CHAPTER FIVE
The Principles of the Free Soil and Whig Parties Are Identical
WISCONSIN’S FREE SOIL PARTY suffered a devastating blow in 1849. Yet, its leaders responded to the setback with equanimity. Although critical of the Democracy’s duplicity in the recent campaign, they seemed satisfied with its putative antislavery platform; however, they warned that any future deviation from it would trigger a rebellion among the state’s voters and bring it down once and for all.1 The Democrats, still savoring their recent triumph, must have had a good laugh at the Free Soilers’ expense.
The election also hurt the Whigs. They not only had failed to overcome the Democracy’s political domination, but worse, their support among the state’s voters actually declined. Whig fortunes were destined to sag further as a result of the continuing sectional controversy in 1850.2
In an attempt to quiet agitation over the status of slavery in the Mexican cession, President Zachary Taylor urged Congress to acquiesce in California’s wish to form a state government and to treat New Mexico, whose citizens soon were expected to apply for statehood, in the same way. With both likely to organize as free states, the North, it was believed, would welcome the president’s plan, while the South, due to the absence of the hated Wilmot Proviso, would grudgingly go along. Instead, the crisis intensified as Southern leaders demanded greater protection for slavery and threatened disunion if their demands were not met. As an alternative to Taylor’s recommendations, the aging Whig senator from Kentucky, Henry Clay, proposed a wide-ranging compromise of the outstanding issues. Among other things, he offered to admit California as a free state, abolish the slave trade in the nation’s capital, organize the territories of New Mexico and Utah without reference to slavery, and replace the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 with a more severe law.3
Wisconsin’s Whigs rallied around the president’s plan. It would permit California and New Mexico to bypass the territorial stage and gain immediate admission to the Union as free states, without reference to the Wilmot Proviso. Clay’s proposal, if enacted, would keep the status of slavery in the territories in suspense for an indeterminate period and provide an opportunity, albeit a small one, to plant it in New Mexico and Utah. Although they had no desire to irritate the South unnecessarily, the state’s Whigs were determined to confine slavery within its present bounds. As the normally temperate editor of the Wisconsin Express put it:
We can never concede that the peculiar institution is right… that traffic in human beings is humane.… We have compromised too long … it is now time that a limit be set to our concessions.… If the Union is divided, it is the act of the South … urged on by a headstrong determination … to either rule or ruin. We love the Union, but we hate slavery, and while we have no desire … to interfere with this institution in the slave states, we do demand … no more slave states shall ever be admitted into the sisterhood.4
The Taylor wing of the Whig party appeared ready to meet the Southern threats of disunion in 1850 head on. Whether the administration’s scheme would have succeeded and the South been forced to back down remains conjectural since the president suddenly died in early July.5 Still, one thing is clear: For many of Wisconsin’s Whigs, the free soil antislavery position had become more important than the Union, a trend first evident in 1848. Much like Liberty and Free Soil stalwarts, they had ruefully concluded that continued concessions to the South could lead to slavery’s spread and perpetuation and even to the erosion of individual liberty and republican ideals in the North. Millard Fillmore, Taylor’s replacement and a compromise advocate, placed these party men in the uncomfortable position of having to back Clay’s plan or be set adrift by the national administration.6
While Wisconsin’s Whigs tried to accommodate themselves to the new situation, Democrats bided their time, testing the political winds. By early July they had set their course, confidently expressing the view that America’s vast western territories would forever remain free. That position, combined with their increasing fears for the safety of the Union, led them to dismiss the Wilmot Proviso as unneeded and swung them firmly into the procompromise camp.7
The Free Soilers followed the proceedings in the nation’s capital with distaste. They denounced the New Yorker Fillmore for his unequivocal opposition to the application of the Wilmot Proviso, in favor of the Cass doctrine of federal nonintervention, and they blasted Democrats for their blind idolatry of the Union. The South needed the North infinitely more than the North needed the South, Free Soilers insisted, and would quickly recant if it ever attempted the folly of disunion. “The Union must stand” Sherman Booth roared. “Put that down as a fixed verity. Shall it stand with honor or shame, with Freedom or Slavery? That is the question for men of this generation to answer.”8
By mid-September, now under the guiding hand of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, an Illinois Democrat, the last of the compromise measures had passed both houses of Congress and received Fillmore’s signature. Three months later, in his annual message, the president urged all Americans to support the settlement as “final and immutable.”9
