With the Compromise of 1850 and the subsequent election of Franklin Pierce, a Democrat from New Hampshire, as the republic’s fourteenth president in 1852, the perpetual controversy over slavery slightly abated. There were still plenty of abolitionists and Fire Eaters actively affirming their positions and standing on their principles, and many politicians in both parties remained troubled by the issue, but upon Pierce’s nomination a period of apparent calm settled in that it provided some respite for at least a brief time. With the exceptions mentioned above, the country as a whole seemed prepared to accept the “finality” of the Compromise of 1850 and make the best of an imperfect situation. But this reprieve from the explosive issue was illusory, and the extent to which it was in fact an illusion was soon revealed.
In 1854, Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in the previous campaign season and one of the more prominent rising stars on the national political stage, proposed and guided the passage of a bill that would bifurcate the Nebraska Territory, the lower half now to be called Kansas, and allow these territories to decide the issue of slavery for themselves. Employing the principle of “popular sovereignty” (or “squatter’s sovereignty”) that can be traced at least as far back as Lewis Cass’s position in the late 1840s (and perhaps earlier), Douglas asserted that it was wholly within the authority of the territories themselves, in line with the will of their citizens, to decide with finality whether or not slavery would exist within their borders upon the eventual adoption of statehood. This was a dangerous turn of events, as the Missouri Compromise of 1820, recently reinforced by the Compromise of 1850, had prohibited slavery in the territories of the Louisiana Purchase (from which the Nebraska Territory had been carved) above the latitude 36°30′ N (with the exception of Missouri, which was at the heart of the compromise). With Pierce’s somewhat half-hearted blessing—a presidential blessing that by some accounts was conceded as a consequence of having been politically strong-armed by Southern senators—Douglas drove the bill to enactment and, in so doing, utterly abolished all previous arrangements regarding where slavery was and was not legally permitted. This proved to be sheer folly, for with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, the country was set on a sure path to civil war.
Both slave-owning and “free soil” settlers began pouring into Kansas. Abolitionist firebrand John Brown, originally from Ohio and determined to strike a blow for the cause, moved into the territory in October of the following year. The shooting began in Kansas in November and was followed by pitched battles between increasingly violent pro-slavery and antislavery factions. On May 21, havoc cut loose in the core region of the Free State cause, Lawrence, Kansas, with many buildings burned, private homes ransacked, and families assaulted by a pro-slavery mob. The violence that roiled Kansas reached as far as the halls of Congress. Massachusetts senator and “free soil” Democrat Charles Sumner, who had at one time been affiliated with the Free Soil Party and, before that, one of the leaders of the Conscience Whigs, a faction of the Whig Party that would also become known as “Wooly Heads,” publicly condemned the pro-slavery faction, and in the process, he rained insults on the character of Southern leadership. Sumner’s caustic attack on the floor of the Senate infuriated South Carolina senator Preston Brooks, who, out of blind rage, brutally attacked and grievously injured his colleague from Massachusetts. Sumner’s injuries were so severe that he was incapable of returning to the Senate for three years. Brooks was vilified by the Northern press and lionized in the South. Meanwhile, the violence out west intensified. “Bleeding Kansas” proved to be a problem too big to manage for President Pierce, who had been distracted by personal tragedy (the loss of his only remaining child shortly before his inauguration, among other sad events in his life) since assuming office, thus quite literally ruining his presidency as well as imperiling the nation.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was also the immediate cause of a political event of enduring significance for the nation’s future: the birth of a new party. In January 1854, Ohio’s Senator Salmon Chase, at the time a leader of the Free Soil Party, in collaboration with a fellow Ohioan, Congressman Joshua Giddings, penned the “Appeal of Independent Democrats of Congress to the People of the United States,” a document excoriating Senator Douglas for conspiring to strengthen the “Slave Power” of the South, and in so doing, utterly demolish the work of the Founding Fathers who had, as Chase reasonably believed, intended for the eventual extinction of slavery and the full promotion of the principles of equality in the long course of time. The article succeeded in stirring the public, provoking public demonstrations in Northern cities throughout the early months of 1854. In March of that year, a meeting of antislavery groups (mostly disaffected Democrats and Whigs) occurred in Ripon, Wisconsin, under the leadership of local lawyer Alvan E. Bovay, refuting the Kansas-Nebraska Act and proposing the formation of a new party. That following June, approximately ten thousand antislavery activists participated in a meeting “Under the Oaks” in Jackson, Michigan; and a month later in Madison, Wisconsin, a convention was assembled with the intent of organizing a new political party publicly determined to challenge the “slave power” and that “in the defense of freedom will cooperate and be known as the Republican Party,” a name that was first coined by New York’s Horace Greeley to describe a movement “united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than [disseminate the propaganda] of slavery.” In response to the writings of Chase and Giddings followed by Greeley and the political events in Wisconsin and Michigan, numerous meetings were convened throughout the North under a variety of party names such as “Independent Democrats,” “Fusion Party,” “Reform Party,” and “Anti-Nebraska Party.” These all culminated in the organization of the Republican Party, which, assembling in Philadelphia, held its first official national nominating convention in June 1856.
