FREE SOIL, FREE SPEECH, FREE MEN, FREMONT—THE CAMPAIGN OF 1856

 

 

The Great Republican Reform Party, Calling on Their Candidate.  Lithograph (New York: Currier & Ives, 1856).

The Republican Party is shown as a group of cranks and fanatics.  Welcomed by Frémont are an abolitionist and a free black; a temperance supporter, a Socialist and a suffragette; a Roman Catholic priest (Frémont was charged with being a closet Catholic), and, in the middle, a free love advocate — “We are all Fremounters.”

 

 

Southern Chivalry – Argument versus Clubs.  Lithograph, John L. Magee (Philadelphia, 1856).

While seated at his desk in the Senate chamber franking copies of his Crime Against Kansas speech, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner was attacked and beaten by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks.  Proslavery assaults on freedom of speech in Kansas Territory had come to the floor of the U. S. Senate.

 

 

“James Buchanan, Democratic Candidate for President,” in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 3, 1856.

 

 

The Fearful Issue to be Decided in November Next!  Shall the Constitution and the Union Stand or Fall?  (n. p., 1856).

 

 

Black Republican Imposture Exposed!  Fraud Upon the People.  Fremont and his Speculations  (Washington: Polkinhorn’s Steam Job Office, 1856).

The Democrats campaigned as the national party and denounced Republicans as the purely northern sectional party of abolitionists who would destroy the Union.  Their campaign tactics included personal attacks on Frémont and playing the race card – their opponents were “Black Republicans,” a name they would use consistently in campaigns through the Civil War and Reconstruction.  But Buchanan’s total reliance upon the South for his victory belied the national pretensions of the Democrats.  American politics had become inescapably sectional.

 

 

The New “Democratic” Doctrine.  Slavery not to be confined to the Negro Race, but to be made the universal condition of the Laboring classes of society (Philadelphia, 1856).

In an appeal to northern laborers, this dramatic Republican broadside linked the Democratic Party to proslavery ideology defining all labor as servile.  This text was reprinted in handbills and pamphlets for the 1856 campaign.  This message is a bold expression of the conflicting cultures of the free states and the slave states.

 

 

The Border Ruffian Code in Kansas (New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1856).

The Democrats had allowed proslavery invaders from Missouri to impose draconian slave laws on the Kansas Territory, charged this campaign pamphlet.  Freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to hold a contrary opinion were all suppressed in this legal code effectively making Kansas a slave territory - the forced regulation of black labor had taken precedence over the rights of free labor.

 

 

William Henry Seward, Immigrant White Free Labor, Or Imported Black African Slave Labor.  Speech of William H. Seward, At Oswego, New York, November 3, 1856 (Washington: By the Republican Association, 1856).

Republican antislavery was for the benefit of white folks, not black slaves.  Distancing the Republicans from both Democrats and Know-Nothings, Seward in this pre-election speech declared their aim to save the western territories exclusively for free white  labor, both native-born and immigrant.

 

 

“Freedom and Slavery, and the Coveted Territories,” wrapper illustration to Life of John Charles Fremont (New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1856).

This map was reprinted on numerous pamphlet wrappers, Broadsides, and display banners to emphasize the stakes involved.  Note the distorted scale making the free states appear geographically eclipsed by the slave states, threatening to consume the vast contested territories.  The accompanying text notes that there are only 347,525 slave owners, and only 92,257 of them own ten or more slaves.

 

 

Fremont the Conservative Candidate.  Correspondence Between Hon. Hamilton Fish, U. S. Senator from New York, and Hon. James A. Hamilton, Son of Alexander Hamilton (New York, 1856).

Two prominent New York Whigs narrowed the issues of 1856 down to resisting the extension of slavery and the Democrats’ expansionist foreign policy, and declared their support for Fremont and the Republicans.

 

 

Republican Bulletin, No. 4. Issued by the Fremont & Dayton Tenth Ward Club.  Twenty Reasons for Leaving the Democratic Party. By an Old Democrat. (Philadelphia, 1856).