At best, it would have been difficult to fashion any permanent legislative settlement of the slavery issue. Yet, what became known as the Compromise of 1850 did result in a short-lived truce between the North and South, though the slavery issue was hardly dead.10 Throughout the North, the Fugitive Slave Law was the most damned of the compromise measures. It denied alleged fugitives the right to a trial by jury, to sue for writs of habeas corpus, or to bring witnesses to testify on their behalf. Equally bad, federal judges were authorized to appoint commissioners to try cases under the law, and they in turn were empowered to command the citizens of any state to assist in its execution. Consequently, whites could be enrolled as slavehunters against their will and prosecuted for obstructing enforcement of the act, while free blacks were stripped of all protection against false claims and unjust imprisonment.11
Wisconsinites of all political persuasions denounced the Fugitive Slave Law unsparingly. “Beyond a question,” wrote Horace Tenney, it is “the most despotic act ever adopted in a republican government—a monument to tyranny—and a libel on civilization.” Byron Paine, a young Free Soil lawyer, likewise condemned the act as “an unhallowed usurpation of the dearest rights that God has given to his creatures.”12 In Milwaukee, blacks staged a public meeting, their first ever in Wisconsin, to express their anger at the passage of the infamous law. They resolved “to come forward at any alarm given and rescue our fugitive brethren even unto death.” To back up their words, Booth noted approvingly, the city’s “colored people are armed to the teeth, and go armed about their daily work.… The first kidnapper who lays hands on one of them, we expect will be shot dead.”13
In addition to robbing citizens of basic civil liberties, many Wisconsinites considered the measure an unconstitutional encroachment upon the reserved rights of the states. They contended that the Constitution committed the free states to act in good faith in the recovery of fugitives, and it empowered them, not the federal government, to set the terms of compliance. As usual, Booth stated the matter most bluntly. “Congress has just as much right to legislate on runaway horses,” he wrote, “as it has to legislate on runaway slaves.”14 Even Beriah Brown, the staunchly conservative Democrat and bitter racist, agreed that while the Constitution granted Congress legislative prerogative regarding alleged escapees, in this case it had clearly overstepped its mandate.
Under the regulations of the slave states, an hereditary state of bondage is recognized, under those of the free states, no individual, black or white can be deprived of his liberty.… The black man is entitled under the laws of the free states to the same rights as the white man, and the state … is pledged to [his] protection.… To place the black man under martial law in time of peace, to hold him subject to accusation and imprisonment for no crime, to take from him the dearest rights guaranteed to every man, is literally to extend the slave laws over the free states, is an infringement of our state sovereignty and individual rights, is pledging the Union to slavery and making every citizen North and South, in effect, a slaveholder.… The law … makes us a party to slavery in its most odious form—the hunting down of men … with ropes, chains and bloodhounds.… We demand its repeal … we wash our hands of the curse.15
Despite this widespread revulsion, three years of sectional controversy and concern for the Union’s safety tempered popular reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law. Racism, too, played a role. One lead district Democrat frankly stated a preference to see “the whole negro race annihilated” rather than witness the destruction of the Union and the Constitution, an immoderate sentiment undoubtedly shared by others.16 Yet, Wisconsinites generally seemed willing to live with the law, never expecting a summons to join in a slave hunt or aid in any fugitive’s rendition. Indeed, many privately pledged to assist runaways whenever the opportunity arose.17 As such, enforcement in Wisconsin could prove troublesome, perhaps impossible.
Still, the Fugitive Slave Law helped keep the political antislavery movement alive throughout the North, especially as national leaders exerted pressure on local Whigs and Democrats to disavow “any useless agitation of the slavery issue” and to endorse the compromise as a final settlement of the question.18 In Wisconsin, state newspapers spotlighted the law with vivid accounts of blacks on the run and extensive coverage of the more celebrated fugitive slave cases. The publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, beginning in June 1851, hailed as “one of the great events of the year” by a Rock County Free Soiler, poignantly reminded readers of the horrors of slavery and the desperation of bondsmen in flight. Itinerant black speakers, including at least one avowed runaway, ranged through Wisconsin’s towns lecturing on the plight of the slave.19
The state’s lawmakers also focused attention on the measure. During the 1851 legislative session, the Senate affirmed Congress’s constitutional right to legislate on the issue but requested the removal of provisions of the 1850 law understood to be dangerous to personal freedom. In the Assembly, Wyman Spooner, a former Liberty man turned Free Soiler, introduced an amendment to the Senate resolution denying Congress any legitimate jurisdiction in the matter of fugitive slaves, such authority being reserved to the states, and instead called for the law’s complete repeal. After some delay, an attempt to kill Spooner’s amendment failed, but in the rush to adjourn it seems to have been buried purposely.20
