Ohio History Journal

ANTHONY GENE CAREY

 

The Second Party System Collapses:

The 1853 Maine Law Campaign in

Ohio

 

As he sat at his desk in Cincinnati in late September, 1852,

Rutherford B. Hayes recorded his thoughts on the apparent disintegra-

tion of a party system that had held the loyalties of Americans for a

generation. "Government no longer has its ancient importance," he

wrote, "Its duties and its powers no longer reach to the happiness of

the people. The people's progress, progress of every sort, no longer

depends on government." Even in the midst of a Presidential cam-

paign, the people were not rallying to the Whig and Democratic ban-

ners with customary enthusiasm. A blurring of traditional distinctions

between the parties had left voters confused and apathetic, and this

public malaise forced Hayes to conclude, "Politics is no longer the

topic of this country."1

Hayes was witnessing the earliest stages of a political realignment

that would eventually lead to the formation of the Republican party in

Ohio and across the North. The lackluster Presidential contest between

Franklin Pierce and Winfield Scott convinced many Ohioans that the

major issues of the Jacksonian parties were obsolete. A national bank,

the tariff, and federal internal improvements, subjects of heated

controversy during the 1830s and 1840s, seemed stale by 1852. The

most divisive national political issue in the last six years had been

slavery, particularly the possible extension of slavery into the western

territories acquired as a result of the Mexican War. The question of

slavery extension had threatened to sunder the national parties along

sectional lines and had created divisions within both state parties in

Ohio. Large numbers of Northern Whigs and Democrats had supported

 

 

 

 

Anthony Gene Carey is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Emory University.

 

1. Entry for 24 September 1852, Rutherford B. Hayes, Diary and Letters of

Rutherford Birchard Hayes: Nineteenth President of the United States, ed. Charles R.

Williams (Columbus, 1922), 1: 422.

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130                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

the Wilmot Proviso, a proposal to bar slavery from the territories by

Congressional legislation. Southerners of both parties had condemned

the Proviso bitterly, even threatening secession from the Union should

slavery be excluded from the Mexican cession. Sectional strains had

weakened the Whig party especially, as part of its Northern constitu-

ency had deserted to the Free Soilers and as the Whig organization had

all but collapsed in several states of the lower South. The Free Soil

party, which had formed in 1848 upon a platform dedicated to opposing

slavery extension, was an important force in Ohio, and the loss of

antislavery Whigs to the Free Soilers had depleted the Whigs' state

electoral strength.

The Compromise of 1850 had temporarily settled the territorial

question by admitting the free state of California and erecting a

territorial government in New Mexico without restrictions on slavery,

but it had done little to revitalize the Jacksonian party system in Ohio

or elsewhere. After both major parties endorsed the Compromise

during the 1852 campaign, Ohio partisans were left without any

pressing national or state issues to invigorate party competition. The

Ohio constitutional convention of 1851 had settled most questions of

state economic policy, and repeated defeats had sapped the Whig

party's spirit. Scott's embarrassing showing caused some Whig leaders

to contemplate a reorganization of parties, and even Whig Congress-

man Lewis D. Campbell decided that his party was "dead-dead-

dead ! "2

The loosening of old party ties and the apparent irrelevance of past

issues opened opportunities for reformers, and in 1853, the prohibition

issue dominated Ohio politics. Concern over Americans' liberal con-

sumption of alcohol was hardly novel, of course; temperance reformers

of the 1850s could trace their lineage back into the colonial era. But the

fervent prohibitionism of the early 1850s was a new phenomenon. The

movement was particularly strong in New England, where it was

fostered by religious and moral opposition to strong drink, and

prohibitionism also attracted support from native citizens dismayed by

the cultural influence of the tens of thousands of supposedly hard-

drinking Irish and German immigrants who had entered the country

since 1845, and from employers seeking to cultivate abstemious habits

among their workers. For a combination of reasons, the temperance

 

2. Lewis D. Campbell to Isaac Strohm, 4 November 1852, Isaac Strohm Papers,

Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s

(New York, 1978), 101- 38; Stephen E. Maizlish, The Triumph of Sectionalism: The

Transformation of Ohio Politics, 1844-1856 (Kent, Ohio, 1983), 149-86; William E.

Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party 1852-1856 (New York, 1987), 13-35.

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Second Party System Collapses                                        131

 

reformers adopted as their favorite measure the "Maine Law," a

stringent prohibition statute enacted in Maine in 1851. The Maine Law

banned the manufacture and sale of alcohol except for very limited

purposes, and provided for distribution only through bonded agents.

Its provisions allowed authorities to search for and to seize illegal

liquor, and its severe penalties made it much harsher than previous

temperance legislation. Ohio temperance advocates had flooded the

1852 legislature with petitions calling for the enactment of a Maine

Law. The legislature had rebuffed their pleas, and the anti-liquor forces

responded with plans to make the Maine Law the test issue in the 1853

state elections. Ohio Free Soilers joined the prohibitionists in the

Maine Law crusade, and together they introduced a potent new issue

that finally destroyed the state's tottering party system.³

 

The Ohio State Temperance Convention assembled on January 5 in

Columbus. John A. Foote, a native New Englander who had left the

Whig party to join the Free Soilers, presided over the gathering that

unanimously endorsed the Maine Law, and declared that prohibition-

ists would "be satisfied with no measure which does not provide for

the utter extermination of the distilleries and dram-shops of the

State."⁴ That evening, the delegates heard an address by Samuel Cary,

the undisputed leader of Ohio temperance reform. A burly man with

wild, wavy black hair, Cary had abandoned a lucrative Cincinnati law

practice for a career as a temperance lecturer. As a national leader of

 

 

3. For background on the temperance movement in Ohio and elsewhere, see Ian R.

Tyrrell, Sobering Up: From Temperance to Prohibition in Antebellum America, 1800-

1860 (Westport, Conneticut, 1979); Jed Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder: Temperance

Reform in Cincinnati from the Washingtonian Revival to the WCTU (Urbana, Illinois,

1984); W. J. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic: An American Tradition (New York,

1979); Frank L. Byrne, Prophet of Prohibition: Neal Dow and His Crusade (Madison,

Wisconsin, 1961); Leslie J. Stegh, "Wet and Dry Battles in the Cradle State of

Prohibition: Robert J. Bulkey and the Repeal of Prohibition in Ohio" (Ph. D. disserta-

tion, Kent State University, 1975), 1-30. Both Maizlish, Triumph of Sectionalism, 181-

86, and Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 56-60, have offered recent interpre-

tations of the 1853 campaign in Ohio. Maizlish minimizes the importance of the Maine

Law question and argues that the disintegration of the party system began as early as

1849, when sectional issues disrupted the parties. Gienapp maintains that the

ethnocultural issues were crucial and that 1853 was a critical year in the collapse of the

second party system. I find Gienapp's argument more persuasive, but in this paper I

attempt to chart a middle ground between the two positions. The Maine Law campaign

destroyed the old party system in Ohio in 1853, but slavery-related questions were most

important in separating Whigs from Free Soilers, and it was their differences on slavery

issues that had to be surmounted in order to form a new organization, that is, to form the

Ohio Republican party.

