6.2The new Republican Party

The Republican Party of the 1850s was a Northern, free-labor party. It did not, at first, call for abolishing slavery where it already existed, but it firmly opposed extending slavery into the western territories, which it wanted reserved for free farmers and workers.

Its coalition blended former Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, immigrants, and reformers under the banner of "free soil, free labor, free men." The party championed a dynamic, opportunity-driven vision of the North against what it called the "Slave Power"—the political dominance of Southern slaveholders. In 1856, its first presidential run fell short but showed astonishing strength. A genuinely new party had arrived, and the old order would not return.