Senate and assembly voting on the Fugitive Slave Law resolutions revealed a clear partisan split. A majority of the Democratic lawmakers opposed both the senate and the Spooner versions; Whigs favored them by nearly a two to one margin; and Free Soilers unanimously endorsed them. As in the past, legislators who represented the southwestern and heavily immigrant counties fronting Lake Michigan provided most of the anti-resolution votes, while southeasterners were nearly unanimous in support of the petitions requesting either repeal or modification of the law.21
In the following year, a senate committee composed of three Whigs and one Free Soiler recommended passage of a resolution similar to the one Spooner had introduced in the previous session. The preamble contained a major difference. It maintained that:
The leading principles on which the government of the United States is founded and which are the foundation of all republican governments are the liberty of speech, and the press; the right of the people peacefully to assemble and express their views on all questions connected with the government … and the right of the majority to rule; and if a state of facts exist … which forbid the people … from expressing, in language of reprobation, their detestation of a law abhorrent to freemen—then is our republicanism but a name, and … our government the rankest despotism on earth. And if the only ligament which binds the states is unconditional submission to any and every law, however unjust and odious … as a sort of condition precedent to the continuance of the Union, then the bonds that bind us together are but ropes of sand, and our boasted union is not worth preserving.22
Although the preamble further suggests evidence of an increasing unwillingness in Wisconsin to sacrifice long-cherished rights and freedoms as the price of Union, its high-sounding sentiments failed to win the legislature’s approval. With a presidential contest in the offing, reluctant lawmakers from both parties tried to downplay slavery issues and quietly laid the declaration to rest, although the senate did agree to have five hundred copies of the resolution printed for distribution.23
Unceasing labor by Wisconsin’s Free Soilers also kept slavery concerns in the public eye in the immediate aftermath of the compromise’s passage, despite their party’s weakened condition. As James Densmore, an ardent antislavery Democrat, sighed, there no longer seemed “life enough to sustain” an independent antislavery party.24 Even Booth for a time appeared uncertain of the future. “Shall we join and endeavor to mould the [Democratic] party and prevent it going for Cass in 1852,” he quizzed the Ohio Free Soiler, Salmon P. Chase, “or still maintain a separate organization. That’s the question!”25 Disregarding the party’s woes, many Free Soilers kept the faith. “Medicines may be administered which will protract the final dissolution and death of slavery,” Christopher Sholes insisted, “but the struggle, however protracted, can only end in the death of that institution.” Likewise, Charles Durkee, Wisconsin’s Free Soil congressman, confidently predicted “that the time is not distant when there [will] … be an irresistible current from the masses in favor of freedom.”26
Booth’s indecision did not last long. With congressional races looming in 1850, he and Sholes offered one last time to merge with the Democrats, conditioned upon their willingness to support Durkee’s reelection effort. As expected, the Democratic leadership ignored this proposition and treated the Free Soil leaders, as Booth disgustedly wrote, “as dogs and outcasts.”27 This approach was repeated throughout the North, he noted, as the Northern Democracy reaffirmed its compact with Southern party members. “The Central Committee at Washington has decreed it … and Southward the party is bound to go.”28
Spurned by the Democracy, Booth organized a petition drive, urging his friend Durkee to seek reelection as an independent candidate. More than two thousand voters signed the call and persuaded the popular incumbent to run again.29 Five hundred Whigs, disenchanted with the compromise and recognizing the futility of fielding a candidate of their own, were among the petitioners. Rufus King and John Tweedy engineered additional Whig aid when, at the party’s district convention, they pressured delegates to nominate Tweedy who, as planned, declined the honor. Upon reconvening, the Whigs failed to make any nomination, as “an enthusiastic expression from every delegate … to give Mr. Durkee a cordial support” prevailed. Although a few grumbled about being sold to the abolitionists, most Whigs rallied to the Free Soiler’s assistance and helped carry him to an easy victory.30
Free Soilers returned the favor in the western second congressional district when they backed the anticompromise Whig incumbent, Orsamus Cole. In that case the coalition proved unavailing. The Democrats nominated a popular opponent of the Compromise of 1850, Ben Eastman, who triumphed handily.31
Chaos ruled in the northern third congressional district. James D. Doty, the incumbent Democrat and one of Wisconsin’s founding fathers, had angered party regulars with his protariff views. For this he was unceremoniously dumped at the district convention. In response, he decided to campaign for reelection as an independent. Whigs and Free Soilers, hopelessly outgunned in the overwhelmingly Democratic north, used Doty’s antislavery record as a pretext for throwing him their support. At least five disgruntled Democratic editors joined them. Coalition efforts, along with the incumbent’s personal popularity, overwhelmingly returned him to office.32
