and political abolitionists) Foner is able to show what each contributed to Republican ideology. He also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in that ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself. At the heart of the controversy over the extension of slavery, he argues, is the issue of whether the northern or southern form of society would take root in the West, whose development would determine the nation's destiny."
January 26, 2021
Read this book for a seminar at my university to look at the multi-faceted Republican ideologies of the Civil War era. Most interesting to me in reading this was the anti-extension beliefs upon which the political platform was partially constructed.
September 22, 2021
as the author himself once mentioned:
if there's one takeaway from my first book, it was this simple point:
anti-slavery was not just a negative attitude, not just a negative outlook. It was an affirmation of the superiority of the Northern form of social organization to that of the South.
if there's one takeaway from my first book, it was this simple point:
anti-slavery was not just a negative attitude, not just a negative outlook. It was an affirmation of the superiority of the Northern form of social organization to that of the South.
October 5, 2018
Not for everyone, but a must read in preparation in understanding the precursors to the Civil war.
January 20, 2020
An exceptional outline; an interesting read if just to understand how ideology has changed in the passing decades and the ideological origins of free enterprise and its use in politics.
May 4, 2020
4/5 stars - history class read. Good insight and debunking the ideologies of the parties before the civil war.
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