1856-1864: Jasper E. Morgan (National)
1856 def.: scattered opposition
1860 def.: Lucius C. French (People’s)
Home Secretary Jasper E. Morgan had essentially acted as First-Citizen during the better part of the civil war – the ‘Western Rebellion’ as it was called in National circles. With Winthrop largely incapacitated, bed-ridden or worse, he had largely run the state and the war behind the scenes. As such, when the caucus of the National Party met in March 1856, Morgan was nearly-unanimously chosen as the party leader, and hence the party’s candidate for the highest executive office.
As the Federal Party had been disbanded and its leadership exiled, executed, disenfranchised or imprisoned, the National candidates faced only token opposition from independent candidates. In the East, it was a wipe-out, the patriotic harangues of the candidates and the victory fervour guaranteed a clean swipe of most seats. In the West, the presence of the military, franchise restrictions and votes by viva voce ensured that no coherent opposition to the National Party emerged on the first post-war election.
Obtaining a historic majority, the National Party set out to implement the most radical reform program in Columbia’s history, leaving few stones unturned. Between 1856 and 1859, the Constitution was largely rewritten to reflect the Nationals’ concept of a homogenous, centralised nation and reflected their fears of an overpowering legislature, drawing on British and Columbian conservative traditions.
The old states were abolished, the First-Citizen’s role was strengthened, as further checks and balances were introduced through the Council of Revision, the Council of Appointments or a National Bank.
If the initial years of the First Morgan Cabinet were dominated by issues of constitutional reform, the last two sessions of the 1856 Congress (1859-60) were dominated by a feverish activity to implement key party pledges.
The Suffrage and Elections Acts of 1859 passed, restricting office-holding to native-born citizens and active suffrage to citizens who paid a $5 poll tax. The Elections Act banned the practice of parties paying for someone’s poll tax, a common People’s Party tactic before the war. The Citizenship Act of 1859 increased the time of residence any immigrant had to meet to be able to become a citizen.
The twin Elections and Suffrage Acts proved one of the most controversial bills passed by the 1856 Congress. Similar bills had been proposed as early as the first constitutional convention, but never implemented at the national level, and attracted the support of the National Party’s constituencies, evangelical middle-class reformers and Yankee workers who feared the pernicious influence of Catholicism (the former) and the low-wage competition from Irishmen (the latter).
In the dealing with the post-war West, the Morgan administration rushed in 1860 what would be known to history as the ‘humiliation of the West’. The Militia Act of 1859, the 1860 Indian Relations and the 1860 Suffrage Act submitted the western half of the country to military control, where the powerful military Intendants-General governed much like Roman proconsuls. As tempers remained high after the conflict and the insurgency would not abate, western citizens had to prove their loyalty before voting.
The Indian Relations Act, in which the government pledged to control migration westwards of the Missouri and recognised the lands of the Sioux, Dakota and Chippewa while granting suffrage to Indians of mixed ancestry who had adopted the “habits and customs of civilized men” – a move calculated to ensure suffrage for what was perceived as a National constituency.
Put together, these measures humiliated westerns, who perceived the government as actively hostile to their interests and even their race. It drove thousands to migrate further west, beyond the Missouri River into the nominally British and Indian lands of Easternmost Oregon, creating the first “clodhopper” settlements. Meanwhile, in western Columbia, the Federalist fight was continued by insurgents who practised occasional raids on military installations and on Indian and Yankee areas alike.
As future historians would later recognise, the single most important element of the legislative rush of the first Morgan legislature was the National Programme (1). The new National majority increased tariffs, especially for manufactured goods; subsidised telegraph and railroad building and opened up land for colleges and other public institutions while creating a new Settlement Office to bring some order into the settlement of the unsettled portions of the country’s north-west.
By 1860, Morgan could claim, rightfully, that the country had changed revolutionarily compared to the pre-war period. But it was also hard to ignore that in victory, the Nationals had not been magnanimous. Many of the measures dealing with the west only heightened tensions and drove a wedge between eastern and western National MCCs.
Over the course of 1859 and 1860, a slow drip of western National MCCs abandoned the party, denouncing its eastern bias. Alongside them, many moderate former Federalists who had managed to stay elected at the local office advocated for a new party that would argue for the more acceptable elements of the old Federalist credo: universal suffrage, “latitudinarian diversity” (2), free trade and a more aggressive western settlement policy.
Ultimately, these disgruntled Nationals and former Federals came together to form a new party, the People’s or Populist Party. In its official plank, the party accepted the new, centralised power structure but advocated for universal suffrage, free trade, an open West, with all its implications for removing the Indians and expanding beyond the Missouri, both very damaging for the country’s relations with the Lakotan Republic and the British.
In the 1860 Founding Convention, Lucius French was elected as the party’s first leader. A former Federal MCC from Kankakee who had refused to follow Morton into rebellion, French managed the difficult task of bringing together the odd mix of far-western National malcontents, odd independents and various respectable former Federalists. The greatest asset that French would have in doing so was himself. At the time, he would become known as Columbia’s finest orator.