White Supremacy Party in Connecticut

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The intent of the antebellum Republican party and its strategy to attract voters was not the abolition of slavery, but the preservation of the territories for white people and the exclusion of black people. The editor of the Hartford Courant reveals his prejudices against the black man and just about anyone else he disliked below; Lincoln reveals his intent to keep the black man on plantations in the South – and outside of the North and West.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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White Supremacy Party in Connecticut:

“Readers were soon treated to large doses of [Thomas M.] Day’s racial and religious prejudices. The [Hartford Courant] editor praised the Native American party for going into political battle with the war-cry of “America for the Americans.” He praised the party’s twin aims: “ a refusal to be governed by foreigners—a determination not to allow Romanism [Catholics] to decide our elections.” He criticized other editors for not seeing that Irish and German immigrants could undermine the American labor market. With even greater assurance he wrote:

“We believe the Caucasian variety of the human species superior to the Negro variety; and we would breed the best stock . . . the Caucasian variety is intrinsically a better breed, of better brain, better moral traits, and better capacity every way, than the Negro, or the Mongolian, or the Malay, or the Red American.”

The Native American motto “America for the Americans” had a different effect on some of the newspaper readers in The Courant’s distribution area. They believed the issues of freedom and human bondage to be far more profound than those of native birth, and they began to look about for a political organization to give force to their view. Their search led directly to the founding of the present Republican Party in Connecticut and to the establishment of a newspaper, and Hartford Evening Press, that was destined to merge with The Courant and to infuse new vitality into the old paper.

The little [Republican] group talked about the crisis the nation faced—a crisis involving human bondage on one hand and liberty on the other. They decided that Judge Niles and Gideon Welles should draw up a circular calling for the organization of a Republican party in the state. There was no national Republican organization at the time.

Things moved fast. Eight days later an enthusiastic mass meeting was held in Hartford. An executive committee was appointed to send delegates to Pittsburgh on February 22, the first national Republican meeting ever held. A National Republican Committee was formed, with John M. Niles the representative from Connecticut. In June a National Republican Convention in Philadelphia put up John C. Fremont as the party’s first candidate for president of the United States. Both The Press and The Courant supported Fremont, who carried Connecticut while Buchanan carried the nation. In view of the Republican success within the State—42,700 votes against 35,000 for the Democrats and a mere 2,600 for the Native Americans—it became clear the Republicanism was on the wax and Native Americanism as on the wane.

A week after his famous Cooper Union address in New York City, Abraham Lincoln spoke in Hartford’s City Hall, filled to capacity before the speaker appeared. When he took the rostrum the applause was long and loud. Lincoln began his remarks to a hushed audience. Frequently, as The Courant reported, his “quaint allusions and similes” brought laughter; frequently his arguments drew long applause.Before Lincoln’s appearance, political discussion in Hartford’s papers had been marked by a notable crassness. A chief argument of the anti-slavery newspapers was that the very presence of black men debased society. Slavery ought therefore to be kept closely confined to the states where it already existed. Local abolitionists, of course, wanted to see slavery done away with, but they were commonly regarded as extremists, who made more noise than sense. The pro-Southern papers, while disapproving of slavery, sought desperately to pacify the South, out of fear that northern manufactures would lose their valuable Southern markets if slave-holders became sufficiently angry.

Lincoln changed all this in Hartford. The tone of editorial comment was never quite the same after his speech at City Hall. Lincoln boldly began: “Whether we will have it or not, the slave question is the prevailing question before the nation.” He placed the value of the United States slave population, considered as property, at $2 billion, and he reminded his audience that a similar amount of property, if owned by northerners, would also have a great influence upon their opinions. He went on:

“Slavery is morally wrong. . . If, then, we of the Republican party who think slavery is a wrong, and would mould public opinion to the fact that it is wrong, should get the control of the general government, I do not say we should or would meddle with it where it exists; but we could inaugurate a policy which would treat it as a wrong, and prevent its extension. For instance, out in the street, or in the field, or on the prairie I find a rattlesnake. I take a stake and kill him. Everybody would applaud the act and say I did right. Slavery is like this. We dare not strike at it where it is. The manner in which our constitution is framed constrains us from making war upon it where it already exists.

Lincoln’s talk aroused Hartford as nothing had before. A young Republican organization, calling itself the Wide Awakes, held torchlight demonstrations and made speeches. The Wide Awake program caught on nationally. Soon The Courant was printing excerpts from the hundreds of letters from various parts of the country asking how to form Wide Awake clubs.

(Older Than the Nation, The Life and Time of the Hartford Courant, John Bard McNulty, Pequot Press, 1964, pp. 70-74)