4. Ashtabula Sentinel, 15 January 1853.

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132                                                     OHIO HISTORY

 

the Sons of Temperance, Cary had long believed that temperance

advocates "must have a nobler, higher, holier ambition than to reform

one generation of drunkards after another. We must seal up the

fountain whence flows the desolating stream of moral death."⁵ The

convention's crucial statement on political action, adopted the follow-

ing morning, insisted that prohibitionists had no "intention of framing

a political party, or interfering with those already formed," but that

they were determined to "vote for no man, for any legislative office,

who is not fully committed" to the Maine Law.⁶ By arousing public

sentiment for prohibition, temperance forces hoped to make the po-

litical parties bid for their support.⁷

The two major parties initially showed little interest in the Maine

Law or any other issue. With the Democrats confidently in control of

the state, factional infighting and squabbling over patronage dominated

their January 8 meeting. The party had split into two wings, one led by

Ohio Statesman editor Samuel Medary, the other by former United

States Senator William Allen. William Medill, the son of Irish immi-

grants and a career officeholder, won the gubernatorial nomination,

and the platform merely reiterated past Democratic dogma.⁸ The

dispirited Whigs met on February 22 and chose the colorless Nelson

Barrere, an old national Whig with upper South roots and conservative

sympathies. The liquor question had already exposed divisions in the

party ranks: the two principal party organs, the Ohio State Journal and

the Cincinnati Gazette, had lined up against the Maine Law, but other

papers had expressed support for prohibition or had remained neutral.

The convention declined to express an opinion; the platform flayed the

Democrats, praised the Constitution, and mentioned no positive mea-

sures. The word "Whig" was absent from the document, and the

self-styled "National Conservative Party" entered the 1853 race

limping badly, with few hopes and even fewer issues.⁹

 

5. Cary's address to the national convention of the Sons of Temperance (1849),

quoted in Donald W. Beattie, "Sons of Temperance: Pioneers in Total Abstinence and

'Constitutional' Prohibition" (Ph. D. dissertation, Boston University, 1966), 202-03; Jed

Dannenbaum, "The Crusader: Samuel Cary and Cincinnati Temperance," Cincinnati

Historical Society Bulletin, 33 (Summer, 1975), 138-43.

6. Ashtabula Sentinel, 15 January 1853.

7. Cincinnati Gazette, 8 January 1853; Ohio State Journal, 6, 7 January 1853; Daily

True Democrat, 7 January 1853 .

8. Cincinnati Gazette, 8, 10 January 1853; Daily Plain Dealer, 10, 11 January 1853;

Ohio Statesman, 9, 13 January 1853; Ohio State Journal, 10 January 1853; Maizlish,

Triumph of Sectionalism, 183; Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder, 110-13. Medary's

maneuverings for an appointment in Pierce's Cabinet preoccupied the Democrats. In the

end, their interparty feuding prevented any Ohio Democrat from being chosen.

9. Ohio State Journal, 5, 14 January; 7, 15, 23, 24 February; 21 March 1853;

Cincinnati Gazette, 1, 2, 25 February 1853; Toledo Blade, 15, 21 January; 24, 25

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Second Party System Collapses                             133

The Free Soilers, convinced that the "old parties" and their "old issues" were obsolete, enthusiastically entered the 1853 campaign ex- pecting new accessions from both major parties.10 Their January 12 convention nominated Samuel Lewis for governor by acclamation; it was Lewis' third campaign at the head of the Free Soil party. Born in Massachusetts, Lewis was a former Methodist minister, had been active in the temperance crusade since the mid-1820s, and had been a founder of Ohio's Liberty party. He ran on a platform condemning slavery as "a sin against God and a crime against man" that would "eventually destroy any people or Government which upholds or perpetuates it." Pledging to "fight now and ever against the admission of any more slave States or slave territory," the Free Soilers also advocated full and impartial black suffrage.11 Their opposition to any further extension of slavery was the core of Free Soil ideology and the     February 1853; Sandusky Register, 5 February 1853, Benjamin Wade to Milton Sutliff, 13 February 1853, Milton Sutliff Letters, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. 10. Daily True Democrat, 4 January 1853. 11. Anti-Slavery Bugle, 22 January 1853. For Lewis' life, see William G. W. Lewis, Biography of Samuel Lewis: First Superintendent of Common Schools for the State of Ohio (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1857).

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134                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

cardinal principle that held together the heterogeneous coalition of men

that comprised the party.

The Free Soilers eagerly incorporated the Maine Law into their party

creed, but at this point they had no idea of making it the paramount

issue in the upcoming canvass. Prohibitionism fit comfortably among

the party's arsenal of reforms, and men like John A. Foote and Samuel

Lewis were deeply committed to the temperance cause. The strong-

hold of the Free Soilers was the Western Reserve, a tract in the

northeast corner of Ohio primarily settled by New England emigrants,

where the Maine Law would surely receive a cordial reception. The

Free Soilers were, however, prone to factionalism on matters other

than antislavery, because party members retained their past "party

predilections" on economic issues and other questions.12 The party

divided over leaders largely along lines of previous party allegiances:

Free Soil Congressman Joshua Giddings of Ashtabula County was the

leading old Whig in the party; and Salmon P. Chase, who had been

elected to the United States Senate in 1849 through a bargain with the

Democrats, headed the party's other wing. Since supporting the Maine

Law ultimately meant cooperating with prohibitionists from the major

parties, the temperance issue created problems for the Free Soilers and

tested the strength of their party cohesion.13

The momentum of the Maine Law crusade built slowly in the late

winter and early spring. The temperance campaign was a grassroots

effort that pitted neighbor against neighbor in dozens of communities

across Ohio. When local citizens witnessed the evils of intemperance

or experienced frustration in battles against the rum traffic, the Maine

Law gained new adherents. In the town of New Lisbon in Columbiana

County, for example, residents of different political parties cooperated

to elect mayor Fisher A. Blocksome, a devoted Maine Law man. The

town council passed several stringent laws to end the sale of liquor by

 

12. Sandusky Register, 22 January 1853.

13. Daily True Democrat, 18 January 1853; Ohio Columbian, 10 February 1853; Ohio

State Journal, 14 January 1853; Albert Gallatin Riddle, "The Rise of Anti-Slavery

Sentiment on the Western Reserve," Magazine of Western History, 6 (June, 1887), 145;

Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States

1837-1860 (New York, 1976), 180-81, 206-11; Maizlish, Triumph of Sectionalism, 121-

46. At this point, Giddings' allies disapproved of possible fusion efforts with the major

parties, while Salmon P. Chase was contemplating further cooperation with the

Democrats. See, for example: Ohio Columbian, 10 February 1853; Ashtabula Sentinel,

22 January 1853; Salmon P. Chase to E. S. Hamlin, 4 February 1853, in Edward G.

Bourne, et. al., eds., "Diary and Letters of Salmon P. Chase," Annual Report of the

American Historical Association, 1902, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1903), 1I: 248-51. On

the careers of Giddings and Chase see: James B. Stewart, Joshua Giddings and the

Tactics of Radical Politics (Cleveland, Ohio, 1970), and Frederick J. Blue, Salmon P.

Chase: A Life in Politics (Kent, Ohio, 1987).

