As winter turned to spring in Alabama, white men across the state prepared for the Democratic National Convention, to be held in Charleston, South Carolina. Many southerners, both radical and conservative, worried that the Democratic Convention could bring trouble for the party and for the South.
Among northern Democrats, Stephen Douglas of Illinois had emerged as a favorable candidate, and his doctrine of popular sovereignty frightened radical southerners. Under popular sovereignty, the citizens of each federal territory could decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery when the territory applied for statehood. Because many white southerners already worried that they would lose the ability to carry their slave property into the territories, Douglas’s position seemed to threaten their equality with their northern counterparts. Likewise, popular sovereignty, if it became law, made it possible for newly admitted states to prohibit slavery, which would tip the slave-free balance of the national legislature against the South.
Prior to the Charleston convention, Democrats in Alabama called their own convention to select delegates. Many Alabamians remained skeptical of the radical southerners who talked of disunion. And a March 14 article in the Southern Advocate—a Huntsville newspaper sympathetic to the Democratic Party and national compromise—implored local Democrats to “stand firmly by their principles, and not choose their leaders from among the rancorous enemies of their party.” Recognizing that the Democratic Party had “always been the advocate of the rights of the South,” the article reminded its readers that the “good of the country requires that the organization of the Democratic party should be maintained unbroken and entire.” Despite pleas from cooperationist Alabamians, lawyer William Yancey of Montgomery used his political clout to ensure that the selected delegates agreed with his radical position. By April Yancey, radical delegates in tow, arrived in South Carolina ready to push a platform and a candidate sympathetic to slaveholding states through the convention. It appeared to many that southern fire-eaters were determined to provoke a revolt of the slaveholding states at any cost; Yancey’s platform offered no room for compromise. Continuing to tout his Alabama Platform—which assured that the federal government would protect the institution of slavery—Yancey convinced radical delegates from Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina to walk out of the national convention and sever their ties with the Democratic Party should the national party fail to bow to southern interests. When the votes had been tallied, and a majority of the party failed to adopt the southern platform, radical delegates rose and seceded from the convention.
Back in Alabama, many people expressed anger and exasperation with the radical behavior of Yancey and his followers. A month after the convention, the May 30 Southern Advocate characterized the seceders as “that class of men who are radical, suspicious, uncompromising, and impracticable,” and it continued to predict that even if these men “had a separate Southern Confederacy of their own,” within a generation, new dissensions among their successors would spawn “another secession and a dissolution movement.” Secession seemed impractical and ill-fated, and many Alabamians searched for an alternative to Yancey’s radicalism as spring faded into summer.
Prior to the Charleston convention, Democrats in Alabama called their own convention to select delegates. Many Alabamians remained skeptical of the radical southerners who talked of disunion. And a March 14 article in the Southern Advocate—a Huntsville newspaper sympathetic to the Democratic Party and national compromise—implored local Democrats to “stand firmly by their principles, and not choose their leaders from among the rancorous enemies of their party.” Recognizing that the Democratic Party had “always been the advocate of the rights of the South,” the article reminded its readers that the “good of the country requires that the organization of the Democratic party should be maintained unbroken and entire.” Despite pleas from cooperationist Alabamians, lawyer William Yancey of Montgomery used his political clout to ensure that the selected delegates agreed with his radical position. By April Yancey, radical delegates in tow, arrived in South Carolina ready to push a platform and a candidate sympathetic to slaveholding states through the convention. It appeared to many that southern fire-eaters were determined to provoke a revolt of the slaveholding states at any cost; Yancey’s platform offered no room for compromise. Continuing to tout his Alabama Platform—which assured that the federal government would protect the institution of slavery—Yancey convinced radical delegates from Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina to walk out of the national convention and sever their ties with the Democratic Party should the national party fail to bow to southern interests. When the votes had been tallied, and a majority of the party failed to adopt the southern platform, radical delegates rose and seceded from the convention.
Back in Alabama, many people expressed anger and exasperation with the radical behavior of Yancey and his followers. A month after the convention, the May 30 Southern Advocate characterized the seceders as “that class of men who are radical, suspicious, uncompromising, and impracticable,” and it continued to predict that even if these men “had a separate Southern Confederacy of their own,” within a generation, new dissensions among their successors would spawn “another secession and a dissolution movement.” Secession seemed impractical and ill-fated, and many Alabamians searched for an alternative to Yancey’s radicalism as spring faded into summer.
