re: #296 Targetpractice

The party was really divided between the “Radical Republicans” who were major advocates of abolitionism and scared the ever-loving shit out of Southerners, and what we’d recognize today as the business wing of the party that saw slavery in the terms of the day: Economics and Political power. The former opposed any new slave states being allowed into the Union on humanitarian grounds, the latter saw any new slave state admitted as a strengthening of Southern influence and power in the Western territories. Lincoln really fell somewhere in the middle, sympathetic to the abolitionist cause but viewing slavery as a legal matter that should be settled in the courts or legislatures rather than through force.

And to add to your point about the economic motivation of more conservative Republicans, these also opposed the expansion of slavery on the grounds that it hindered the furtherance of a free labor system. Eric Foner’s book, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, on the emergence of the Republican Party is an important read.

And in terms of the humanitarian motive, there were Republicans, Lincoln chief among them, that saw the expansion and presence of slavery as a blot on the reputation and example of the American Republic. Some Republicans might not have cared all that about slavery or the condition of Blacks, but they were concerned about how slavery made the American example appear to other countries. These desired that America serve as a republican example to other countries so that democracy/republicanism might be spread.