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Second Party System Collapses                                   135

 

the drink, but the trade continued illicitly, particularly in a notorious

Market Street grocery. Wives had noted the staggering gait of their

husbands after several trips to the market, and the women became

vigilantes when appeals to the sheriff failed. They burst into the back

room of the grocery, startled a circle of tipplers, and apprehended the

shopkeeper. The wives brought him into court, where he was acquitted

despite obvious evidence of guilt. Such incidents were common enough

to convince anti-liquor forces that nothing short of the Maine Law

could accomplish their purposes.14

Ohioans held city and town elections in April, and in some places

these contests offered tests of temperance sentiment. In Akron,

attempts to enforce liquor laws prompted attacks on the houses of the

mayor and a local judge, and the marshal braved gunfire while arresting

rum vendors. Voters condemned vandalism and lawlessness by choos-

ing candidates pledged to continue the struggle against dram sellers.¹⁵

Elections in Columbus were more tranquil, but the temperance alliance

there formed an independent "Citizen's Ticket," and their nominee

finished a close second in the mayor's race. John J. Janney, a

Virginia-born, antislavery Quaker who was a member of the State

Temperance Central Committee, triumphed in his race for School

Director.¹⁶ Unless temperance forces were in the field, however, the

April elections generally aroused little voter interest.

The most exciting political events of the spring occurred in Cincin-

nati, where Archbishop John Purcell had sponsored a petition asking

that a portion of the public money spent on education be allotted to

parochial schools, because the regular public schools used the King

James Bible and encouraged Catholic children to dissent from the

Roman Church. Protestants, including some non-Catholic Irish and

Germans, reacted with fury, and the controversy became the sole issue

in the city election. The regular party organizations dodged the

question, and this brought two independent, Protestant-backed, Free

School tickets into the contest. Although the Democrats won the

mayoral race with 40 percent of the vote, the two Free School tickets

 

 

14. Ohio Patriot, 8 April 1853; Aurora, 6, 28 April; 11 May; 8 June 1853; Buckeye

State, 28 April; 2 June 1853. Although women could not vote and seldom overtly

participated in politics, they played an important part in the temperance crusade. The

Women's State Temperance Convention strongly backed the Maine Law, and women

worked at the local level to arouse prohibition sentiment. See Anti-Slavery Bugle, 29

January 1853; Cincinnati Gazette, 2 September 1853 ; lan R. Tyrrell, "Women and

Temperance in Antebellum America, 1830-1860," 28 Civil War History, (June, 1982),

131-44.

15. Akron Democratic Standard, 10 March: 7 April 1853.

16. Ohio Columbian, 7 April 1853.

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136                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

combined 42 polled percent, and the Whigs finished a distant third. The

school issue wrecked the old party system in Cincinnati, and the

anti-Catholic furor created new Maine Law supporters, as many

native-born Protestants almost automatically associated Catholicism

with intemperance.17 The Catholic Telegraph certainly drew no dis-

tinction between anti-Catholicism and prohibitionism when it alleged

that "Maine Liquor Laws, State Education Systems, Infidelity, Pan-

theism, are not isolated measures, plans, doctrines, but parts of a great

whole, at war with God."18

As the spring elections closed, the executive committee of the state

temperance organization met to plot strategy for the fall campaign.

John Foote chaired the April 6 meeting in which the committee laid

plans for a special convention in June and initiated a fund-raising plan

to support travelling temperance lecturers. Donations from local

temperance alliances eventually exceeded $20,000, and the committee

at one point supervised seventeen speakers scattered throughout the

state. Meanwhile, interest in the Maine Law caused subscriptions to

Samuel Cary's Ohio Organ of Temperance Reform to jump from 5,000

to 20,000 in the course of the year.19

Whig and Democratic newspapers had avoided prominently discuss-

ing the temperance question, but growing prohibitionist sentiment

forced a reconsideration. From late spring through the fall election the

partisan press debated the Maine Law. The Democrats quickly aligned

against prohibition, although reactions among the party faithful at the

county level varied considerably. The Whigs vacillated; party leaders

first gravitated toward an anti-Maine Law position, and then retreated

from their opinions as prohibition attracted support from the party

rank-and-file. Free Soilers solidly backed the Maine Law from the

beginning, but they focused less on the merits of the Maine Law and

more on convincing temperance voters to abandon the old parties.

Maine Law proponents focused on the republican theme that intem-

perance enslaved the individual and eroded public virtue. Distilleries

and breweries spewed "forth a constant stream of disease, and vice,

 

 

 

17. Cincinnati Gazette, 5 February; 16, 22 March 1853; Cincinnati Enquirer, 27

March 1853; Carl Wittke, "Ohio's Germans, 1840-1875," Ohio Historical Quarterly, 66

(October, 1957), 339; John B. Weaver, "Nativism and the Birth of the Republican Party

in Ohio, 1854-1860" (Ph. D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1982), 119; Dannenbaum,

Drink and Disorder, 117-124. About 40 percent of Cincinnati's population in 1853 was

foreign-born.

18. Catholic Telegraph, 19 March 1853.

19. Anti-Slavery Bugle, 23 April 1853; Ohio State Journal, 11 April 1853; Ohio

Columbian, 14 April 1853; Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder, 128-29.

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Second Party System Collapses                             137

and misery, and pauperism, and crime, and death."20 Liquor sellers were an "overwhelming army of leaches [sic], feeding upon the substance of the country."21 Samuel Cary predicted that "if all the liquor of this city [Cincinnati] could be annihilated at once ... we should have but little business for our police court, or use for the rookery or jail." 22 Prohibitionists believed that all previous legislation had been too lenient, unenforceable, and mistakenly aimed at restrict- ing, instead of abolishing, the sale of alcohol. Only the Maine Law could finally eradicate the liquor business and end "the long exercised right of a minority to grow fat by sucking the life-blood of the body politic."23 Like many antebellum Americans, temperance reformers dreaded conspiracies, and they often blamed the evil of intemperance on the "Rum Power." Sinister liquor interests supposedly conspired "to bring all parties to bear against" the prohibitionists and spent their         20. Newspaper clipping, 7 February 1853, James A. Briggs Scrapbooks, 2 vols., Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland: 1: 82. 21. "A Listener" in Toledo Blade, 3 September 1853. 22. Ohio Organ of Temperance Reform, 7 July 1853, quoted in Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder, 79. 23. Dudley A. Tyng in Cincinnati Gazette, 22 September 1853.

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138                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

"untold wealth" with "lavish prodigality to defeat" reform efforts.²⁴

Samuel Cary urged citizens to "enroll your name, join the army of

temperance, and be prepared for a mighty struggle with a mighty

foe."²⁵ The fear of plots to undermine liberty and the need for constant

vigilance in order to safeguard freedom had been prominent themes in

American political discourse since the Revolution, and their belief

in the "Rum Power" convinced prohibitionists that the fate of the

Republic hinged on the battle for the Maine Law.²⁶

Critics of the Maine Law ridiculed the idea of a "Rum Power" and

instead attributed intemperance to human weakness and a bad envi-

ronment. A "brutish routine of labor and sleep" made some working

men into inebriates, and these unfortunates needed "places for spend-

ing the evening" that were "free from all temptations," not the

misguided laws spawned by "the fanaticism of reformers.^"27 The

moral failings of individuals were the root of the problem; society could

remove some of the causes of intemperance, but morality could not be

legislated. The Catholic Telegraph stressed that the "Maine Liquor

Law, as enacted by an authority not competent in its sphere, even

where it is passed, is never binding on the consciences of the people.

