John Holmes and the Shifting Partisan Politics of Slavery in Early Maine

Abstract

The longevity and shifting partisan allegiances of the political career of John Holmes illuminate many of the issues animating Maine politics in the broad statehood era. None of these issues dogged Holmes or revealed the intersection of Maine and national politics better than that of slavery. His seemingly endless political flexibility makes Holmes an unusually good barometer of the mainstream position in Maine on slavery and related issues across this broad period. Matthew Mason is a professor of history at Brigham Young University. He is the author of books including Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic(2006) and Apostle of Union: A Political Biography of Edward Everett (2016), and the co-editor of books including John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery: Selections from the Diary (2017).