Consisting mostly of antislavery Democrats and Northern Whigs, the party was initially identified as a “free soil,” antislavery alternative to the Democrats, who now, both North and South, seemed to have embraced either pro-slavery policies or, at the very least, the position of “popular sovereignty” that had been forged and pushed by Cass and Douglas. Douglas was particularly prominent as one of the Democratic Party’s Young Turks and a target of Republican antipathy. A good many of the new Republicans were in fact Old Whigs, some of whom brought with them the antislavery lineage of the “Wooly Head” Conscience Whigs and the “free soil” Whigs. Other Republicans were less concerned about slavery and more concerned with continuing the Hamiltonian vision that had been embodied in the “American System” of that most august of all Whigs, Henry Clay. Members of the fading Free Soil Party also found a natural home with the new Republican Party, which had also attracted fringe elements that injected a small but visible nativist element into the party. Thus the Republican Party was a hybrid at its birth; some of its members were drawn to it as a way to oppose slavery, others for reasons quite apart from the issue of slavery. But the fact remains that the main rallying principle for the Republicans in the mid-1850s was resolute opposition to the expansion of slavery, formed within a broader vision that aspired toward slavery’s gradual eradication throughout the entirety of the Union.
The Democratic Party, in spite of the recent and strident criticism that it was receiving from some quarters in the North, still remained the dominant force in electoral politics and held the advantage that comes from established loyalties and institutional affiliations. Given the sustained strength of the Democrats taken as a whole, the Republicans needed a serious candidate who could at once be a credible champion and yet would not come from the party’s leading ranks. To the party’s leadership (i.e., men like Chase and William Seward of New York), winning the White House was an unlikely outcome for a newly organized party; thus the leading lights of the movement needed to be held back until the time was right to raise a more viable challenge. Allowing someone like Chase or Seward to be sacrificed now could thwart any promise of victory in the near future. Nonetheless, the party needed someone who would bring a degree of credentialed dignity to the fight, even if defeat was the foregone outcome in the face of the Democrats’ hold on power.
Prior to the summer convention in Philadelphia, party leaders informally gathered in Silver Springs, Maryland, to discuss campaign strategy and select their standard-bearer. Chase and Seward, who were both participants in the Silver Springs meeting, were widely viewed as the best possible, as well as most deserving, candidates—but they were still inclined to wait for a more auspicious opportunity. Other names were floated, such as Ohio’s Justice John McLean, a moderate candidate who held some appeal to both “free soil” elements in the party and those former Whigs who were dedicated to the sustained promotion of Clay’s “American System.” But McLean was elderly, already into his seventies, and the sentiment was toward a younger man for a young party. They found him in John C. Fremont, renowned explorer of the American West, a former army officer who, as lieutenant colonel, led the California Battalion in the Mexican-American War. Fremont also served as the military governor of California, followed by a short term as one of the first two senators representing the newly added Golden State.