Despite the presence of several popular congressional candidates, only 52 percent of the eligible electorate bothered to vote in 1850. To enliven interest in politics and unify their ranks in preparation for the 1852 presidential contest, the Democrats took vigorous steps. They established newspapers that preached adherence to traditional party principles and replaced editors who refused to toe the line. Between 1847 and 1852, the number of party newspapers climbed from eleven to twenty-five, with most of the increase coming after 1850. In order to arouse political enthusiasm among the state’s burgeoning foreign-born population, they organized county level committees to distribute party literature prior to elections.33 Democratic unity received a further boost in mid-1852 when Horace Tenney and Beriah Brown, editors of Madison’s two contentious party newspapers, ended their longstanding feud. At the behest of Josiah Noonan, Milwaukee’s Democratic boss, the two journals were consolidated under the ownership of Brown and Tenney’s former associate, Stephen D. Carpenter.34
Capping the drive to bring about greater harmony and reestablish the primacy of established party ideals, Wisconsin’s Democracy began to shed its antislavery garb. At the 1851 legislative session, the Democratic majority overwhelmingly voted to rescind the 1849 resolution censuring Senator Walker.35 Several months later, Walker himself gave a rousing and well-received speech in Milwaukee endorsing the compromise measures.36 At its state convention, the party firmly repudiated “all extraneous issues and sectional tests of party faith as pernicious, clannish, and disorganizing in their tendency.” It also embraced a resolution from the 1836 national platform that denounced all forms of abolitionism as inevitably tending “to diminish the happiness of the people and to endanger the stability and permanency of the Union.”37 With free soilism purged from the party, Democrats celebrated the return to the “Glorious old National Democratic Charter.” “We are free,” the editor of the Kenosha Democrat rejoiced: “Free from sectional tests—free from the heresies of free soil—free from degrading compromises with a selfish enemy.”38
As Democrats returned to their roots, Free Soil leaders in 1851 looked to nurture the relationship established with Whigs the previous year. Since Whigs had little hope of overturning their opponent’s statewide majority and refused to be muzzled on slavery questions, the strategy made sense. Whigs, to be sure, mindful of Southern threats to break up the Union, discouraged agitation, but they refused to surrender their right “to discuss and strive to amend or repeal … any or all laws which do not suit them.” The Whigs deferred to no man or party in their love of the Union, Rufus King observed, and short of violating personal liberty or abandoning the territories to slavery, they were prepared to make any sacrifice to preserve it.39 Encouraged, Free Soilers issued a call to all men, without reference to party, who were opposed to the Fugitive Slave Law, to the extension of slavery, and “to the insolence of men of any section of the Union who dictate to us on what subjects we shall or shall not discuss,” to come together at a mass convention in Madison on September 17.40
At this largely Free Soil affair, Booth, Edward D. Holton, Byron Paine, and other former Liberty men overcame the objections of leery Democratic Free Soilers and succeeded in nominating Leonard J. Farwell, a popular antislavery Whig, for governor.41 They filled out the rest of the ticket with Free Soilers, reaffirmed the party’s 1849 platform, and condemned the Fugitive Slave Law as antirepublican and subversive of individual liberty. Finally, the convention enthusiastically promoted the notion that the nation’s founders fully expected “that under a proper administration of the General Government, slavery would cease to exist at an early period.”42
After the convention, it remained only for the unwilling Farwell to accept the nomination. Booth spent several days at the candidate’s Madison home trying to convince him to accept the bid, especially since the Whigs also were expected to place his name before the people. Convinced that the Democrats were unbeatable, Farwell would have preferred to be left to his business pursuits. In the end, he was prevailed upon to await the outcome of the Whig convention before announcing his decision.43
The so-called mass meeting’s nomination of Farwell placed the Whigs in a quandary. If they seconded his candidacy, they would be open to the charge of having surrendered their organization to the Free Soilers; if they did not, the Democrats undoubtedly would elect their man. Rufus King, probably after discussions with Booth, boldly called on the chairman of the Whig party’s state organization either to call off the upcoming convention and work for the election of the nonpartisan candidates or to convene and disband without making any nominations.44