It is a law purely penal, without any moral sanction."²⁸ The Demo-

cratic party had consistently opposed the mixing of morality and

politics, and the Ohio Statesman proclaimed, "Never has a merely

moral question been nailed to the Democratic platform.^"29

Democrats particularly argued that the search and seizure provisions

of the Maine Law violated civil liberties. The Maine Law encouraged

citizens to spy on their neighbors and gave authorities license to invade

private property in search of illegal liquor. The Maine Law was

fundamentally "at war with all just notions of liberty," claimed the

Cincinnati Enquirer; and if enacted, it "would make our government

the most tyrannical one that ever existed-Russia and Austria would

 

 

24. "Ohio," Journal of the American Temperance Union, 17 (September, 1853),

quoted in Paul R. Meyer, "The Transformation of American Temperance: The Popular-

ization and Radicalization of Reform Movement, 1813-1860" (Ph.D. dissertation, Uni-

versity of Iowa, 1976), 168.

25. Ohio Organ of Temperance Reform, 25 February 1853, quoted in Dannenbaum,

Drink and Disorder, 131.

26. Jill Siegel Dodd, "The Working Classes and the Temperance Movement in

Ante-Bellum Boston," Labor History, 10 (Fall, 1978), 515. On the prevalence of

conspiracy theory in the United States, see David B. Davis, The Slave Power Conspiracy

and the Paranoid Style (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1969), and Richard Hofstadter, The

Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York, 1965).

27. Cincinnati Gazette, 16 April 1853.

28. Catholic Telegraph, 16 July 1853.

29. Ohio Statesman, 26 August 1853.

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Second Party System Collapses                           139

 

be mild and liberal in comparison." When reformers made temperance

a "compulsory matter" and a "political issue," the Enquirer warned

them to "expect the hostility of everyone who is opposed to a most

odious despotism being exercised by government."³⁰ This civil liber-

ties argument was almost exclusively a Democratic one, and it coin-

cided with the party's traditional opposition to active government.

Even when Whigs opposed the Maine Law, they acknowledged the

right to legislate for prohibition, insisting only that the crusade would

be "injurious to the Temperance cause" because it would drive away

less ardent supporters.³¹

Distinguishing between liberty and license, Maine Law men con-

tended that a concern for social welfare required that those "who had

not the strength to stand alone . .. must be upheld, and restrained if

need be, by the strong arm of the law." No one could "do wrong at his

own cost"; intemperance threatened the lives and property of all.³²

The "whole existence" of government was "an infringement on the

natural rights of man," and citizens relinquished "a portion of those

rights to secure peace and protection." And reformers asked, "what

endangers our peace and safety more than these drinking establish-

ments?"³³ These arguments had practical utilitarian overtones, but

they also appealed to transplanted New Englanders whose Puritan

forebears had policed the morals of their communities, and to the Whig

inclination to use positive government to promote the general welfare.

The most prevalent argument against the Maine Law was that it was

unenforceable. Whigs occasionally sounded this theme, but the Dem-

ocrats were far more vocal. They thought that it was futile "to pass acts

that public opinion will not sustain" and that the failure of prohibition

would breed disrespect for the law in general.³⁴ Making liquor illegal

might assuage a few troubled consciences, but it would not stop

drinking. With some justice, Democrats claimed that so-called temper-

ance reformers really aimed at shutting down taverns and groceries

frequented by immigrants and the working-class. The Catholic Tele-

graph predicted that under the Maine Law the rich would continue "to

buy admittance to the room in the hotels where liquor is not sold, but

set on the table," while in poor households the "abused wife will still

have her drunken husband, the ragged children their tippling mother."³⁵

 

 

30. Cincinnati Enquirer, 9 August 1853.

31. Toledo Blade, 25 April 1853.

32. Guernsey Times, 29 September 1853.

33. "Publicus" in Cincinnati Gazette, 29 August 1853.

34. Cincinnati Enquirer, 3 August 1853 .

35. Catholic Telegraph, 24 August 1853.

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140                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

Maine Law supporters had difficulty answering questions about en-

forcement, especially because existing township liquor laws were ob-

viously ineffectual. They simply relied on the assertion that a vigilant

citizenry and officials would have "little difficulty in enforcing"

prohibition.³⁶

Economic concerns entered the Maine Law debate, because Ohio

led the nation in the production of distilled spirits. Unlike Maine, Ohio

was a "corn producing State," where "millions of dollars are invested

in distilleries." Liquor manufacturing had "a direct influence upon the

price of corn and the price of pork, and indirectly enters into the price

of almost everything we sell."³⁷ Maine Law opponents even claimed

that "without whiskey, farmers, as a matter of profit, could not afford

to produce corn at all."³⁸ Prohibitionists replied that feeding corn to

livestock was more profitable than distilling it, and that farm lands

were "depreciated a full twenty-five percent, in value, by the distill-

eries and grog shops in the neighborhood." Maine Law sobriety would

also improve the productivity of farm workers, reformers observed,

since the "great majority of foreign laborers are more or less addicted

to the use of strong drinks."³⁹

European traditions did include the regular consumption of alcoholic

beverages, and it was among the foreign-born that the Maine Law met

its strongest opposition. Immigrants, mainly Germans and Irish, com-

prised more than 11 percent of Ohio's population. Although most

ethnic groups heartily endorsed temperance, which they defined as the

moderate use of beer and liquor, they considered prohibition fanatical.

In Cleveland and Cincinnati, Germans and Irish worked in the distilling

and brewing industries, and many operated coffee houses, groceries,

and saloons that sold liquor by the drink. These immigrant-owned

businesses were gathering places for ethnic communities, and along

with church and home were the hubs of social life. Religious differenc-

es separated Catholic immigrants from the largely Protestant Maine

Law reformers, and the Catholic church hierarchy was unremittingly

hostile to prohibition. Even Protestant immigrants, who would join in

an anti-Catholic movement like the Cincinnati school controversy,

were alienated by the Maine Law. Catholics also tended to align with

the Democracy and therefore were inclined to follow their party's

 

 

36. Cincinnati Gazette, 9 August 1853. See also Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder,

133; Sandusky Register, 25 June 1853.

37. Ohio State Journal, 7 February 1853.

38. Cincinnati Gazette, 1 September 1853.

39. Reprint from the Ohio Cultivator in Toledo Blade, 5 October 1853. See also Tyrell,

Sobering Up, 243-44.

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Second Party System Collapses                            141

anti-Maine Law stance.40 Opposing politicians had often accused "Irish and Germans" of being "hewers of wood, and drawers of water" for Democratic party leaders, and this contempt further en- sured that the Maine Law would make little headway among foreign- born voters.41 By mid-summer, the prospect of forming Maine Law fusion tickets combining Whigs and Free Soilers had become the leading practical concern of state politicians. The gubernatorial contest attracted con- siderable attention, but the real work of the campaign had to be done at the county level, since the results of the races for the state legislature would determine the Maine Law's chances. Was Maine Law sentiment strong enough to narrow the gulf that separated Whigs and Free Soilers? Temperance reformers hoped so, but the past history of the parties made cooperation problematic. As the Ashtabula Sentinel phrased the problem, Whigs and Free Soilers "all desire to conquer their successful opponents, the Locos [i.e., Democrats]; but they have something else to conquer first-THEIR PREJUDICES AGAINST EACH OTHER."42 Joshua Giddings added that the "real obstacles"       40. Sandusky Register, 3 September 1853; Toledo Blade, 10 September 1853; Tyrrell, Sobering Up, 297-302; Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder, 124-26. 41. Daily Forest City Whig, 19 September 1853 . 42. Ashtabula Sentinel, 11 August 1853.

