Republicans for Peace and War
 
From: bernhard1848@att.net
 
Republican moderates like Henry J. Raymond in 1860 favored a conciliatory policy toward the South, repeal of Northern personal liberty laws which nullified the United States Constitution, and reimbursing owners of fugitive slaves for their losses. He felt “the Southern people had the right to decide for themselves what course they would take in this period of crisis.…[and] that these States could not be retained by force.”
 
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
 
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Republicans for Peace and War:
 
“The small American party that existed in the State of New York was led by Washington Hunt.  Hunt wrote in December of 1860, that:
 
“I am for saving the Union by conciliation and against civil war.  When the federal tie is broken it cannot be restored by shedding the blood of our brethren.”
 
Millard Fillmore, who had been the party’s presidential standard bearer in 1856, hoped for a compromise. He opposed both the right of secession and civil war.
 
The Republican party was split into two wings. One segment, which had once supported the Whig party, was led by William H. Seward, Thurlow Weed and Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times.  The anti-Seward segment of the party was made up of former free-soil Democrats led by Horace Greeley, William Cullen Bryant and David Dudley Field. Field had been the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in 1857 and was later to be a United States Supreme Court Justice.
 
It is interesting to observe that the leadership of both segments of the New York Republican party favored a policy that would had permitted the South to go in peace. The Seward-Weed faction, represented by Thurlow Weed and Henry J. Raymond, and Horace Greeley of the anti-Seward faction, took a similar position – one that would have recognized de facto secession.
 
However, the rank and file Republicans tended to support Lincoln’s position of no compromise and the use of force.”
 
(The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States, William C. Wright, Associated University Presses, 1973, pp. 180-181)