See my response last year to a thread "Considering the Panic of 1857, would Pres. Frémont have caused a Civil War?"
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...have-caused-a-civil-war.434065/#post-16325469
---
Some years ago, in soc.history.what-if, I explained why I was uncertain that Fremont's election would lead to civil war (my apologies for any links that may no longer work):
***
The odds against Fremont winning in 1856 were pretty long, at least once the Democrats nominated Buchanan. (They would be somewhat better against a more controversial Democrat like Pierce or Douglas.) The Republicans were a new party; the Americans were sure to get some of the anti-Buchanan vote in the North; Fremont was plagued by rumors that he was a Catholic, etc. (See
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.history.what-if/msg/cdee93afcb44b801 for my discussion of that last point.) Indeed, one reason why there was much less southern organization of planned resistance (by secession or otherwise) to a possible Fremont administration in 1856 than there was to a possible Lincoln victory before the 1860 election is that it seemed much\ less likely that Fremont would win (especially after the Democrats narrowly won the Indiana and Pennsylvania gubernatorial elections in October.) Still, let's wave our hands and say Fremont does win--we'll combine a more intelligent campaign (in OTL his failure to address the Catholic issue helped to convince many people that the accusations might be true) with narrow victories by the Republican/American fusion candidates for governor in Indiana and Pennsylvania leading to fusion in those states on the presidential level as well. (Even then I don't think Fremont would win, so maybe we have to add the Democrats nominating a weaker candidate than Buchanan. But again I don't want to concentrate too much on *how* Fremont could win. Let's just say he does.) Does the South secede?
I used to think that the answer was Yes. Now I am not so sure.
First of all, we have to get our of our heads any notion that Fremont in 1856 was considered more "radical" by Southerners than Lincoln was in 1860. It is true that Fremont would later become a hero of Radicals because of his order (countermanded by Lincoln) freeing the slaves of disloyal masters in Missouri, and it is true that the Radicals even nominated him for President in 1864 (he withdrew in favor of Lincoln). But in 1856 Fremont gave no sign that he was *personally* "radical"--except of course implicitly by taking the Republican nomination. It is true that he had been defeated for re-election to the US Senate from California by that state's pro-slavery faction. Yet there is nothing in his brief record as a Senator to show that he was more than moderately antislavery. Significantly, he (like his 1856 running mate Dayton) had voted *against* a proposal to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia that had the support of Chase, Hale, and Seward. He had never made any speech calling slavery morally wrong or insisting that the US must eventually become either entirely free or entirely slave.
By contrast Lincoln in 1860 was considered *personally* antislavery, not just the nominee of an antislavery party. His "House Divided" speech was endlessly quoted by Southerners as proof that he was as bad as Seward, that he favored a political war against the South for the "ultimate extinction" of slavery. The widespread perception today that Lincoln was more "moderate" than Seward was not shared by Southerners or by northern Democrats in 1860. Nor was it shared by all Republicans. Eric Foner has noted in *Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War* that in areas like southern Indiana, conservative Republicans opposed both Seward and Lincoln for the nomination, considering both of them too "radical." Conversely, he notes, some Radicals declared themselves quite satisfied with Lincoln's nomination: "[Joshua] Giddings, with whom Lincoln had discussed his proposal for emancipation in the District of Columbia when both were in Congress in 1849, declared that he would as soon trust Lincoln on the slavery question as Chase and Seward....Cf. Frederick Douglass' analysis: 'He is a radical Republican, and is fully committed to the doctrine of 'the irrepressible conflict'...He is not a compromise candidate by any means.'"
http://books.google.com/books?id=HUqJPUyS83AC&pg=PA215&sig=7qFt7W7Krs630FMO6o66iW7a33o
Second, and perhaps more important, consider the things that had happened by 1860 that had not yet happened in 1856:
(1) There was no Dred Scott decision yet--so (apart from the "personal liberty" laws passed by some northern states) it could not yet be said that the Republicans meant to deprive the South of anything that the Supreme Court had said was a clear constitutional right.
