|
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, defeating William H. Seward for the ballot, 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.
|
