Was the 1850s Democratic Party conservative/right-wing by 1850s standards?

[RINO Tom]

Of course they were. Just take a look at the platform. Extremely conservative, very right-wing.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29576

"That Congress has no power to charter a national bank; that we believe such an institution one of deadly hostility to the best interests of the country, dangerous to our republican institutions and the liberties of the people, and calculated to place the business of the country within the control of a concentrated money power, and above the laws and the will of the people."

"That the separation of the moneys of the Government from banking institutions is indispensable for the safety of the funds of the Government and the rights of the people."

"That the liberal principles embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and sanctioned by the Constitution, which makes ours the land of liberty and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation, have ever been cardinal principles in the Democratic faith, and every attempt to abridge the privilege of becoming citizens and the owners of soil among us, ought to be resisted with the same spirit which swept the alien and sedition laws from our statute-books."

Whatever you want to call those views, very few would classify them as "right-wing."

[RINO Tom]

It sounds really dumb, but it's like that famous porn court case quote: "you know it when you see it."  It's just obvious, at least to me, that where Jefferson and Madison were coming from - the true goals they had in mind and their reasons for doing what they did - came from a decidedly "liberal" spirit that, even if TONS of things have changed, provides a clear ideological link to what modern liberalism is trying to accomplish, even if their methods and rhetoric for achieving this goals are vastly different, maybe even opposite.  See the same reasoning for Hamilton being a conservative.