Originally a Democrat, Fremont was a firm opponent of slavery and a serious enough individual to have received attention from the Democratic Party itself as a possible nominee to represent the party as a candidate for the White House. Fremont cut a commanding figure at the convention and won the nomination with comparative ease. With approximately one thousand total delegates in attendance, the convention drew many prominent figures. In addition to Seward, Chase, Giddings, Greeley, and McLean, such renowned leaders as Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, New York’s Thurlow Weed, David Wilmot and Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and Missouri Free Soiler Francis Blair Sr. were also in attendance. Some at the convention, at least initially, still favored nominating one of the leading figures (i.e., Chase or Seward) or perhaps patching together a McLean candidacy for president with the younger Fremont as his running mate; but as the balloting commenced, it was clear that Fremont was a stronger choice. An informal ballot prior to the official voting polled 369 for the Californian to 196 for McLean. By this time, Chase and Seward were clear in their decision not to stand for nomination, at least this time around; and on the first formal ballot, Fremont enjoyed the support of 530 delegates to McLean’s meager 37. Thus it happened that John C. Fremont became the first candidate to run for the presidency under the banner of the Republican Party. (Readers will recall that the term “Republicans” had previously been used as a name for the Jeffersonian political faction that formed in the first two decades after the Constitution’s ratification. Later to be called “Democratic-Republicans,” the early party known as the Jeffersonian Republicans is not accurately linked to the modern Republican Party that was born in the mid-1850s.)
Selecting a nominee for vice president required sifting through a higher number of potential candidates. Fifteen names were in the running, but from the beginning, the clear front-runner was William L. Dayton, a former senator from New Jersey. Interestingly, the only candidate other than Dayton to receive any significant support for the vice presidential nomination was a young veteran of Illinois politics, Abraham Lincoln. In the informal poll before the official balloting, Dayton won 259 votes, a clear lead, but Lincoln received a noteworthy 110 votes. During the formal balloting, Dayton won with little effort, but the amount of interest in Lincoln can be interpreted as evidence that his political fortunes, which had been seriously diminished in the late 1840s, were about to turn in a different direction.
The Republicans were not the only alternative to the Democrats that were attracting supporters during the antebellum period. Since the 1830s, perhaps earlier, anti-immigrant (or nativist), anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic sentiments were becoming more evident within the political arena, leading to the formation of the first nativist party in New York in 1843, from there spreading into other parts of the country. By 1845, nativist parties were not uncommon at the state level, and a national movement was clearly under way, with a national convention of what was then called the Native American Party convening in the summer of 1845 in Philadelphia, a violent hotbed of anti-Catholicism (riots in the City of Brotherly Love in 1844 resulted in over twenty deaths and the burning of two Catholic churches). Secret societies formed, remaining active enough to be known but anonymously underground. When members were asked about their nativist affiliations or activities, they would simply respond by saying, “I know nothing,” a phrase that would evolve into the common name for a new nativist party, the Know-Nothings, officially called the American Party. Shedding their customary practice of secrecy, the American Party, or Know-Nothings, gathered again in Philadelphia in February 1856 to construct a formal party platform representative of the national nativist movement and to formally nominate a national candidate for the upcoming election.
But the slavery issue quickly and irreconcilably divided the Know-Nothings in the same way that it had divided the Democrats and the now moribund Whigs, with the result that the Northern antislavery delegates withdrew over their frustration with the influence of the pro-slavery element as well as over their objection to the inclusion of Louisiana delegates to the convention, a reaction to the fact that Louisiana was a state heavily populated by Roman Catholics.
With the Northerners abandoning ship, the Southern delegates controlled the course of the convention, nominating as their candidate for the top of the Know-Nothing ticket former Democratic president Millard Fillmore of New York, joined by Tennessee’s Andrew Jackson Donelson, the nephew of President Andrew Jackson. Sam Houston, who at one time was viewed as a leader with national appeal in the Democratic Party, was among the eleven candidates who received votes from the Know-Nothings. But no one really challenged Fillmore. Some among the Know-Nothing supporters of the Fillmore/Donelson ticket hoped for the reconstitution of the Whig Party and were more interested in that long-term goal than they were in hewing to a strict nativist agenda. This served to strengthen Fillmore’s broader appeal. These “Old Line” Whigs, supporters of Fillmore based mostly in the Northeast, who were also known as the “Silver Greys” or “Nationals,” felt that their leader, given his prominence as the thirteenth president, was more than capable of accomplishing this goal through a return to the White House. The Northern faction, known as the “Northern Bolters” or “Republican Sympathizers,” independently reconvened the following June in New York City and eventually supported the Republicans.
