The
Constitutional Union party aimed to accomplish this. The
Republicans sought to out-maneuver them. They made their
platform as temperate as they could and yet consistent with the
maintenance of their opposition to Douglas and popular
sovereignty; and they went no further in their anti-slavery
demands than that the territories should be preserved for free
labor.
Another basal question had been considered in the Republican
platform. Where would Northern capital stand in the
reorganization of parties? Was capital, like men, to become
frankly sectional or would it remain impersonal, careless how
nations rose or fell, so long as dividends continued? To some
extent capital had given an answer. When, in the excitement
following the John Brown incident, a Southern newspaper published
a white list of New York merchants whose political views should
commend them to Southerners, and a black list of those who were
objectionable, many New Yorkers sought a place in the white list.
Northern capital had done its part in financing the revived slave
trade. August Belmont, the New York representative of the
Rothschilds, was one of the close allies of Davis, Yancey, and
Benjamin in their war upon Douglas. In a word, a great portion
of Northern capital had its heart where its investments were--in
the South.
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