Ignoring King, the Whigs assembled as scheduled on September 24 and proceeded to name A. L. Collins for governor. Collins, the party’s nominee in 1849, had no desire to head another hopeless cause and declined the tribute. Frustrated, the delegates turned to Farwell who reluctantly agreed to run.45 The Whig platform endorsed traditional party measures, opposed the extension of slavery, and pointedly upheld the “unquestionable right of every citizen to canvass the merits of every enactment, and if found to be unjust, oppressive, or of doubtful expediency, to advocate their modification or repeal.”46 Like the Free Soilers, the Whigs then completed their ticket with party loyalists. In a comment that contained more than a little truth, one Democrat exclaimed, “Married—at Madison, on Wednesday, September 24th, by Gen. Rufus King & Co., the Universal Whig Party to the Woolly-Headed Abolition Party, all of Wisconsin.”47
Farwell’s candidacy provided the only link in 1851 between Free Soilers and Whigs who otherwise deliberately ignored each other during the campaign, perhaps fearful that the appearance of too close a union might alienate some party members. Instead, they concentrated their fire on the Democrats. The Whigs also played down the slavery issue and urged voters to support a referendum on the establishment of state banks. Since most political observers expected the bank question to win easily, they noted, it made sense to elect a governor who would enact laws necessary to organize them. Farwell was such a man. “With slavery the Governor of this State can have nothing to do; with the BANK question he may have much.”48 Free Soilers, meanwhile, hammered away on the slavery issue and labored to retain the loyalty of antislavery Democrats who hesitated to support Farwell, committed as he was to Whig economic programs, unless he publicly aired his views on slavery. Taking matters in hand, Booth drafted a letter to Durkee, over Farwel’s signature, that confirmed his opposition to slavery’s extension and the Fugitive Slave Law and his support of measures to abolish “slavery wherever it exists under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress.” Farwell gave Booth permission to publish the letter, and it seems to have satisfied the uneasy Democrats.49
Whigs and Free Soilers cheered when Farwell squeezed out a narrow victory over his Democratic rival, and opposition candidates wrested control of the assembly from the Democrats for the first time in the state’s brief history. Whigs won thirty-one assembly seats, Free Soilers six, and the Democrats thirty, but the Democrats retained a two-to-one majority in the senate. As expected, the bank issue easily passed. Although Whigs and Free Soilers were pleased with the election results in the gubernatorial and assembly contests, they hardly could lay claim to a resounding victory. The popular Farwell ran six thousand votes ahead of the other Whig candidates for state office, while the Free Soilers polled fewer than three thousand votes, a decline of more than 25 percent from 1849. Moreover, the combined Whig and Free Soil tally did not put Farwell over the top. He required the support of about three thousand “sore headed Democrats” and a handful of men voting only in the governor’s contest to eke out his win, although the Whig nominee’s popularity and Democratic efforts helped raise voter participation slightly from 1849.50 The Whig achievements in 1851 failed to mask its persistently weak position in Wisconsin politics, particularly compared to the robust if factious Democracy, and the Free Soilers continued to struggle for their political life.
The Free Soilers were hurt further when, shortly after the 1851 election, Rufus King and other friendly Whigs came under pressure from the Fillmore administration to mend their coalitionist ways. A procompromise paper was set up in Milwaukee to compete with King’s Sentinel, and it frankly advised both Whigs and Democrats who were disenchanted with their party to join the abolitionists, as they “alone can sympathize with you.”51
King took the hint and withdrew from the Free Soil embrace. Three weeks after the administration paper appeared, he downplayed slavery’s significance in the recent election. “The Whigs of Wisconsin let the slavery question alone,” he truthfully stated, and they “commended their candidates to the people on … local issues,” most notably the bank question.52 King then publicly rebuffed renewed Free Soil advances to enact a formal union with the Whigs, even though many would have welcomed it.53 Booth took the snub with unusual grace, fully aware that the pending presidential election made any concert of action unlikely. He counseled patience and the continuation of an independent Free Soil course for the foreseeable future, confident that old party ties were unraveling and that the slavery issue soon would mold them into some new form.54
Booth’s prediction came one step closer to reality as a result of the 1852 presidential contest. At their national convention, Democrats enthusiastically championed the compromise measures as a final solution to the slavery issue and nominated the inoffensive Franklin Pierce for president. Smelling victory, Wisconsin’s Democratic leadership, united as never before, eagerly touted Pierce’s candidacy and overwhelmed the party’s few dissenters.55 The Whig convention turned out to be a raucous affair. It selected the aging military hero Winfield Scott as its standard-bearer and approved a procompromise platform resolution. Because Southern Whigs distrusted Scott and Northern Whigs disliked the platform, the party’s sectional rift deepened and it ran a listless campaign. In Wisconsin, Whigs angrily repudiated the compromise resolution and made only halfhearted efforts on behalf of Scott.56 Like the Democrats, Free Soilers enjoyed an agreeable convention. This time they nominated John P. Hale for president and drafted an antislavery platform similar to that of 1848. The other parties refused to engage them in a serious debate over slavery, however, and in Wisconsin, frustrated Free Soilers denounced the supporters of “Slavery Ticket—No. 1” and “Slavery Ticket—No. 2.” The Whig failure to again back Durkee’s reelection effort most infuriated them. They accused Milwaukee’s Whigs of placing a candidate in the field solely to enhance the chances of Daniel Wells, the Democratic nominee, whose business ties placed him in a better position to boost the city’s commercial prospects.57
