Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970).

SYNOPSIS:

Foner's book argues that the Republican Party's ideology centered on the concept of "free labor" and "the creation and articulation of an ideology which blended personal and sectional interest with morality so perfectly that it became the most potent political force in the nation." (309) Foner treats ideology as pervasive, a systemic feature of nineteenth-century politics. By examining the way Republican ideology posed a threat to the very foundations of Southern society and economy, Foner suggests, we can see the root causes of the Civil War. Free labor, Foner contends, was so important to Republicans because it defined the right of white, laboring, productive citizens to enter the market with their skills, an ideology in direct confrontation with slavery. Free labor ideology helped bring conservatives closer to radicals in the party, as over time they came to see free labor linked inextricably to free soil and free men.

EXCERPT:

"When I speak of the Republican ideology, therefore, I am dealing with the party's perception of what American society, both North and South, was like in the 1850s, and its view of what the nation's future ought to be." (5)

"The irrepressible conflict view is also weak when it centers on the moral issue of slavery, particularly in view of the distaste of the majority of northerners for the Negro and the widespread hostility toward abolitionists. Moral opposition to slavery was certainly one aspect of the Republican ideology, but by no means the only one, and to explain Republicans' actions on simple moral grounds is to miss the full richness of their ideology. And the revisionists can be criticized for denying altogether the urgency of the moral issue, and for drastically underestimating the social and economic differences and conflicts that divided North and South." (5)

"At the center of the Republican ideology was the notion of 'free labor.' This concept involved not merely an attitude toward work but a justification of ante-bellum northern society, and it led northern Republicans to an extensive critique of southern society, which appeared both different from and inferior to their own. Republicans believed in the existence of a conspiratorial 'Slave Power' which had seized control of the federal government and was attempting to pervert the Constitution for its own purposes. Two profoundly different and antagonistic civilizations, Republicans thus believed, had developed within the nation, and were competing for control of the political system." (9-10)

RELATIONSHIP:

We agree with Foner's explanation of Republican ideology and of the driving importance of it both in Franklin and in Augusta. Foner downplays the importance of race prejudice and of nativism in the rise of the Republicans to national power, and we find in Franklin evidence to support him. While there was significant racial prejudice in Franklin and Republicans there did little to make the moral case for ending slavery, there was a connection between black activism and the victories of the Republicans. Nevertheless, Foner's emphasis on ideology as principally motivating the Republicans leaves aside the social context of local communities.

"In the first half of 1860 Republican editors in Franklin's Repository and Transcript attacked slavery as a violation of nature that stole from the workingman the fruits of his labor; they focused mainly on slavery's potential to undermine free labor."

"In the first half of 1860 Democratic editors in Franklin County emphasized slavery's compatibility with the Northern economy and society and Northern complicity in the South's institution."

"In the heat of the campaign of 1860 both Franklin Democrats and Republicans shifted their emphasis on slavery."