Remnants of the Whig Party assembled in Baltimore for what would become the last Whig convention, allying with the American Party in their joint nomination of the Fillmore/Donelson tandem. However, while some Whigs endorsed Fillmore as their own—and as fate would have it, final—candidate, and other Whigs joined in with the Republicans for different reasons (some to oppose the expansion of slavery, some to continue the legacy of Clay’s “American System” under a new banner), a minority of Whigs, concerned that the new Republican Party could ruin the Union, preferred to throw what little influence they still retained behind the Democratic candidate. Most notably, Rufus Choate of Massachusetts, an old friend and political ally of the late Daniel Webster, regarded the Republicans as a divisive, “geographic” party that rested its principles on what he called the “glittering” generalities of the Declaration of Independence, scoffing at the revered documents underpinning the principle of natural rights. These divisions within the remnants of the Whig Party were a reflection of the broader divisions growing throughout the republic as a whole.
The Democratic convention met in Cincinnati, the first time a national presidential nominating convention convened in a city outside the original thirteen states. Even though the party had suffered fragmentation and defection over the issue of slavery, it remained the stronger, larger, and better-organized party in the now increasingly fragile Union. President Pierce, whose political strength had been depleted by the Kansas-Nebraska fiasco and subsequent disturbances, still sought a second term. Senator Douglas, who had also been stung by the consequences of his sponsorship of this now-infamous legislation, also held hopes for nomination. Both candidates appealed to the South, but in the North they were both slightly regarded as “Doughface” Democrats—that is, Northerners who cravenly held Southern sympathies, and thus their persona resembled the pliable doughface mask—a term of disparagement that would be hard to live down. Lewis Cass, the nominee in 1844 and prospective candidate in 1848, was still around and supported by a small minority.
But it was Pennsylvania’s James Buchanan, a gradually rising star over the last dozen or so years, whose name had drawn some support during the previous two conventions. On experience alone, Buchanan was definitely qualified; one of the more experienced candidates in recent years, he had made a solid name for himself in both branches of government, having served as both congressman and senator from his home state, as well as diplomat abroad (Russia and the Court of St. James) and as a widely esteemed secretary of state under President Polk. His appeal was further enhanced by the fact that he had been serving abroad as a diplomat during much of the slavery controversy and thus had been fortunate to evade participation in the debate, leaving little record of his attitudes. Buchanan, a conservative Democrat (his roots reached back to the final years of the Federalist Party, his first political affiliation as a young man), also harbored affinities with Southern attitudes and positions, and in this sense, his name and reputation could also be added to the Doughface element of the party. But Buchanan’s sympathy with the South was at the time less noticeable when compared to the actions and policies of President Pierce and Senator Douglas.
Not supportive of Buchanan, front-runner President Pierce and Senator Douglas together agreed to collaborate against his nomination. For some time, Douglas and Buchanan had both been striving to ascend to the top of the party, and thus they viewed each other as natural rivals. By contrast, Douglas felt somewhat indebted to Pierce, given the latter’s support (however reluctant in the beginning) of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, so the alliance between the two men naturally followed. But the violence in Kansas as well as on the floor of the Senate soured the current political mood, and anyone associated with the “crimes against Kansas,” as Sumner referred to them, left a distasteful impression on the public’s sensibilities. Buchanan’s diplomatic service had, as stated above, mercifully removed him from the conversation, while Douglas and Pierce were under the glaring spotlight heated by the emotions that swelled in those particularly precipitous days. Thus when the convention was gaveled in session, Buchanan’s loyalists were able to quickly gain the upper hand for their man.
On the first ballot, Buchanan held a clear lead, winning 135 votes but not the requisite majority. As expected, Buchanan, while failing a majority on the first ballot, did outpoll both the president (122 votes) and Douglas (33 votes), with Cass scarcely visible as a distant fourth (5 votes). This pattern would hold for 14 ballots. On the 15th ballot, the Pierce-Douglas alliance, frustrated by Buchanan’s strength (peaking on the 6th ballot with 155 votes, and then dropping back to 143 on the 7th before gaining enough momentum to reach 152 votes after the 14th), shifted its direction to attempt a different tack. Pierce’s supporters suddenly threw in behind Douglas in the desperate hope of braking Buchanan’s momentum. The president was wiped out, losing all but 3 votes, leading him to withdraw before the 16th ballot. Douglas managed to win 122 votes on the 18th ballot, which was the same amount that Pierce had managed on the first ballot, but it was a total that he never surpassed. It was now evident that Buchanan’s nomination could not be stopped, and thus on the 19th ballot, both Douglas and Cass (who never earned above 7 votes) also withdrew, allowing Buchanan to take all 296 delegates.