(2) There was no John Brown raid on Harpers Ferry. This played an important role in convincing Southerners that the "Black Republicans" were their mortal enemies--not so much because of the raid itself but because of the widespread northern admiration of the way Brown conducted himselfafter the raid failed and the widespread Northern mourning at Brown's death.
(3) Helper's *Impending Crisis*, the Republican party's compendium of it, and the defeat of John Sherman for House Speaker (because of his endorsement of the compendium) had not yet taken place in 1856. The importance of these developments is that they crystallized awareness on the part of Southerners of the Republicans' plans to appeal to southern non-slaveholders and to use federal patronage to build a Republican Party in the South. Such a strategy seemed to be a grave threat to slavery in the border states; and if slavery were abolished there, the remaining slave states would be a hopeless minority in the Union. Even in the Deep South, poor white men might be tempted to accept Republican patronage, and thus even there pro-slavery unity among whites might be undermined (not to mention the mails opened to "incendiary" publications).
(4) The controversy over Lecompton and the "Freeport Doctrine" had not yet taken place, and the Democratic Party had not yet split. In 1856, most Southerners still assumed that northern Democrats, including Douglas, were their allies. Once it became clear that the northern Democracy contained what might be called a "semi-free-soil" wing--one which *in practice* was as hostile to slavery expansion as the Republicans--the southern position in the Union seemed a great deal more hopeless after a Republican victory in 1860 than it would have seemed after a Fremont victory in 1856. In 1856, even in defeat, Southerners could hope that a future Democratic victory would set things right; in 1860, it was not clear that in the future there would even *be* a national Democratic Party to challenge the Republicans.
(5) Seward's "Irrepressible Conflict" and Lincoln's "House Divided" speeches were still in the future in 1856. These helped to persuade Southerners that the Republicans would never be satisfied with more non-extension of slavery, but would only use non-extension as a first step to abolish the institution.
If we turn from *a priori* reasoning about whether Southerners had more cause to fear Fremont in 1856 than Lincoln in 1860 to what Southerners actually said and did in 1856, we get a mixed picture. True, there were some like Virginia's Senator James Mason who said that if Fremont wins, "One course remains for the South: Immediate, absolute, and eternal separation." Yet Steven A. Channing has noted in his *Crisis of Fear: Secession in South Carolina* (pp. 79-80) even South Carolinians were divided about whether a Fremont victory would be catastrophic:
"Alfred Huger, speculating on the possible consequences of a Republican victory, foresaw almost certain sectional war. The deeply conservative Charlestonian hoped that the South would pause and await the overt enactment of the antislavery plot. But, Huger lamented, if Fremont were elected and did not 'play traitor to his friends,' if, in short, the 'Black' Republicans did 'half that they threaten, we shall be in a state of Revolution.' [DT: Note that Huger could at least hope that Fremont himself was not too antislavery, that he might "play traitor to his friends." This hope could not exist with Lincoln in 1860; so far as Southerners were concerned, his own principles as evidenced in the 'House Divided" speech were just as bad as those of his friends....]
"As with the general perception of a totally 'abolitionized' North, there were considerable numbers of South Carolinians who denied that the new sectional party solely represented political antislavery sentiment, or that Fremont's election would necessitate a bloody conflict. A "Friend of the Union,' writing to Presbyterian minister and fellow Unionist William R. Hemphill, professed to see no significant differences between the presidential candidates. Even Fremont said that 'slavery where it exists in the states *must not be interfered with,* Hemphill's correspondent affirmed, and Buchanan and Fillmore had made similar pledges. Like most, this 'Friend of the Union,* was not prepared to believe this promise, nor to battle for Constitution and Union, out of any doubts about the soundness of the Southern position. As 'Friend' concluded, what could Fremont or any other man elected President not proslavery...do to injure Southern interests while we have a democratic Senate and House of Representatives?' Still, there were some who were not equivocal in condemning all 'little minded disunionists'and asserting that the state would be willing to 'Try Fremont a while.'"