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142                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

to fusion were an attachment "to party names and party pride and

party prejudices," and that "feeling of personal hostility which has

been engendered between individuals who have heretofore politically

opposed each other."⁴³ In the end, the fate of the Maine Law rested

not in the hands of non-partisan temperance men, but in the hands of

partisan politicians.⁴⁴

The Free Soilers campaigned strongly on the Maine Law issue, but

their main goal was a more powerful antislavery party. They thought

that it was time "to put Ohio right on the great themes of Freedom and

Temperance, to break up thereby in the State and in the Nation the old

organizations, and form, in their stead, AN INDEPENDENT PARTY

OF PROGRESSION."⁴⁵ Samuel Lewis toured the state for over four

months, often joined by Joshua Giddings and Salmon Chase, and

unless requested to speak on the temperance question, they focused

almost exclusively on antislavery appeals. Chase, although favoring

temperance, cared little for the Maine Law compared to antislavery,

and his ambition for Free Soilers was "to cast such a vote as will-if

not elect our candidate,-at least put an end to [the] triangular

contest."⁴⁶ "I am a temperance man," Giddings had declared, "but

wholly opposed to throwing the burthen of that reform upon the

movement for liberty."⁴⁷

When Free Soilers spoke of fusion, they normally meant the

abandonment of the Whig party and the formation of a new antislavery

organization. If the Whig party disbanded, the Free Soilers would have

"a clear field and a fair fight" against the Democracy. "No intelligent

man hopes, or expects to see the Whigs rally again as an organized

national party," they argued; let "the Whigs withdraw their nomina-

tions" and "nine-tenths of the Whig party will vote for liberty, justice

and humanity."⁴⁸ Salmon Chase warned Giddings not to allow "any

compromise of principles"; he wanted no temporary arrangements and

thought Free Soilers should seek "the union of all the Progressives

 

43. Letter from Giddings in Toledo Blade, 25 August 1853.

44. Painesville Telegraph in Daily True Democrat, 12 July 1853; Holmes County Whig

in Daily True Democrat, 2 July 1853; Daily Forest City Whig, 30 August 1853.

45. Daily True Democrat, 12 September 1853.

46. Salmon P. Chase to Charles Sumner, 3 September 1853, in Bourne, ed., "Diary

and Letters," American Historical Association, II: 252.

47. Letter from Giddings in Ashtabula Sentinel, 10 February 1853. See also,

Ashtabula Sentinel, 8 September 1853; Ohio Columbian, 14 April; 12 May 1853;

Hillsborough Gazette, 16 May 1853; Marietta Republican, 19 May 1853; Anti-Slavery

Bugle, 21 May 1853; Clinton Republican, 10 June 1853; Sandusky Register, 25 June 1853;

Aurora, 7 September 1853. Reports of scores of other Free Soil meetings can be found

in the issues of the Ohio Columbian for 1853.

48. Ashtabula Sentinel, 2 June 1853.

• 14
 

Second Party System Collapses                                143

 

against all the Hunkers, rather than an alliance with the Whigs."⁴⁹ In

their quest to form a Northern antislavery party strong enough to force

a showdown on the question of slavery extension, the Free Soilers

repudiated the formula of intersectional party coalitions that was the

basis of the Jacksonian party system.

The Free Soilers wanted no union with men who were not thorough-

ly antislavery. A correspondent of the Ohio Columbian clearly stated

the relative importance of prohibitionism and anti-slavery in party

calculations:

 

We want the Maine Law; but we will not support the Baltimore platform [that

endorsed the Compromise of 1850] even to secure that law, and let the blame

fall where it is due. Our great cause has more than once been well nigh ruined,

because our party has joined with one or [the] other of [the] hunker parties for

a particular crisis. Let us be done with it.⁵⁰

 

The Free Soilers had never accepted the Compromise of 1850 or the

new Fugitive Slave Law included in it, so in fusion negotiations the

Free Soilers often demanded that Whigs repudiate their past views on

the slavery question. The Ashtabula Sentinel set down the basic

requirements for fusion in its county, and the list amounted to terms for

Whig surrender. If they desired cooperation, Ashtabula Whigs would

have to oppose the Fugitive Slave Law, call for the separation of the

federal government from slavery, pledge themselves to prevent the

admission of any slave states or slave territory, and support the Maine

Law.⁵¹ The Free Soilers were eager to unite with all men who put the

Maine Law "cause above party," but only if they could do so "without

sacrificing one Anti-Slavery principle."⁵²

 

The Western Reserve was of paramount interest to the party, and

there was no conflict between the Maine Law and anti-slavery in that

Free Soil bastion. Free Soilers could espouse the Maine Law and

dictate antislavery platforms to the Whigs without worrying about

alienating past party supporters. Outside of the Western Reserve,

where the party was weak, Free Soilers were not so doctrinaire. They

recognized that "various views will be entertained, if not various

action demanded, according to the circumstances in different locali-

 

 

49. Salmon P. Chase to Joshua Giddings, 1 June 1853, Salmon P. Chase Papers,

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

50. "G" in Ohio Columbian, 4 August 1853.

51. Ashtabula Sentinel, 11 August 1853.

52. Daily True Democrat, 12 September 1853.

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144                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

ties." The "same course" was "neither necessary or expedient" for

Free Soilers "in every county." The Free Soilers showed that they

were men of principle and astute politicians by driving hard bargains on

the Western Reserve while assuming a pragmatic stance in the rest of

the state.53

The Whigs had no such strategy and they mounted almost no

campaign. Congressmen Lewis Campbell complained that Barrere had

never ventured "out of the corporate limits" of his home town, and

other speakers were equally inactive.⁵⁴ The Whig press dropped its

earlier principled objections to the Maine Law and belatedly endorsed

prohibition, but the party had already forfeited any claim to temper-

ance leadership. Lewis Campbell revealed the political motivation

behind this change when he confessed that he was "not exactly a

Maine Law man," but added the prayer: "Heaven send us anything

that will help, break down Locofocoism."⁵⁵ The desperation of Whig

leaders was justified, for their party had virtually ceased to exist as a

statewide organization. It had degenerated into a heterogeneous coa-

lition of men whose opinions on the Maine Law ranged from total

opposition to rabid support-the only thing they claimed in common

was the Whig name. Some men at both extremes abandoned the party

because of its noncommittal stance, and those in the middle became

hopelessly apathetic, as evidenced by a Whig who considered the

Maine Law "one of the most contemptible humbugs of the age" but

remained "entirely indifferent" to "its passage."⁵⁶ The inertia of party

loyalty was no longer enough to sustain the Whigs, and perplexed

editors noted that never before had "party bonds and shackles set so

loosely upon men of all parties as they do at this present moment."⁵⁷

The step out of an old party was a long one, but the step into a new

one was even longer. Disaffected Whigs were hardly eager to join the

Free Soilers. Benjamin Wade, who had gained a seat in the United

States Senate in 1851 with aid from Free Soilers, admitted that the

"Whig cause" looked "rather blue," but was satisfied that "the same

apathy reigns in the ranks" of the Democrats. "I care as little for

names as any one," he declared, "but I am not to be driven from the

 

 

53. Ohio Columbian, 4 August 1853.

54. Lewis D. Campbell to Isaac Strohm, 28 June 1853, Strohm Papers, Ohio

Historical Society.

