The Middle Class, Farming, and the Republican Party

Besides the formation of the USDA in 1862, other federal laws were enacted in the 19th century to preserve the agrarian way of life.  Horace Greeley, the famous newspaper editor and Presidential candidate, once stated that a country without agriculture "can rarely boast a substantial intelligent and virtuous yeomanry...It may have wealthy Capitalists and Merchants, but never a numerous Middle Class."  Greeley was one of the founders of the Republican Party, which was formed to preserve agrarianism in the Northern states.  However, the Republicans did not believe, like Jefferson, that industry was antithetical to the virtuous farming life, but argued that moral development would follow material development.

The Republican Party was formed from a group of former Democrats and Whigs who were united under the Free Soil Party.  The Free Soil Party existed to promote the idea of free labor in the North (as opposed to slavery in the South).  The Free Soilers promoted the rapid expansion of Western territories in order to provide more land for free farmers.  They believed these farmers would provide a protection against the expansion of slavery by creating a "middle class," which was a new term at the time.  U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens stated while addressing Congress, "The middling classes who own the soil, and work it with their own hands are the main support of every free government."  Charles Francis Adams, a congressman and the grandson of John Adams, stated "the middling class...equally far removed from the temptations of great wealth and of extreme destitution, provided the surest defense of democratic principles."

Instead of a moral agrarianism, the preservation of the middle class became the foundation for morality and democracy.  Many from the Whig Party and the Democrat Party were divided on issues such as economics and abolitionism, but this position united those them, and eventually formed the basis of the Republican Party platform.