ABSTRACT
Odd as it may seem today, tent-size was the biggest pre-convention issue for the Republican Party in 1860. The "small-tent" people, as they came to be called, thought slavery was a great evil and wanted the party to say so plainly in a convention plank. But making a moral issue out of something as private and personal as slave-owning was widely regarded as controversial, and pointlessly so. Enlightened opinion was offended. This was particularly true among the many rights-oriented Republicans who had no slaves themselves, but wished to defend the human rights of those who happened to own a few here and there. As they tirelessly explained, they were not "pro-slaveholding." Not at all. Still others admired the fervor of the abolitionists, but insisted that a national political convention is hardly the place to discuss ideas, let alone principles.