55. Lewis D. Campbell to Benjamin Wade, 16 August 1853, quoted in Maizlish,

Triumph of Sectionalism, 183.

56. Alexander Boys to [?], 3 October 1853, Alexander Boys Papers, Ohio Historical

Society, Columbus.

57. Ohio State Journal, 5 August 1853. See also Ohio State Journal, 1 July 1853;

Cincinnati Gazette, 6 August; 30 September 1853; Toledo Blade, 1 September 1853.

• 16
 

Second Party System Collapses                                  145

 

support of Whig principles, or from acting with the glorious old party,

sink or swim."⁵⁸ Conservative Whigs loathed the Free Soilers on

principle as "agitators and one-idea fanatics" obsessed with opposing

slavery.⁵⁹ One such Whig was Elisha Whittlesey, a distinguished

lawyer from the Western Reserve who had served several terms in

Congress during the 1830s. He deplored the breed of "fanatical

Yankee" politicians who hoped "by taunts, hypocritical phylanthropy

[sic], & interfering with the institution of slavery, to make the South to

take measures" to dissolve the Union. Whittlesey and his kindred were

unlikely to support any measure that smacked of Free Soil ultraism,

including the Maine Law.⁶⁰

Most Whigs viewed a national party system as essential, as one of

the strongest bonds that cemented the Union, and they could foresee

that any party incorporating Free Soil ideals would inevitably be a

sectional one. As early as 1849, Whig United States Senator Thomas

Corwin had sensed the dangers stemming from the Free Soilers'

single-minded devotion to opposing slavery and slavery extension. "I

cannot comprehend the view of a party that proposes just one thing &

cares for nothing else," he confessed; "When I look at such a party, I

fear their motives or distrust their judgement. I do not see any good but

much evil from its predominance." Conservative Whigs who had

fought for years to maintain their party's "nationality" would think

carefully before enlisting in an antislavery party that had scant hope of

attracting support in any slaveholding state.⁶1

 

State Democratic leaders, with no measures of their own to propose,

concentrated on attacking prospective Whig and Free Soil fusionists.

Throughout the campaign, Democrats denounced the Maine Law

movement as a "Whig ruse" to snare credulous voters. The Cleveland

Plain Dealer alleged that "the prominent actors on the temperance

stage, are manifestly aiming at political preferment rather than social

reform."⁶² The Democrats harked back to the "Log Cabin and Hard

 

 

58. Benjamin Wade to Lewis D. Campbell, 27 June 1853, Lewis D. Campbell Papers,

Ohio Historical Society, Columbus.

59. Ohio State Journal, 27 May 1853.

60. Elisha Whittlesey to Reverend James Gallagher, 28 August 1853, Elisha Whittlesey

Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland.

61. Thomas Corwin to Oran Follett, 31 August 1849, in Belle L. Hamlin, ed.,

"Selections from the Follett Papers, 11," 9 Quarterly Publication of the Historical and

Philosophical Society of Ohio (July 1914), 96. Corwin was also worried about the Free

Soilers eroding Whig electoral strength and depriving Whigs like him of federal and state

offices.

62. Daily Plain Dealer, 12 January 1853.

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146                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

Cider" campaign of 1840 to prove that the Whigs were utter hypocrites

on the temperance question. "Whiggery in Ohio this fall seems to be

disposed to reverse the tactics of 1840," noted the Cincinnati Enquirer,

"... hoping that temperance will do for it now what drunkenness did

then, giving it a triumph over the Democracy.⁶³

Although Democrats scarcely considered the possibility of losing the

state in 1853, the prospect of eventual Whig-Free Soil fusion was

worrisome. The Democrats had won the last several elections with only

a plurality of the vote, and if their opponents ever united, the anti-

Democratic forces could control Ohio. Democratic politicians, there-

fore, viewed the apparent collapse of the Whig party with ambivalent

feelings, because it threatened the comfortable status quo of the party

system. The editor of the Enquirer admitted that he preferred to

compete against the old Whig party rather than a "conglomeration of

disaffected factionists, pretended independents and neutrals, destitute

of political honesty."⁶⁴ Victory and spoils offered rewards for Demo-

cratic party leaders, but the appeals to party loyalty which they relied

upon in 1853 did not generate mass enthusiasm. As William Medill

remarked, virtually the sole goal of the Democratic campaign was "to

keep up our organization, upon which the attack is particularly made

at this time."65

The Maine Law fusion campaign varied widely throughout the state.

The coalition efforts that occurred in perhaps half of Ohio's counties

differed according to political conditions and temperance sentiment in

each area. The Maine Law crusade generally fared best in the northern

half of Ohio, where New England influences were the strongest. The

southern part of the state was comparatively untouched by the Maine

Law campaign, although temperance forces made inroads in some

counties and waged an impressive campaign in Cincinnati. Much of

southern Ohio had been settled originally by emigrants from Virginia,

Kentucky, Tennessee, and other Southern states, and many residents

there shared a contempt for Yankee reform notions and a sympathy for

the national Democratic party with its Southern ties.⁶⁶ The Free Soilers

 

63. Cincinnati Enquirer, 24 September 1853. See also Ohio Statesman, 17 May; 27

July; 9, 26 September 1853; Hamilton Telegraph, 16 June 1853; Stark County Democrat,

5 October 1853; Ohio Patriot, 2 September 1853.

64. Cincinnati Enquirer, 8 October 1853 .

65. William Medill to Ralph Leete, 12 July 1853, Ralph Leete Papers, Western

Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland. See also Ralph Leete to William Medill, 20 July

1853, and, John E. Hanna to William Medill, 10 August 1853, both in William Medill

Papers, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; Ohio Statesman, 27 July; 12 August 1853.

66. The Ohio State Journal, 14 October 1853, commented on this geographical

division after the election when it noted that the "north has gone almost unanimously

Maine law. The south anti-Maine law."

• 18
 

Second Party System Collapses                                147

controlled proceedings on the Western Reserve, which was the center of fusion activity, while Whigs and Free Soilers formed uneasy partnerships in localities where Whigs predominated. The Whigs sometimes took the initiative on the Maine Law issue, then challenged Free Soilers and temperance Democrats to join them. The Democrats occasionally nominated their own Maine Law candidates, and Demo- cratic dominance in a score of counties discouraged any opposition fusion efforts. All of these varieties of fusion were unstable; fusion tickets were formed, abandoned, and then taken up again, often within a matter of days. Confusion kept politics in a state of flux, and for disillusioned Whigs the most prevalent form of "fusion" was the haphazard desertion of their old party. In the Western Reserve counties of Huron and Ashtabula, Free Soilers nominated straight tickets and urged others to support them, but elsewhere the antislavery party negotiated fusion arrangements with the Whigs.67 Anti-Democratic temperance forces in Summit County had cooperated in the Akron city elections in April, and they       67. Ashtabula Sentinel, 11 August; 8, 22 September 1853; Ashtabula Weekly Tele- graph, 17 September 1853; Ohio Columbian, 7 September 1853.