Pierce handily carried Wisconsin and the nation. In the state, he received 33,658 votes to Scott’s 22,240 and Hale’s 8,842. Turnout was the same 62 percent it had been in 1848. To the bitter disappointment of Free Soilers, Durkee failed to win a third term to Congress, as the Democrats swept to an easy victory in all three districts. Free Soilers did make a respectable showing, though, and promised to remain a political force within the state. Whig reverses nationwide irretrievably sundered the party, perhaps nowhere more than in Wisconsin. In his typically forthright manner, Booth declared that the Whig party “is blotted from the political map, and henceforth ceases to be a political organization.” The earthy Democrat George Hyer said much the same thing when he exclaimed, “All there is left of the Whig party is a few feathers and a pair of epaulets. Scott’s rear was entirely shot off. It wasn’t much of a fight after all.”58
As their anger over the alleged complicity of Milwaukee’s Whigs to thwart Durkee’s reelection effort subsided, Free Soilers began to explore the possibility of taking advantage of Whig decrepitude. They encouraged political abolitionists to subscribe to party newspapers and organize local clubs throughout the state as the most effective way of spreading antislavery dogma and winning new converts.59 At their well-attended state convention in January 1853, Free Soilers took steps to tighten their organization and reaffirmed their determination to remain an independent party.60 By contrast, the Whigs were an unhappy lot. As summer neared, several of their editors floated the possibility of a coalition in the upcoming fall elections.61 A handful of Democrats, disgusted with their party’s suppression of the slavery issue, joined them. As one stated, “None have so kicked, cuffed, reviled, abused, insulted, slandered and outraged Free Soil Democrats as has the Hunker party of this State.”62 At first, Booth sounded unimpressed with the overtures. As a prerequisite to merging, he asked for the complete dismemberment of the Whig organization and the adoption of the 1852 Free Soil platform. He also advocated independent Free Soil nominations for the upcoming state campaign, whatever the Whigs might do.63 Christopher Sholes tempered Booth’s haughty attitude, and he counseled antislavery men to be more realistic in their demands and to treat the friends of union with greater respect.64
Early coalition efforts focused on the proposed renomination of Farwell. Free Soil and Whig editors warmly backed him, although it was rumored he would not run again due to the personal and financial sacrifices the governorship required.65 The likelihood that Free Soilers and Whigs at the very least would unite behind the incumbent became clear when both called state conventions to meet in Madison on successive days in June, several months earlier than usual.66 Only Farwell discouraged the prospective arrangement.
On June 7, a mere thirty-nine Whigs convened from fewer than half of Wisconsin’s assembly districts to hear the governor absolutely decline to be a candidate again. The confused delegates informally nominated him anyway and adjourned without naming a ticket. They also ignored Free Soilers who attended the melancholy gathering to feel them out on the fusion question. Few now doubted, as one the observer reported, that “the great Whig party of Wisconsin is no more.”67
The following day sixty-three hearty Free Soilers assembled in the capital city. Several of them made strenuous efforts to convince the convention to abstain from making nominations, hoping yet to make an arrangement with the Whigs, but their proposal fell on deaf ears. With Farwell out of the picture and the Whigs moribund, the delegates had little incentive to pursue a coalition. Instead, they chose the old Liberty man, Edward D. Holton, to head their ticket on an antislavery platform.68
Free Soilers pursued their independent course, convinced that Whigs could be absorbed into the antislavery coalition without concessions on principle. The influential Whig Horace Greeley lent encouragement in his New York Tribune, when he warmly commended Wisconsin’s party leaders for avoiding nominations and urged them to coalesce with the Free Soilers. Farwell himself, it was whispered, had told antislavery friends that “the Whigs ought not to have called a convention or even talked of nominating.” In Milwaukee, Rufus King denounced the Democrats for their abandonment of free soilism and declared himself in favor of fusion. Even David Atwood, chairman of the Whig state central committee, spoke approvingly of the antislavery ticket and expressed no desire to “reanimate dead bodies.”69
The prospects for a union were dampened in mid-August when, under pressure from conservatives, the Whigs issued a call for a meeting on September 14. Although in essential agreement on slavery questions, these conservatives continued to attach greater priority to Whig economic issues. For that reason, they repudiated the coalition movement because the Free Soil economic creed contained too many Democratic ideas “and as such has no business to be embraced by the Whigs.”70
