The Rise of the Republican Party

Name: Saif Ramirez

Course: HST_111_LS2

Professor's Name: Yedwab, Stuart

Date: Monday December 5th 2022

 Political change in the mid-1850s was prompted by the divisive effects of slavery on the

established parties. Nonetheless, the Republican Party's rise mirrored more significant societal

and economic shifts, such as the finalization of the market revolution and the onset of substantial

immigration from Europe (Foner, 2019). From 1843, the time prosperity returned, through 1857,

when another economic depression hit, the economy grew at an unprecedented rate, particularly

in the North. The establishment of the train system was the catalyst for this change. By the year

1850, most of the farmers in the western part still transported their agricultural products down

River Mississippi. A decade later, almost all the agricultural products were transported by

railroads to the East at a fraction cost that was charged previously. Northeast and Northwest

economic integration created an excellent background for the political unification of the

Republican Party. By 1860, the North was an integrated economy that was complex Eastern

industrialists manufactured goods for the farmers in the west while the residents consumed

western food. At this time, two locations of great industrial production had also risen (Foner,

2019). The Atlantic coast stretched from Baltimore to Boston and Philadelphia, and the other

one was on the great lakes.

The Know Nothing Party burst into the national political scene in 1854 and was mainly

driven by nativism. The Know Nothing Party was dedicated to reserving political offices for

American-born natives. After Fillmore's defeat, the party's fortunes began a precipitous slide.

The pro-slavery ruling of the United States Supreme Court in 1857 further mobilized resistance

to slavery in the North, leading many former Know Nothings to switch to the Republican Party

(Foner, 2019). During the American Civil War, the remaining members of the American Party

joined the Constitutional Union Party and eventually faded away.

 A political party that opposed the expansion of slavery into the western regions of the

United States, the Free-Soil Party was relatively small but had a significant impact in the years

before the Civil War. It was out of concern for the consolidation of slave power within the

national government that the 1846 ban on slavery in the vast southwestern areas just acquired

from Mexico was submitted to the Congres (Foner, 2019). Small farmers, debtors, village

merchants, and household and mill employees who feared the prospect of black-labor

competition in the territories were attracted to the Free-Soilers because of the motto asking for

free soil, free speech, free labor, and free persons. In 1854, the divided Free Soil Party was

absorbed into the emerging Republican Party, which went further than the Free Soil Party in its

moral condemnation of slavery and its opposition to its extension.

After the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, the Republican Party arose to

oppose the further spread of slavery into American territories. Northern Protestants,

manufacturing workers, professionals, businesspeople, prosperous farmers, and after the Civil

War, freed blacks all made up the Republican Party. White Southerners, a traditionally reliable

Democratic vote demographic, did not back the party. While Democrats and Republicans both

adopted pro-business measures in the 19th century, the Republican Party was differentiated by its

backing of the national banking system, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs (Foner,

2019). By 1856, the Republican Party was a coalition of antislavery Democrats, Know-Nothings,

and Northern whigs who opposed slavery expansion. The Republicans Party convinced the

Northerners that slave power was a threat so immediate to their aspirations and liberties that

immigration and popery. Free labor was the central ideology of the Republicans Party, and a free
society accompanied it. These ideologies glorified the North as a home for freedom, opportunity,

and progress.

References

Foner, E. (2019). Give Me Liberty! An American History: One Volume. WW Norton &

Company.