III: The New Democratic Party
Formerly the unstoppable force of American national politics, the once tightly unified fabric of the Democratic Party had begun to fray. Never before had they had to undergo this experience. Unlike their recently vanquished Whig rivals, ideology and political stances had never really served to divide the party. On occasion, conflicts between certain figures had produced this effect, most notable between Jackson and Calhoun in 1832 and Lewis Cass and Martin Van Buren in 1848, but those had been temporary and rapidly resolved when one figure stood triumphant over the other and party coherence was restored. By 1860, however, a new Democratic Party was being birthed, and there were certainly pains in the process. Previously, the Northern wing of the Democratic Party had been headed up by the so-called "Doughfaces", or men pliable to the will of their Southern constituents. One such man was James Buchanan, and another was the permanent chair of the convention, former attorney general Caleb Cushing.
By 1860, however, the Doughfaces began to dwindle within the Democratic Party, and a new faction arose, replacing them throughout their previous bastion of the North. Led by Stephen A. Douglas, they refused to be bullied into meek submission by their Southern compatriots, instead demanding their voice by heard by the party. Ultimately, their revolt and rupture with the Southern half of the party had occurred when the Lecompton Constitution had been brought to a vote before Congress. The constitution, drafted by a pro-slavery convention in the Kansas Territory, petitioned for entry into the Union with slavery being allowed to remain in Kansas. Backed by President Buchanan, the bill was expected to easily pass in the Senate. Standing in opposition, however, was Douglas, who promised to "resist it to the last." as he believed the elections had been fraudulent and popular sovereignty not properly enacted. Ultimately, he would rally his followers to side with the Republicans, despite the fact that the Republican motivation of free soil stood juxtaposed against his support of popular sovereignty. Even together, however, the two forces were unable to prevent its passage, if only barely. He had delayed it enough, however, for a new anti-slavery legislature to be elected in Kansas, who promptly withdrew the Lecompton Constitution and submitted a new one that ensured Kansas would become a free state. Despite not having strong feelings one way or the other on whether slavery was allowed in Kansas, the more radical Southerners in the nation quickly branded Douglas' stand against the Lecompton Constitution as proof that he was a closet abolitionist and secretly conniving with the Republicans, even though most knew the allegations to be false.
In his stand, Douglas, who to many prior had seemed a likely shoo-in for the 1860 presidential nomination, had undercut his candidacy. While he remained generally popular within the Northern wing of the party, he had earned the ire of both Buchanan and the radical Southerners, whose combined influence could likely deny him the nomination he so desired. Combined with a close run Senate re-election campaign in 1858, and Douglas was seeming to be a less and less viable candidate for a unified Democratic Party to rally around.
Senator Stephen A. Douglas, a man of passion, principles, and probable Democratic division
This doubt came to manifest itself come the convention, which was hosted in Charleston, South Carolina, at the South Carolina Institute Hall. Already facing the specter of a fight against the forces of Doughfaces and the South, Douglas was deeply distraught when informed that Daniel S. Dickinson, a former New York senator and Doughface, had entered his name among the candidates. Although certainly he would not steal the nomination from Douglas, he would also certainly divide the ballots of the states that Douglas was counting to hand him the nomination. Privately, Douglas' camp would approach Dickinson's, attempting to convince him to drop out. In response, they were only willing to drop out should they be promised that Dickinson would be Douglas' running-mate. Realizing that in doing that, Douglas would be prevented from forming a national ticket of a Northerner and a Southerner, which had become such a staple of Democratic tickets that even Douglas refused to shatter it, Douglas' partisan had to give up the fight. Thus, coming into the convention, Douglas had to hope not only to find a pathway to the nomination not involving the South, but also one that wouldn't be blocked off by Dickinson's candidacy.
Douglas' two primary opponents at the convention would prove to be former House Speaker and current Virginia Senator Robert M.T. Hunter and Former Secretary of the Treasury James Guthrie. Although by no means a Fire-Eater in the vein of William L. Yancey, Hunter was certainly the candidate of the South, or at least what remained represented of it following a walk out of the delegates representing Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas. A former Whig, Hunter switched to the Democratic Party in 1844 when he perceived a shift within the tone of the Whigs, which he believed was threatening slavery as an institution and its expansion into the West. Since then, he had rapidly climbed the Democratic party ranks and was currently seated in the Senate, where he had defended slavery, promoted the Lecompton Constitution, and made a name for himself for being a generally capable and skilled politician. With the absence of the Deep South to back a rabid Fire-Eater, Hunter was a solid choice by the remaining Southerners, if one almost certainly doomed to defeat by the walkout of the Deep South delegations. Despite this, he held a firm grasp over remaining Southern delegates.