While the Whigs struggled desperately to survive, internal warfare broke out among the Democrats. Josiah Noonan, Milwaukee postmaster and party chieftain, was laboring to thwart the upstart William A. Barstow’s attempt to seize control of the organization. As Wisconsin’s secretary of state between 1849 and 1851, the charismatic Barstow had used his position to build up a personal political following independent of Noonan. Relations between the two rapidly deteriorated in 1852, when Noonan had Barstow arrested on his way to the Democratic national convention to compel payment of a $300 loan contracted several years earlier. After the presidential contest, Barstow, along with prominent Democrats such as Beriah Brown and former Governor Dewey, tried without success to have Noonan removed as postmaster. They then initiated impeachment proceedings against Circuit Judge Levi Hubbell, one of Noonan’s closest friends and political allies, charging him with more than fifty offenses, including one of “inducing females interested in suits before his court to submit themselves to be debauched by him.”71
On September 7, the battleground shifted to the state Democratic convention. Barstow was the leading contender for the party’s gubernatorial nomination, along with A. Hyatt Smith, president of the Rock River Valley Union Railroad, and Jairus C. Fairchild, a former state treasurer and Noonan’s favorite. After twelve ballots, Smith, whose railroad interests competed with Noonan’s, threw his support to Barstow and gave him the nomination.72 Barstow’s triumph intensified the Democratic split. Alexander Randall, the erstwhile Free Soiler and a friend of Noonan’s, openly rebelled, while Brown’s short-lived partner at the Argus and Democrat, Stephen Carpenter, complained that “a more contemptible ticket could not be picked.”73 The Democratic platform did not reflect these divisions; basically it restated the 1852 party positions, including a reendorsement of the Compromise of 1850.74
The Whigs reconvened as scheduled on September 14. If anything, the second meeting was more pathetic than the first. Only twenty-six delegates from twelve of the state’s thirty-six counties bothered to show up. Nevertheless, they went ahead and picked candidates pledged to “uphold the old and well-known principles of the Whig party” and oppose the extension of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law.75 Very few observers took the conservatives seriously, although it was suggested that they had named candidates merely to abet the defeat of any Whig-Free Soil union.76 And the Democrats understood the advantages of keeping these Whigs in the race. George B. Smith, one of Barstow’s intimates, hearing rumors of renewed coalition efforts, asked the Democratic candidate if he could fix it so that the Whig nominee, Henry Baird, “will stand firm.”77
Smith’s intelligence proved correct. Milwaukee’s powerful Whig faction, which had boycotted the September meeting, had quietly been laying the groundwork for a People’s Mass Convention to be held at the upcoming state fair in Watertown.78 To Booth, Rufus King acknowledged that the conservatives had acted “neither wisely nor well in making a nomination, [but] they can at least plead in extension of their error that they followed the example of the Free Soilers,” who earlier had placed their own ticket in the race. He also asserted that issues of substance no longer divided the two parties, making it “highly desirable that they should act together.” As to the process of effecting a union, King swept aside the demand that his party disband and march under the Free Soil banner. “Partyties … have lost much of their prescriptive authority in this State,” he explained, “but party prejudices still linger.” He suggested a coalition bearing a new name.79
Booth happily agreed. On the evening of October 5, the two men met privately and completed the arrangements. Although evidence is scarce, it appears that they agreed to place Farwell before the people, in order to appease conservative Whigs, and then replace him with Holton.80
The next morning, state fair goers in Watertown found a call posted around the village asking those opposed to the Democracy’s candidates to gather at a nearby schoolhouse to select a People’s ticket. Utter confusion resulted. Democratic leaders attending the fair packed the meeting place with their supporters and forced an adjournment. At 7:00 P.M., with John Tweedy in the chair, the meeting finally came off. But Democrats continued their disruptive tactics and blocked every attempt to nominate a fusion ticket. Outmaneuvered, Booth and King, who so far had maintained a low profile, retired with a small number of coalition leaders to a friend’s law office for a secret caucus. Taking matters into their own hands, they disingenuously announced that the People’s convention had chosen the incumbent governor as its favorite.81
As expected, Farwell rejected the so-called nomination. A committee appointed at Watertown then named Holton to head the ticket. Three Free Soilers and five Whigs filled the remaining slots. With the exception of Baird, all of the regular Whig and Free Soil nominees then stepped aside in favor of the People’s candidates. And, with a single exception, every Whig and Free Soil newspaper, along with one Democratic journal, supported the new coalition. Most significantly, Holton won over western Whigs who, some feared, might reject the well-known abolitionist’s candidacy. In a speaking tour through the lead district, he successfully quieted their misgivings and helped organize local support.82
