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The U.S. presidential election of 1856 was unusually heated. The Republicans crusaded against the Slave Power, while the Democrats warned the Republicans were extremists whose victory would lead to civil war. The newly formed Republican Party condemned the Kansas-Nebraska Act and expansion of slavery, while Democrats took more of a laissez-faire approach to slavery expansion, taking the official position that it was a state-by-state decision. A third party, the new-minted American Party or "Know-Nothings", ignored the slavery issue (in favor of anti-immigration policies) and won a quarter of the vote.
The incumbent President Franklin Pierce was defeated in his effort to be renominated by the Democrats, who instead selected James Buchanan of Pennsylvania. The Whig Party had disintegrated over the issue of slavery, and new organizations such as the Republican Party and the American Party competed to replace them. The Republicans nominated John Frémont of California as their first standard bearer, and the Know-Nothings nominated former President Millard Fillmore of New York. Perennial candidate Daniel Pratt also ran.
Frémont received fewer than 600 votes from slave states—those all coming from Delaware and Maryland. The electoral college results indicated, however, that the Republicans could likely win the next election in 1860 by winning just two more states—such as Pennsylvania and Illinois.
General election
Campaign
Neither candidate took to the stump. Republicans opposed the extension of slavery into the territories—in fact, their slogan was "Free speech, free press, free soil, free men, Frémont and victory!" The Republicans thus crusaded against the Slave power warning it was destroying republican values. Democrats counter-crusaded warning that a Republican victory would bring Civil War.
Results
Source (Popular Vote):
Source (Electoral Vote):
(a) The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote.
See also
- American election campaigns in the 19th Century
- History of the United States (1849–1865)
- History of the United States Democratic Party
- History of the United States Republican Party
- Origins of the American Civil War
- Third Party System
Notes
References
- Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s (1992)
- Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (1970)
- William E. Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (1987).
- Michael F. Holt, The Political Crisis of the 1850s (1978), pp 139-81
- Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: vol 2: A House Dividing, 1852-1857 (1947), the most detailed narrative
- Michael D. Pierson; "'Prairies on Fire': The Organization of the 1856 Mass Republican Rally in Beloit, Wisconsin" Civil War History, Vol. 48, 2002
- James A. Rawley, Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War (1969)
- Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United States, 1837-1860 (1976) 254-91
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