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148                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

extended their alliance with a fall slate of Maine Law fusion candi-

dates. Lyman Hall, the editor of the Free Soil newspaper in Portage

County, forged a tenuous Maine Law bond between his party and local

Whigs, despite continued Whig antipathy to the Free Soilers' anti-

slavery dogmas. This rapprochement was a step toward healing the

split that had thrown most county elections since 1848 to the minority

Democrats.⁶⁸ Erie County Free Soilers spurned Whig fusion offers,

proclaiming that they could not "support one enormity to aid in the

suppression of another," and that they would not coalesce with

"proslavery parties in order to secure the election of a Maine Law

man." The Whig Sandusky Register censured Erie Free Soilers for

professing "an abhorrence for 'party ties' and 'party subserviency,' "

and yet letting their own party prejudices divide the Maine Law vote.

This charge rang true; Western Reserve Free Soilers seldom sacrificed

antislavery principles to pursue Maine Law fusion.⁶⁹

The spirited fusion debate in Cuyahoga County divided Free Soilers

along lines of past party allegiance. An early September fusion meeting

in Cleveland nominated a mixed ticket of Whigs and Free Soilers that

included John A. Foote. Such close cooperation with the Whigs

alienated a group of Democratic Free Soilers led by the volatile Rufus

Spaulding, and he launched a tirade against the Whigs and fusion

before he and his allies stalked out of the hall. Three weeks later,

Spaulding organized a convention that made "regular" Free Soil

nominations, despite the protests of Whig Free Soilers against

Spaulding's fratricidal course. Meanwhile, Cuyahoga Democrats had

also split into two factions with separate tickets, partly as a result of

personal feuds, but also because of differing opinions on how to

balance the need for German Democratic votes against the desire to

attract Maine Law supporters. Four tickets, none of them bearing the

Whig name, thus competed for the favors of Cuyahoga voters.⁷⁰

Fusion efforts were yet more complicated outside the Western

Reserve, as each group of county party leaders maneuvered for

advantage. Free Soil strength in Morrow County nearly equaled that of

the Whigs, and the two parties together outnumbered the Democrats.

Morrow temperance men made independent nominations, which were

 

 

68. Akron Democratic Standard, 25 August; 1, 22 September; 6 October 1853; Eric J.

Cardinal, "The Development of an Anti-Slavery Political Majority: Portage County,

Ohio, 1830-1856 (M.A. thesis, Kent State University, 1973), 80-92.

69. Sandusky Register, 3 September (quotations); 8 October 1853.

70. Daily True Democrat, 20 August; 5, 19, 26, 27 September; 7, 11 October 1853;

Daily Plain Dealer, 12, 13, 20 August; 3, 30 September 1853; Cleveland Weekly Herald,

28 September 1853; Daily Forest City Whig, 29 September 1853.

• 20
 

Second Party System Collapses                                   149

 

subsequently endorsed by the Free Soilers, but a joint convention of

Whigs, Free Soilers, and temperance advocates then formed a com-

promise Maine Law ticket. In Columbiana County, New Lisbon

residents continued their temperance battle. County Democrats re-

mained silent on the Maine Law at their June convention, and the Free

Soilers met shortly afterwards and chose prohibition candidates. The

Whigs responded by pushing for fusion, and in a hastily organized

"People's" convention, they selected Maine Law nominees of their

own. Neither Democrats nor Free Soilers accepted this Whig-backed

ticket, and the Columbiana temperance vote remained divided. Assess-

ing the situation, Free Soil editor Marius Robinson aptly concluded,

"Politics are a little mixed up in this county, this Fall."⁷¹

All sorts of political combinations and shades of temperance senti-

ment entered into county races. In strongly Democratic Crawford

County, temperance forces nominated a Maine Law Democrat for state

representative. The Whig and Democratic papers endorsed him and he

ran unopposed. Both Whigs and Democrats in Guernsey County

formed Maine Law tickets, and this unanimity on prohibition spawned

a reverse fusion effort when disaffected men from both parties joined in

backing an anti-Maine Law slate. The campaign around Toledo in

Lucas County centered on the activities of James M. Ashley. He would

later win notoriety as an impeacher of President Andrew Johnson, but

in 1853, he was a Democrat who was dissatisfied with his party's

position on both slavery and temperance. Ashley participated in a

Maine Law convention that nominated Sanford L. Collins, an anti-

slavery Whig, for the legislature. When local Democrats pressured

Ashley to renounce his Maine Law sympathies, he and several friends

broke away from the party and actively campaigned for Samuel Lewis.

Although Ashley was already discontented with the Pierce administra-

tion, his case was an example of the Maine Law's tendency to break

down party lines.⁷²

 

71. Anti-Slavery Bugle, 9 July; 20 August (quotation) 1853; Ohio Columbian, 15

September 1853; Ohio Patriot, 1 July; 12 August 1853; Buckeye State, 11 August 1853.

72. Hillsborough Gazette, 22 August 1853; Guernsey Times, 8, 15, 29 September

1853; Toledo Blade, 1, 4 August; 24 September 1853; Robert F. Horowitz, The Great

Impeacher: A Political Biography of James M. Ashley (New York, 1979), 15-16. The

variety of political combinations in 1853 almost defy general description. Free Soilers in

overwhelmingly Democratic counties often stood alone and backed the Maine Law. See

Ohio Columbian, 25 August; 15 September 1853; if no fusion occurred in a county, the

Whigs either supported the Maine Law or lapsed into apathy. See Marietta Republican,

25 August; 10 October 1853; Clinton Republican, 19 August 1853; and in several counties

the Democrats campaigned on the temperance issue without endorsing the Maine Law.

See Hillsborough Gazette, 27 June; 6 September 1853; Ohio Democrat, 9 June; 21, 27

July; 11 August; 8 September 1853.

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150                                             OHIO HISTORY

 

The party system in Cincinnati never recovered from the free school

controversy, and the Cincinnati Times believed that "there never was

such political confusion in Hamilton County as there is at the present

time." "Old party ties have in great measure been rent asunder," the

editor reported, "and the only organizations that now exist, are

founded upon an entire new issue-that of a prohibitory liquor law."⁷³

Cincinnati prohibitionists carefully balanced their Maine Law ticket,

selecting five Whigs, five Democrats, and a Free Soiler. Three of the

Whigs were already on that party's regular ticket, and the Free Soilers

subsequently ratified the Maine Law nominations. The coalition move-

ment among their opponents unexpectedly unified the Democrats,

most of whom supported the party convention candidates pledged to

oppose the Maine Law.⁷⁴

The final fusion effort was an impromptu arrangement at the state

level between Whigs and Free Soilers. The Free Soilers' candidate for

lieutenant governor, Benjamin Bissell, announced his withdrawal in

early August. The party initially selected a replacement, but then

changed course and adopted Isaac J. Allen, the Whig nominee. Allen

was a political novice from heavily Democratic Richland County who

had appealed for Free Soil support by declaring his opposition to

slavery extension and to the Compromise of 1850, and by firmly

endorsing the Maine Law. This last-minute cooperation on a Maine

Law Whig with Free Soil principles was a fitting climax to the

confusing 1853 campaign.⁷⁵

The election results were a disaster for both the Whigs and the Maine

Law reformers. Nelson Barrere polled the lowest vote of any Whig

gubernatorial candidate in Ohio history in an election that featured the

lowest turnout of any contest in the 1850s. Medill won easily with

147,663 votes, followed by Barrere with 85,843, and Samuel Lewis

trailed at 49,846. Barrere fell over 60,000 votes short of his party's total

in 1848-the last time the Whigs had captured the governorship-while

Samuel Lewis improved on his 1851 showing by some 33,000 votes.

