Free Soil: The Birth of the Republican Party in Cumberland County

There was a time when Cumberland County had no Republican party. It was born of the 1850s struggle between slavery and free labor that produced the Civil War. The party itself helped bring about war, for it was exclusively northern and "free soil", determined to stop slavery's spread. Merely by winning the presidency and Congress in 1860, the Republicans provoked seven southern states to secede, with four to follow upon the war's outbreak. Though a new party, the Republicans arose from existing politicians and ideas, especially those of the northern Whig party that had withered only a short time before. In Cumberland County, Republicans continued Whig loyalty to free soil and high tariffs and drew their strength from the same precincts that had supported the Whigs. Republicanism here was the child of Whiggery.

Whigs and Democrats before the Storm

 Up to 1847, Whigs and Democrats, north and south, argued mainly about government's role in the economy. Pennsylvania's Whig party had appeared during the 1830s in a mood of rage over Democratic President Andrew Jackson's efforts to kill the Second Bank of the United States.¹ Whigs (denounced as "Federalists" by Democrats) supported government banks and government funding of "internal improvements"-canals, roads, bridges-while Democrats (denounced as "loco focos" by Whigs) opposed them. As county Democrats put it at their August, 1846 convention, they opposed "all measures of a consolidating, centralizing and federal tendency, whereby the rights of the states and of the people may be trampled under foot by a colossal central power."² Although Democrats tended to have stronger support in Cumberland County, the Whigs had a powerful issue: tariffs. Whigs believed that tariffs—taxes on imported foreign goods—ought to be kept high enough to protect and encourage American industry and appealed to the self-interest of American workers anxious about their jobs. In 1842 Congress had set duties at a satisfactorily high level but in 1846 the Democratic Congress and president had cut duties. Whigs claimed as "Blessings of the New Tariff" that "Factories are stopping in various places," and "The English nabobs are preparing to ship large invoices of goods to factories in America."³ Cumberland County Democrats were in a tight spot. At their August 1846 convention they disapproved the new tariff as producing insufficient revenue and as possibly "injurious to the great iron and coal interests of Pennsylvania."⁴ Whigs kept up attacks along this line for years. In 1849 the Shippensburg News wrote, "Foreign manufacturers monopolize our market, and drive everything American out of it ... thus closing many of our workshops, and depriving hundreds and thousands of poor men of the means of supporting their families." The paper loudly called for

PROTECTION! The People, who were so basely and cruelly deceived and swindled in 1844, are trumpet-tongued demanding it! We say a place on our own soil for our own enterprize [sic], our own labor, our own manufacturers and our own agriculturalists! To effect this, the British Tariff of' 46 must be repealed, and the Protective features of that of ' 42 restored!

Unfortunately for Whigs, the tariff issue lost its power when Cumberland County's economy refused to collapse. County Democrats felt safe enough by 1849 to shift position and defend the 1846 tariff At a county meeting in August they openly opposed "a high protective tariff "⁵ A convention held February 26, 1850 resolved that, "the present tariff has operated well for the interests of the working classes, and should not be disturbed for light and trivial causes."⁶ Later that year the Democratic American Volunteer even dared to publish a defense of free trade.⁷ Another paper wrote, "The federal government was not made to help a man to his food and clothing, to enable him to raise or spin cotton, to manufacture iron or grow sugar cane."⁸ The Democrats had lost their terror of the tariff.

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