Fusing to Combat Slavery: Third-Party Politics in the Pre-Civil War North

Authors

Corey M. Brooks
Beau C. Tremitiere

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This Article examines how antislavery third parties used electoral fusion—the practice by which a candidate can appear as the nominee of multiple political parties—to mobilize antislavery political power in the 1840s and 1850s. Highlighting several striking and consequential examples of how Liberty, Free Soil, and early Republican partisans cross-nominated candidates also supported by another party, this Article sheds light on a pivotal chapter in the long and important history of this electoral tactic. The critical role electoral fusion played at key points in American political history casts further doubt on the legitimacy of contemporary state anti-fusion restrictions, whose constitutionality is currently being contested by an ever-growing series of legal challenges across the country. Given the potential for electoral fusion to facilitate cross-ideological coalitions within the confines of the American two-party system, these issues have taken on outsized importance today.