Hoping to strike a middle tone between Douglas and Hunter was Guthrie. Having served with distinction as Secretary of the Treasury, he had also managed to avoid miring himself in the struggles and strife of sectional politics since then by staying out of national politics. Seen by supporters as a return to traditional Jacksonism and the age where slavery was not tearing the country asunder, he had an appeal to both Northerners and Southerners, which he was hoping would work to his advantage in a deadlocked convention. Rounding out of the field of minor candidates, alongside Dickinson would be Oregon Senator Joseph Lane--a Doughface--, and Tennessee Senator Andrew Johnson--a moderate like Guthrie.
Douglas' primary rivals for the nomination: Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia, and James Guthrie of Kentucky
As the balloting began, an unnerving trend began to appear in the convention. In prior conventions, delegate loyalty had been quite fluid. A delegation might stick with their original candidate over the course of several ballots, but if they noticed that the convention had become deadlocked, they were not averse to switching allegiance in order to produce a candidate. This was not so with the 1860 convention. Of course of dozens of ballots, the delegates remained almost completely steady, with little variance from ballot to ballot. As expected, on the first ballot Douglas swept the majority of the delegates of the Northern states resulting in a total of 153 delegates, all from free-states. Placing second after Douglas would be Hunter, who maintained around 35 delegates throughout, followed by Guthrie who secured 27. The decline of the Doughface faction was made clear with the dismal performances of Dickinson--who had around 20 delegates coming from California and defectors from Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York--, and Lane--who had 4 votes coming from Oregon and a Missouri defector. Rounding out the group would be Andrew Johnson with Tennessee's 12 votes. And so these totals carried on at almost the exact same numbers throughout. Occasionally a Hunter delegate or two would switch for Guthrie, or vice-versa, but never was any candidate able to reach the prerequisite two-thirds of the delegates required.
The issue of reaching this count was only made even more unachievable when Chairman Cushing ruled that two-thirds total had to include the Southern delegates who had walked out of the convention, bringing the number of necessary delegates up from 169 to 202. When word of this reached Douglas' camp, which was currently in the midst of negotiations with Guthrie's, it blasted a gaping hole in their plan. Now, even if Douglas could convince Guthrie to endorse him, which now seemed less of a possibility with Guthrie getting cold feet from the rule clarification (or change, according to some), their totaled delegates would not reach the necessary 202, and certainly Hunter, Dickinson, and Lane could not be convinced to drop out in favor of the despised Douglas.
And so the endless balloting continued, with all realizing that realistically no one was going to be nominated. Nevertheless, the Democrats hopelessly persevered, with Cushing stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the need to change the delegate count to reflect the walkout of the Fire-Eaters. And thus, nothing was decided. In the end, after the 60th ballot, Cushing called for an adjournment of the convention, which was to reconvene in Baltimore 7 weeks later. By the time this was called, everyone's temper were fried, and even the promise of a break seemed unlikely to smooth over the now deeply sown and proven differences within the Democratic Party, now permanently fractured, at least until some conclusion on the slavery issue could be reached (which seemed impossible in the current circumstances). Douglas' men and the northern stalwarts had come to despise Guthrie's, Dickinson's, and Lane's camp from blocking their rightful nomination of their hero, and the Southerners, both the moderates under Hunter and the Fire-Eaters, had come to perceive the convention as rigged in the favor of Douglas, as proved, they believed, by the fact that he had consistently led on every ballot with well over a hundred more delegates than the runner-up, Hunter.
When the time had come for the next convention in Baltimore, it was clear that the Democratic Party was no longer a single entity. Instead, it had broken up into the followers of Douglas, who had tired of catering to the whims of the South, and the followers of the South, including the Doughfaces, who were increasingly turning to secession as the only way to protect their way of life.
Caleb Cushing, the man who would unintently destroy the Democratic Party.