The Politics of Impatience: The Origins of Know Nothingism

Abstract

W RHILE historians still disagree over the ultimate causes of the Civil War, most of them would concur that a major proximate cause was the political realignment of the 1850s. The collapse of the national Whig party snapped a crucial bond of union between North and South. Its replacement in the North, the Republican party, provided a powerful political vehicle for sectional hostility to the South, and Republican victory in 1860 provoked secession. Viewed with hindsight, the reason for this political reorganization seems clear and compelling. The fragile national coalitions of Whigs and Democrats could not withstand the sectional pressure of the slavery extension issue. When that pressure was re-aggravated by the passage of the KansasNebraska Act in 1854, the old parties fragmented; and the northern Republican party emerged as the major opponent of the pro-southern Democratic party. Without the slavery issue the old parties would not have split along sectional lines, the Democratic party would not have been the target of such great northern anger, and the Republican party would never have been formed. If, however, one asks why voters deserted the Whig party at the state level, rather than why the national Whig organization was destroyed or why the Republican party emerged, it becomes apparent that the slavery issue alone cannot account for the process of realignment in the 1850s. Although the slavery issue divided northern and southern Whigs, it did not necessarily have to drive Whig voters from the party in the North, especially in the states where the Whigs were competitive with the Democrats. In the 1840s both Democrats and Whigs had divided in Congress over the Wilmot Proviso along sharp North-South lines, but rank-and-file voters in both sections had remained loyal to their old parties. The major parties in 1848 had run different campaigns in the different sections, opposing slav-