![]() īy 1854, in the face of intense controversy over whether Kansas and Nebraska would enter the Union as free or slave states, the Whig Party, which had been divided on the issue, collapsed. The real concern was that Northerners feared the "Slave Power" - the South - would become a cabal that would utterly dominate US politics, instituting slavery wherever they could and cutting off opportunity for free white laborers, as historian Heather Cox Richardson writes in her book To Make Men Free. Now, the issue here wasn’t that Northern politicians were desperate to abolish slavery in the South immediately, apart from a few radical crusaders. And this was an enormously consequential question, because the more slave states there were, the easier it would be for the slaveholding states to get their way in the Senate and the Electoral College. ![]() The American South based its economy on the enslavement of millions, and the two major parties - which by the 1850s were the Democrats and the Whigs - were willing to let the Southern states be.īut when the US started admitting more and more Western states to the Union, the country had to decide whether those new states should allow slavery or not. PBS: American Experienceįor the first half-century after the United States’ founding, slavery was only one of many issues in the country’s politics, and usually a relatively minor issue at that. From an anti-slavery party to a pro-business party 1) The Republican Party was founded to oppose the "Slave Power" Northerners feared the Kansas-Nebraska Act would let the "Slave Power" dominate the US.
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