http://books.google.com/books?id=X29egdUI4WUC&pg=PA79&sig=8uZ876cqzpP2VPSdZvSe5P_5GxU
Indeed, Channing writes later in his book (p. 161) that "*Although no responsible Southern voices had been raised in 1856 for secession,* [my emphasis--DT] the speeches of Seward, Lincoln, and others since then had convinced South Carolina that total and violent abolition was the central goal of the Republican party."
http://books.google.com/books?id=X29egdUI4WUC&pg=PA161&sig=i0o-gu-I2RaDoW8Blp-5eNCZ9Hg Given the statement I have quoted by Mason, to say that *no* responsible Southern voices had called for secession in 1856 seems inaccurate, but it is true that such statements were less common in 1856 than in 1860.
William W. Freehling in *The Road to Disunion, Volume II: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861* (p. 101) notes the failure of Southerners to organize for secession in 1856 compared to 1850 or 1860:
"The lack of an organized southern effort for supposedly inevitable secession also undermined Buchanan's scary prophecy [of disunion if Fremont won]. In the fall of 1856, secessionists' only visible planning looked abortive. After Virginia's Henry Wise invited eleven fellow southern governors to a mid-October conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, to plot strategy in case Buchanan lost, empty seats dominated the conference table. Only the governor from North Carolina (who opposed disunion and had but to step across the street) and from (were else!) South Carolina came to hear Wise's irresolute gasconade.
"If northern voters had been privy to secessionists' private mail in 1856, they would have been even less convinced that revolution loomed ahead. Compared to the conspiratorial correspondence that had occurred in 1850-52 and would occur in 1860-61, disunionists scarcely corresponded, much less plotted, with each other in 1856. Southern extremists expected Buchanan to win, making disunion premature.
"With no preexisting revolutionary organization to push the southern majority toward disunion, enough Southerners would have to consider disunion necessary. But if a Republican won the presidency, would the winner necessarily menace slavery? When debate swirled on that question in 1860-61, the elected Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, had a long, clear record of at least moral opposition to slavery. In contrast, John C. Fremont...had no record on much of anything. Republicans nominated the charismatic 'Pathfinder' because of his fabled explorations out west, not because he never called slavery iniquitous."
To be sure, the Republican platform seemed insulting to the South, grouping slavery together with (Mormon) polygamy as "twin relics of barbarism."...Yet the question remained: What concretely would a Republican victory do to undermine slavery? By 1860, southern secessionists had an answer: the Republicans would undermine slavery in the South through the use of patronage to foster a Republican party there. Some Southerners were already raising that specter in 1856, but not nearly as many as would do so later. To Freehling (pp. 103-4) this was the key Republican menace to the South, all other supposed menaces requiring control of Congress:
"Southern social control demanded that antislavery agitation be silenced, lest slaves or non-slaveholders be exposed to heresy. Now a Southern Republican Party, financed by federal patronage, might pry open the closed society. 'Did you ever expect to see the day,' Virginia Congressman William O. Goode privately asked a friend, 'when the success of a presidential candidate would probably fill every Federal office in the *South*--with a *Free Soiler?*' Goode, a charter member of the F Street Mess that had pressured Stephen A. Douglas on Kansas-Nebraska, would secede rather than allow 'Black Republicanism...to plant and rear their party in the South.' Since 'everything must be done to present a result so fatal,' climaxed Goode, we must teach 'our people...a proper appreciation of the danger.'
"A proper appreciation of the Southern Republican menace would have been as crucial to secessionists' success in 1856 as it would become in 1860. All other possible Republican menaces to slavery--abolishing territorial slavery, repealing fugitive slave laws, prohibiting slave sales between slave states--all such new laws would require Republican dominion over both houses of Congress as well as over the White House. Republicans had as little chance to win congressional majorities in 1856 as they would in 1860. So southern unionists' prime cry in 1860--that disunion could safely wait until Congress passed an 'overt act' against slavery--would have been omnipresent in 1856 and to even more effect, for the National Democratic Party then still existed, to win the next congressional election.
