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FeedParty Crasher
A local Democrat changes sides—and politics.
(page 1 of 4)
Starting a new political party isn’t rocket science. Just take an existing one that’s gotten too big, been in power too long, and cut too many corners. Then, organize its malcontents.
One such malcontent was John Hickman, a U.S. Congressman from West Chester who began his political career as a Democrat. His 1855 split with pro-Southern party leaders was the wedge that inspired local Know-Nothings, Whigs and disaffected Democrats to coalesce into the new Republican Party of Chester County, which has mostly controlled county government ever since.
As a Republican, Hickman exhibited the fervency of the converted. In the early days of the Civil War, he criticized the Lincoln administration’s slowness to move against the Confederacy. After emancipation, he condemned the government’s failure to embrace full citizenship for freed slaves.
Democrats hated him. A Democratic newspaper editor mocked Hickman’s fraternizing with his “woolly-headed (African American) brudders.” On the grounds of the U.S. Capitol, a Southern congressman took a swing at him.
“He did not seek an early political life,” said fellow attorney William Darlington on the occasion of Hickman’s death. “But having entered into its arena, he devoted his characteristic vim to its work, and may well be said to have always proved himself a true representative of the people who rallied to his standard.”
Born in West Bradford Township, Hickman was the son of farmers John and Sarah Hickman. The Hickmans valued education, hiring a private tutor to drill their boy in the classics and mathematics.
Hickman had intended to become a physician, but he couldn’t endure the required hours in the dissecting rooms. He next considered the ministry, but eventually settled on law. Admitted to the bar in 1834, he spent the following 10 years building a practice.
Hickman got his first taste of politics in 1844, when he offered himself to local Democrats as a candidate for Congress. He ultimately lost the nomination to a more established party member. Perhaps as a consolation, Hickman was sent as a delegate to that year’s national convention, which nominated Democrat James K. Polk for president.
It was the age of Jackson. Beginning with the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828, the Democratic Party—typically headed by land-hungry Southerners—had led the nation on a 30-year expansion spree. The Cherokee and Choctaw tribes were evicted from their lands in the Deep South. The country also confronted Great Britain, walking away with Oregon and Washington. Under Polk, the U.S. would seize California and the entire Southwest from Mexico.
