THE RUPTURE OF THE ANTEBELLUM DEMOCRATIC-PARTY - PRELUDE TO SOUTHERN SECESSION FROM THE UNION

In 1860, the issue of slavery's status in the nation's territories rup tured the national Democratic Party despite the party's long history o f successfully compromising on the slavery issue. When southern Democr ats walked out of the party's national convention and initiated the fo rmation of an alternative national party organization, they anticipate d the South's later secession from the Union. If southern Democrats wo uld not remain within the Democratic Party and could not cooperate wit h northern Democrats, there was little or no possibility that southern ers would remain within the Union, since the national debate over slav ery was much wider and more robust than the Democratic Party's interna l discussion of that issue. While the Republicans' anti-slavery and an ti-extension beliefs fundamentally challenged slavery's existence, nor thern Democrats confined their disagreement with their southern collea gues to the procedural dimension, i.e. to a discussion of what the Sup reme Court had or had not decided in its 1857 Dred Scott decision and what the national party had agreed in 1856. Therefore, the internal co nflict within the national Democratic Party provides a new perspective on secession, not because it reproduced the wider national disagreeme nt about slavery, but precisely because it was so much narrower than t hat national conflict.