"Technically, a Republican president's power to menace slavery by appointing Southern Republicans also required a congressional majority (to approve the appointments). But Congress had never rejected every presidential nomination; and Southerners would have considered any Republican officeholder beholden to the enemy. Nor could Northern Democrats help Southerners stop every appointment, lest they be the more damned as slaves of the Slave Power. Thus southern unionists almost never protested that Congress would save the South from Republican local appointments. That power a Republican president *would* have, almost everyone assumed. If a president's appointing power inside the South could immediately menace slavery, the unionist case for awaiting congressional 'overt acts' would be irrelevant.
"But in 1856, as William O. Goode conceded, southern voters still lacked widespread understanding of the Southern Republican danger. Here as everywhere, the secessionists' problem, if Fremont had won in 1856, would have been that the final boosts to disunionism had not yet developed. In early 1860, a major national crisis over Northern Republicans' Southern Republican strategy [Freehling is referring to the Speakership contest, where John Sherman's endorsement of the *Compendium* of Helper's *Impending Crisis* prevented his election] would advertise the menace. So, too, during the 1860 election campaign, Republicans would run an explicitly antislavery (in theory) presidential candidate, the National Democratic Party would split itself in half, and Lower South governors would commence a conspiratorial correspondence. Even then, securing secession against the wishes of a vast majority of southern whites would become a tense adventure. In 1856 an even tenser escapade would have had to feature even wilder scenes.
"Still, the 1856 South contained some wild secessionists, insisting that southern honor and safety required defiance of an elected Republican president [citing Mason's call for "Immediate, absolute, and eternal separation" if Fremont won]...No 1856 bet against Mason, yet another powerful resident of the F Street Mess, would have been a sure thing. But four years before Lincoln's election, Buchanan's trouble, as he tried to convince Northerners that only his election could save the Union, remained that disunion, if he lost, looked uncertain."
See also Avery Craven's *The Coming of the Civil War*, pp. 378-9, where Craven quotes Judge P. J. Scruggs of Mississippi (as a representative of "the radical element") who stated that if Fremont won "In my judgement, anything short of immediate, prompt, and unhesitating secession would be an act of servility that would seal our doom for all time to come." Yet as Craven notes, "Others suggested delay. Even if Fremont were elected, they would wait for some overt act before resorting to disunion. Perhaps even the fanatical Fremont might repudiate the Black Republican platform altogether and become the champion of Southern Rights! Not more than a fourth of the Republicans believed what they said. The remainder were engaged in a 'wild, heartless, and unprincipled hunt after office.'"
http://books.google.com/books?id=DEWCKlYiocIC&pg=PA378&sig=65Qciki34QX76kkMD4fCY0Ev6FQ
(Of course this dispute as to whether the South should wait for an "overt act" also existed in 1860-1; but again, what strikes me is that in 1856 it was possible to argue that maybe Fremont wasn't *really* anti-slavery and might, in Alfred Huger's words I quoted above, "turn traitor" to his friends--something that was much harder to argue about Lincoln in 1860-1.)
Any thoughts?
***
Looking back at that post, I still think that southerners would be less willing to secede simply over the election of Fremont than they were over the election of Lincoln--but I can still see a civil war coming nevertheless if South Carolina takes the lead in seceding without waiting to see if any other states will--and if Fremont then uses force against South Carolina. Just as Fort Sumter in 1861 in OTL led many previous non-secessionists in states like Virginia and Tennessee to favor secession, so in 1857 not only the Upper South but even states like Georgia and Louisiana and Mississippi might not want to follow South Carolina into secession simply over the election of Fremont--but might nevertheless resort to secession and war if Fremont were to "coerce" South Carolina.
I would also add that I don't think the Panic of 1857 would have much effect on the chances of secession and civil war. If the South secedes at all, it is likely to be soon after Fremont is elected, due to the shock of the entirely "sectional" "Black Republican" party winning control of the White House (and also due to the willingness of some southern states which were not secessionist per se to support secession if Fremont tried to "coerce" states which did want to secede). If the Union peacefully survives the first several months after Fremont's election, I doubt there will be secession or civil war later in his term.