Unlike the Liberty and Free Soil parties, the People’s coalition did not have its roots in opposition to slavery. It arose in 1853 to fill the vacuum created by the demise of the Whig party and the realization that the old national issues were dead. Local issues dominated the canvass. The People’s candidates tried to mobilize voter dissatisfaction with government corruption and high taxes with a promise to restore republican purity to the administration of the state’s affairs.83 That appeal might have found wider support if the temperance issue had not intruded. At a special session in June, the state legislature reluctantly agreed to hold a referendum on whether to ban the sale of intoxicating beverages in Wisconsin. None of the parties took a stand on the question as leaders and editors announced their positions as principle or local circumstance demanded. The People’s movement became strongly identified with the ban, however, much to the chagrin of Whigs, when influential Free Soilers publicly recommended it. King and others would have preferred to ignore the issue altogether, while the Democrats adroitly manipulated the issue to accommodate local prejudices. In Milwaukee, with its large immigrant population, Barstowites staunchly opposed prohibition; in the northern and western counties, they claimed to be its friend.84
The Democratic strategy on the liquor question and insufficient time to organize led to the defeat of the People’s ticket. Barstow captured 30,542 votes to Holton’s 21,918 and Baird’s 3,364. Interestingly enough, neither the temperance issue nor dissatisfaction with alleged corruption and spoils-manship stirred the enthusiasm of Wisconsin’s electorate. Fifty-two percent of the state’s eligible voters chose to remain home on election day, nearly the same proportion as in the two previous contests for state officers. Only 46 percent bothered to vote on the liquor question, with a slight majority in favor of a ban.85 Counties and towns with large numbers of German and Irish residents tended to be heavily against the ban on alcohol; those with the fewest immigrants favored it. Yet, neither large nor small concentrations of foreign or native-born citizens were good predictors of turnout. Seventy-one percent of the people in Manitowoc county and 62 percent of those in Milwaukee county were born overseas, primarily in Germany, but only 37 percent and 53 percent, respectively, turned out to vote on the liquor issue. More than 85 percent of Portage and Richland county residents were native-born, but 38 percent and 33 percent took the time to vote on temperance. Eighteen counties contained more than one-third foreign-born men and women. In these counties average turnout was 46 percent, although those with the largest concentrations of Germans displayed a slight tendency to turn out in greater numbers than counties with the fewest foreign-born citizens. Nevertheless, using turnout as a measure of interest, neither the governor’s race nor the liquor question generated any more excitement than had been shown in earlier elections.86
In the state contest, the Democrats succeeded in mobilizing the bulk of their 1852 constituency. They also gained several thousand prior nonvoters and new electors, probably mostly foreign-born residents alarmed over the liquor issue and a handful of Free Soil Democrats upset with their party’s marriage to the Whigs (see table 6). Nearly 80 percent of Hale’s supporters rallied to the People’s standard. The rest either abstained or voted for Barstow. Less than one-half of the Scott Whigs favored the union, while 40 percent did not vote at all. About 13 percent stood by the conservative Baird. The People’s coalition failed to make inroads among the Democrats, although it did show surprising strength among former abstainers and, perhaps, some newly eligible voters.
The 1853 election convinced all but the most obstinate Whigs that their party was dead. It also gave a boost to the friends of fusion as western Whigs for the first time rallied behind the candidacy of an avowed abolitionist, eroding in part the intrastate sectionalism that hampered prior coalition efforts. Shortly after the campaign, both Whig and Free Soil leaders hinted that a more permanent union based on opposition to slavery might be in the offing. Christopher Sholes, sensing a turn in national affairs, wrote that antislavery men would soon unite to rescue the government from the slave power and thus complete “the mission of the Free Democracy as an independent party.” Even the conservative Whig Janesville Gazette confessed that “the principles of the Free Soil and Whig parties are identical,” and a union likely. David Atwood agreed.
It must be admitted that there are numerous indications in the present condition of parties pointing to such a state of things in the future.… The ostensible issues have become matters of fancy.… A great majority of the people are opposed to the extension of slavery; the humbug of “saving the Union” is beginning to be appreciated in all quarters.… If slavery can be restricted within its present limits, it must inevitably decline. Southern fanatics are unquestionably aiming at its introduction into Nebraska and New Mexico. It is against these designs that we wish to see the Free Soil sentiment of the North united.87
Shortly after Atwood penned this article, Stephen A. Douglas introduced a bill to organize the Nebraska territory without restrictions on slavery.