Non-voting affected all the parties, but the most important product of

the campaign was the desertion of thousands of Whigs to the Free

Soilers. These defections were enough to destroy the already weak

Whig party. The Democrats elected a large anti-Maine Law majority to

 

73. Cincinnati Times, 7 October 1853, quoted in Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder,

140.

74. Dannenbaum, Drink and Disorder, 141-44; Cincinnati Gazette, 5, 15 September

1853.

75. Ohio Columbian, 18 August; 8, 28 September 1853; Cincinnati Gazette, 20

September 1853; Ashtabula Sentinel, 29 September 1853; Ohio Statesman, 26, 29

September; 5 October 1853.

• 22
 

Second Party System Collapses                                151

 

the Legislature, and thus crushed the hopes of temperance men. A few

scattered fusion victories confined mainly to the Western Reserve,

such as the triumph of John A. Foote and the People's ticket in

Cuyahoga County, offered Maine Law advocates little consolation.

The Free Soilers were enthusiastic about their gains, but fifty-thousand

votes in one state hardly approached their goal of a powerful antislavery

party. As the Whig Cleveland Herald concluded, the election showed

that there was only one party in Ohio that remained as a viable

statewide organization, the Democracy.⁷⁶

The primary effects of the Maine Law agitation were destructive;

prohibitionists generated enough enthusiasm to draw new adherents to

the Free Soil cause and to wreck the Whig party, but they could not

overcome widespread voter apathy. Instead of polarizing sentiment

along party lines, and perhaps revitalizing the Whig party, the Maine

Law crusade scattered voters and left the remnants of an old party

system with only a few indications of how a new one might be

constructed. The liabilities of the Maine Law as a reform issue in 1853

proved to be overwhelming, but its liabilities as a potential future

partisan issue were even more serious. The Maine Law alienated all but

the most zealous temperance supporters-few could lukewarmly ad-

vocate total prohibition. A statewide party could hardly be built upon

a measure that created more enemies than friends, and furthermore, an

Ohio Maine Law party could have only the remotest relation to politics

in the rest of the Union. If a party realignment were to take place in

Ohio, it would have to be on issues other than the Maine Law.⁷⁷

A realignment began, of course, in 1854, and the previous year's

Maine Law campaign contributed to the success of the anti-Nebraska

fusion movement. The collapse of their organization made Whigs less

inclined to cling to their party simply for party's sake, and life-long

Whigs like editor Oran Follett of the Ohio State Journal readily

admitted that "there is not much to choose from between this or that

party or fragment of a party in the Free States.⁷⁸ After the 1853 contest,

Whigs and Free Soilers had a better understanding of how fusion

worked, and how it could fail. They still disagreed over how far the

anti-Nebraska coalition should go in opposing slavery, but outrage at

 

76. Cleveland Herald, 26 October 1853; Ohio State Journal, 14 October 1853; Daily

Forest City Whig, 15 October 1853; Thomas W. Kremm, "The Rise of the Republican

Party in Cleveland, 1848-1860" (Ph. D. dissertation, Kent State University, 1974), 105-

07; Maizlish, Triumph of Sectionalism, 185, 242; Gienapp, Origins of the Republican

Party, 56-60, 494-95.

77. Gienapp, Origins of the Republican Party, 38, distinguishes between the "party

decomposition" phase and the realignment phase of party reorganization.

78. Ohio State Journal, 25 April 1853.

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152                                                 OHIO HISTORY

 

the repeal of the Missouri Compromise overcame many of the suspi-

cions that had blocked fusion in 1853. There were many individual links

between the 1853 and 1854 campaigns: John A. Foote and Lafayette G.

Van Slyke, for example, served on both the State Temperance Central

Committee and the Anti-Nebraska State Central Committee. Also,

many of the Free Soilers who opposed fusion in 1853, such as Rufus

Spaulding of Cleveland and Joseph Root of Erie County, played

important roles in founding the anti-Nebraska party.⁷⁹

But the differences between the 1853 and 1854 campaigns were more

important than their similarities. A battle against the "Slave Power"

was, for many reasons, a more potent issue in Ohio than opposition to

the "Rum Power." Maine Law crusaders attacked other Ohioans,

while the anti-Nebraska movement concentrated its fire on Southern

slaveholders and on their supposed instrument, the national Democrat-

ic party, thus uniting anti-Democratic forces. The antislavery cause

was made more palatable for some by dropping Ohio Free Soil ideas

such as black suffrage and relying on appeals to Northern racism in

claiming the territories for free white labor. The anti-Nebraska move-

ment attracted antislavery Democrats who had been wholly unmoved

by the Maine Law, and anti-Catholic elements in the anti-Nebraska

coalition included Protestant immigrants who had spurned

prohibitionism. Conservative Whigs, persuaded by recent events that

Free Soil concerns about slavery were justified, or simply intent upon

the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, joined in the anti-

Nebraska movement. Finally, the anti-Nebraska agitation extended

beyond the borders of Ohio and offered politicians potential state and

national power-power that meant offices and patronage.

 

Diverse concerns motivated Ohioans who joined the heterogeneous

anti-Nebraska party that rolled to victory in the 1854 fall elections.

Rutherford B. Hayes captured the spirit of the party when he pro-

claimed that "Anti-Nebraska, Know-Nothings, and general disgust

 

 

 

79. Ohio State Journal, 14 February 1853; Benjamin F. Wade to Milton Sutliff, 21

April 1854, Sutliff Letters, Western Reserve Historical Society; Cincinnati Gazette, 5

April 1854; Salmon P. Chase to N. S. Townshend, 10 February 1854, Chase Papers,

Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Thomas Ewing to Oran Follett, 28 April 1854, Oran

Follett to Thomas Ewing, 1 May 1854, and, Thomas Ewing to Oran Follett, 2 May 1854,

all in Belle L. Hamlin, ed., "Selections from the Follett Papers, V," Quarterly

Publication of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, 13 (April 1918), 50-55;

Cleveland Morning Leader, 6 July 1854; Joseph Smith, ed., History of the Republican

Party in Ohio and Memoirs of its Representative Supporters, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1898), I:

19-25.

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Second Party System Collapses                                        153

 

with the powers that be" had conquered the Democrats, and he was

"pleased to see old organizations blotted out." In a span of two years,

Hayes had seen the Maine Law and anti-Nebraska fusion movements

transform the Ohio party system. A difficult course lay ahead, but as

the Ohio Republican party took shape over the next two years, a

bedrock commitment to opposing slavery extension and the "Slave

Power" held the coalition together.⁸⁰

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

80. Rutherford B. Hayes to Uncle S. Birchard, 13 October 1854, in Hayes, Diary and

Letters, I: 470 (quotation); Cincinnati Gazette, 16, 25 March 1854; Cleveland Morning

Leader, 7 April 1854; Daily Forest City Democrat, 23 February 1854; Salmon P. Chase

to E. L. Pierce, 12 March 1854, in Bourne, ed., "Diary and Letters," American

Historical Association, II: 258- 60; Larry Gara, "Slavery and the Slave Power: A Crucial

Distinction," Civil War History, 15 (March 1969), 5-18; Gienapp, Origins of the

Republican Party, 113-19; Maizlish, Triumph of Sectionalism, 187-206.

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