 

 

Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men.  Proceedings of the Democratic Republican State Convention, At Syracuse, July 24, 1856 . . . (Albany: By Order of the Convention, 1856).

As if in reply to the above handbill, antislavery Democrats in New York declared their party the captive of slaveholders and endorsed Frémont, but remained loyal on other issues.  “We are none the less attached to all democratic principles and measures, and none the less ready to labor for them on all necessary occasions.” 

 

 

Col. Fremont Not a Roman Catholic (Washington?, 1856);

 

 

 To Catholic Citizens!  The Pope’s Bull, and the Words of Daniel O’Connell (New York: Joseph H. Ladd, 1856).

In an effort to chip away the support of antislavery Know Nothings, Democrats charged that Frémont was a closet Catholic.  The claim is refuted in this campaign tract.  The other tract is an appeal to Catholic voters, reprinting Pope Gregory XVI’s injunction against the slave trade, and Irish Nationalist hero Daniel O’Connell’s appeal to Irish Americans to support the anti-slavery movement.

 

 

George Weston, The Poor Whites of the South (Washington: Buell & Blanchard, 1856).

Weston, a Maine Democrat and newspaper editor, marshaled statistics and observations to show how slave society impoverished non-slave-holding white laborers, the vast majority of the southern white population.  Republicans hoped their free labor agenda would attract the support of these white southerners, who would eventually abolish slavery in their individual states.

 

 

Charles Sumner, The Crime Against Kansas.  The Apologies for the Crime.  The True Remedy (Washington: Buell & Blanchard, 1856).

Following Sumner’s scathing denunciation of proslavery violence in Kansas he was the victim of proslavery violence on the Senate floor when he was attacked and beaten by South Carolina Representative Preston S. Brooks.  Republicans were given a stunning example of slave tyranny attacking free speech and made effective use of it in the 1856 campaign, as in this handbill, Republican Bulletin No. 7.  Tyranny of the Slave Power (New York, 1856) and in the above political cartoon.  Sumner’s speech was widely reprinted as a campaign document, and Preston Brooks was applauded by his southern colleagues and constituents.

 

 

Republican Campaign Edition for the Million.  Containing the Republican Platform, the Lives of Fremont and Dayton . . . (Boston & Cleveland: John P. Jewett, 1856).

 

 

Republikanische Feldzugs-Ausgabe für die Millionen Deutsche in den Berein . . . (Boston & Cleveland: John P. Jewett, 1856).

Cheap give-away pamphlets such as these brought the Republican message to a larger public.  Much campaign material was also printed in German-language editions to appeal to the large and important German-American community.

           

 

The Republican Campaign Songster: a Collection of Lyrics, Original and Selected, Specially Prepared for the Friends of Freedom in the Campaign of Fifty-Six (New York & Auburn: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1856).

Campaign songs fired the enthusiasm of rallies and mass meetings.  The songs were usually the lyrical creations of activists, set to the tune of a well-known song.  Shown here is “For Fremont and Freedom,” which features Fremont’s attractive and adventurous wife, Jessie Benton Frémont, daughter of Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, and an important strategist in Frémont’s campaign. She was the first woman to play a central role in managing a presidential campaign.

 

 

Circular.  Philadelphia, November 4, 1856.

In Philadelphia the campaign was an unsuccessful fusion effort with the American Party.  This is an election ticket issued just before the vote, giving voters the option of choosing the same electors for either Frémont or Fillmore.  Voters clipped their selection and cast it as a ballot.

 

 

Free Ticket to the ‘Saline Springs,’ For all “Wooley Heads,” “Nigger Thieves,” “Underground R.R. Directors,” and “BlackRepublicans” (Philadelphia, 1856).

After Frémont’s predictable defeat in prosouthern anti-black Philadelphia, the Republicans were sent on an excursion to Salt River, or political oblivion.  This cartoon is part of the persistent and consistent denunciation of Republicans as abolitionists.  Note the references to Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Philadelphia’s Lucretia Mott.