Michael F. Holt, Forging a Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-1860 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969).

SYNOPSIS:

Holt examines the politics of the city of Pittsburgh and places it in the larger context of Pennsylvania and national party politics in the antebellum era. Holt argues that as the demographic profile of voters, especially the ethnoreligious profile, changed in the 1850s, the political parties became increasingly indistinguishable. In the beginning of the Second Party System Holt finds distinct differences between the Whigs and Democrats. Whigs were more likely to be middle and working class, native born, Protestant, and led by much wealthier leaders than the Democrats. Whig leaders were more connected to the business enterprises of Pittsburgh while Democrats were more likely to be lawyers and other professionals. In the climate of party convergence, he argues, the Republicans in Pennsylvania did not make a direct attack on slavery or its extension as a moral issue, but instead attacked the idea of slavery as a labor ideology--that it might eventually weaken the position of white working men in a free wage society. Holt finds that in Pennsylvania the tariff issue was not as important to voters as earlier historians have assumed, and that Pennsylvania prosperity in the late 1850s helped make the tariff less crucial in the election. Instead, Holt asserts that local issues explain the ways voters aligned in the state and national election--in Pittsburgh the railroad tax issue divided the electorate in ways more powerful than the extension of slavery issue.

EXCERPT:

"Recently, however, historians have begun to point out that politics often involves the whole fabric of human interrelationships and that political alignments are frequently shaped by local social and economic factors which do not appear in formal national or state party platforms. What is needed to discover and evaluate the importance of these factors, they persuasively argue, is a more comprehensive 'social analysis' of political history." (2)

"By 1860 the leadership of the opposing parties had also changed considerably from that of the Whigs and Democrats in the late 1840s. . . . the Republican and Democratic leaders by 1860 came from much more similar backgrounds. . . . [they] tended to come from the same socioeconomic groups . . . Republicans continued to be almost exclusively Protestants while a large proportion of Democrats were Catholics. . . Aside from this notable difference in religious background, however, the leaders of the two parties were remarkably alike." (291)

"In many ways then the votes for and against Lincoln in 1860 did not result from a single campaign but represented the continuation of a division which had occurred earlier." (302)

"In the years between 1856 and 1860 resistance to slavery extension alone could not sustain the Republican party in Pittsburgh. What interested the city's voters in these years was not Catholic aggressions, slavery, the South, or Kansas, but their own difficulties with railroads and tax increases." (309-310)

"The appeals and voting behavior in Pittsburgh create doubts about how much the moral issue of slavery shaped political patterns in the North in the 1850s. First, it is unclear that sectional and party differences grew out of a fundamental cleavage over the morality of slavery. Not the oppression of the slave, but slavery extension which threatened to bring the hated Negro into the territories and which apparently involved Southern aggression on Northern rights seems to have been the major popular grievance against the South in the North. Second, it is not certain that even sectional issues, let alone moral indignation, motivated Northern voters. Some local factors in Pittsburgh like the railroad tax crisis may have been unique, but in almost every city of the North local conditions may also have importantly shaped the nature of the Republican and Democratic parties." (312)

RELATIONSHIP:

Holt's detailed study of Pennsylvania focuses on ethnocultural analysis of politics in the period leading up to the Civil War. It remains the closest analysis of politics and voting in an Northern border state. Our work examines geographical relationships more intensely than ethnocultural ones, though there is no doubt that ethnicity profoundly shaped party identity and loyalty in the North.

"In Augusta clusters of contiguous precincts gave their support in the 1860 presidential election in similar patterns."

"Whigs accounted for the most visible party activists in Augusta County, but activists in both parties exerted significant influence."

"Precincts in Augusta that supported Breckinridge at a high level in 1860 represented the extremes of wealth, as the wealthiest and the poorest precincts drew more support for Breckinridge than any other precincts."

"The precincts with high Bell support had average household wealth and farm value well below county averages. For these marginal places a vote for Bell represented a safe course, the least change."

"In Franklin County, John Breckinridge won a majority in six precincts, most of them in the far northern and western belt of the county, where few blacks lived and farmers planted corn not wheat."

"Lincoln won sixteen precincts in Franklin, ten of them by margins greater than 55 percent, with support mainly from the urban center of the county and places with the highest numbers of black residents--even though black men could not vote in Pennsylvania."