WI: John Fremont wins the 1856 election?

Lets say that the American party never catches on, and John Fremont wins the 1856 election. What happens next?
 
IIRC someone did a TL about this.

The South is in a slightly better situation than it is in 1860 to fight a war, the North would still win though.
 
Hard to do this, at least as long as the Democrats nominate Buchanan. Remember, he got more votes than Fremont and Fillmore *combined* in Pennsylvania and Indiana. http://psephos.adam-carr.net/countries/u/usa/pres/1856.txt And it's quite unrealistic to think that all Fillmore voters, even in the North, would go for Fremont in a two-way race. (In any event, it's hard to believe there won't be *some* party, whether named American or not, to appeal to conservative Whigs. After all, there was such a party in 1860...)

To be sure, it is just possible that a fusion ticket in Pennsylvania could have carried the state, but I doubt it, and even if it did, it could not by itself have done more than throw the election into the House. The prospects for anti-Buchanan fusion in 1856
 
last realistic chance to prevent a Civil War?

and some phrased move away from slavery, say within a generation (this part may be unrealistic, but I really wish it wasn't)
 
I wrote about this some years ago in soc.history.what-if:

***

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 himself
after 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." http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/r1856.html 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?

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/8gBwCfBbaxU/OeM0FA512NwJ
 
BTW, if it seemed likely that the Republicans would win, Fremont would probably not be their nominee. Seward could have had the nomination if he wanted it, but decided against seeking it, because he didn't think the party could win the presidency in 1856. Better to wait until 1860.

As the late William Gienapp wrote in *The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856,*" Had Seward allowed his name to be used, he would unquestionably have been the first Republican standard bearer." https://books.google.com/books?id=szHnCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA339
 
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