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Expansion of Slavery into the Territories
Contributing teacher:
Bruce Baskind
Time period: 1850s
Point
Eric Foner argues that the debate over whether the territories [particularly land from the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and what had been acquired as a result of the Mexican-American War (1846–48)] would be carved into slave or free states was the key political issue of the 1850s and the major source of conflict between northern and southern states. Foner analyzes public opinion in the North by focusing primarily on the development of a "free-labor" ideology, which contributed to the collapse of the "second party system" and culminated in the formation of the Republican Party. According to this ideology, slavery posed a threat to free labor. Were the slave system allowed to expand into the territories, that might be devastating to free white workers and farmers. For Foner, the ideology of free labor explains the core meaning of the Republican Party and why the party became so intransigent in its stand against the expansion of slavery.
Counterpoint
Beginning in the late 1980s, Foner's interpretation came under attack by a school of historians that Alan Brinkley calls the "ethnoculturalists"; see "Where Historians Disagree" in his book American History: A Survey (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992). Led by William Gienapp, as detailed in his book The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852–1856 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), this school argues that the expansion of slavery was not the key issue in either the collapse of the existing party system or the emergence of the Republican Party. Gienapp argues that Republicans were more concerned with issues revolving around immigration, even temperance, and that the rise of their party had more to do with an attempt to capture the powerful nativist vote, primarily from the Know-Nothing Party, than with the issue of the expansion of slavery. The ethnoculturalists challenge Foner's belief that the Republican Party was united against the expansion of slavery.
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