Even though the nomination went to nineteen ballots, it was not nearly as contested as those previous conventions that had led to the nomination of dark horses Polk (1844) and Pierce (1852). Buchanan led the entire way and, while temporarily frustrated, was never really in danger. Supporters of Douglas, believing that their moment was still to come, quickly conceded to Buchanan’s nomination. The convention then proceeded to nominate in two ballots John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, only thirty-five years old (and thus just eligible), from a field of eleven candidates, as the party’s vice presidential nominee. (Upon the death in mid-April of Vice President William Rufus King scarcely six weeks into his term, the office of the vice presidency had been left vacant throughout most of President Pierce’s term. King was the third vice president to have died in office, George Clinton, serving under presidents Jefferson and Madison, and Elbridge Gerry, serving under President Madison, being the other two to this date.)
Of particular importance in the Campaign of 1856, the Democratic convention passed a platform plank formally stating that the residents of territories and states should by themselves resolve the slavery issue, not Congress or any part of the federal government. This fact was kept fairly quiet by Buchanan during the campaign, as he was not at this time looking for a fight over popular sovereignty. Buchanan’s ability to eschew sectional polarities seemed to many at the convention a reasonable antidote to the party’s recent internal struggles, as well as a step in repairing the sectionally charged associations that the Democrats had earned for themselves since the debates over the annexation of Texas. His record of service in both branches of government was solid, and he appeared to be eminently qualified, if a bit less than charismatic. He lacked the oratorical flair of both President Pierce and Senator Douglas, but he appeared to many as a promising and much-needed stabilizing influence. In many ways he served as a clear alternative to the more passionate and adventurous Republican candidate, the soldier/explorer Fremont. Fillmore, the Know-Nothing/Whig candidate, in most ways resembled Buchanan. What was important to a good many voters was that none of the three major figures resembled Pierce, who had by 1856 become widely unpopular.
The campaign for the general election thus moved forward. In many ways the 1856 campaign resembled the famous log-cabin campaign of 1840. Mass events such as torchlight parades and barbecues were held in the North, as they had been in the 1840s, but things were oddly quiet in the South. This time, the difference could be seen in what was at stake, for unlike that earlier campaign that sang the praises of frontier living, hard-cider drinking, and Indian fighting, a truly substantively critical issue—slavery—shaped the nation’s mood. Southerners could not bring themselves to support Fremont, and Fillmore was negatively associated with a previously failed administration. Once the nomination was secured, Buchanan’s Doughface proclivities were exposed by his opponents, but such revelations served only to relieve Southern Democrats, who were encouraged by Buchanan’s public statements repeatedly expressing concern over the threat to the Union of Republican antislavery activism, and his bold declaration that the “Black Republicans”—as the Republican Party was described by Democrats—“must be, as they can be with justice, boldly assailed as disunionists, and this charge must be reiterated again and again.” In other words, to the Southern Democrats, encouraged by Buchanan’s own words, it was the Republicans who were the sectional schismatics, and it was the Democratic Party that was committed to preserving the purity of the Constitution and the viability of the Union as it was originally designed. The Republicans, Buchanan would argue, were “abolitionists, free soilers and infidels against the Union.” Only with a Democratic victory, in Buchanan’s understanding, could the Union be preserved. This conclusion was not without merit, for many in the South were already drawing the division between the Democratic Party, the party of union, and the Republican Party, the party of disunion.
Southern Democrats dug in hard. Alabama’s John Forsyth pointedly remarked that the election of Fremont would mean the end of the United States. Virginia’s governor, Henry A. Wise, called up the state militia and belligerently declared that if “Fremont is elected, there will be a revolution.” Throughout the South there were murmurs of secession, even among those who had only recently held more moderate positions. Fremont was viewed by many as a serious threat, and no small number were prepared to divide the Union permanently should the Republicans, through him, gain the White House. Such inflammatory posturing was not exclusive to the South. In the North, Joshua Giddings publicly wished for “a servile insurrection in the South,” and Horace Greeley wrote that the two sections, slave and free, should resolve to divide and go their separate ways. The more radicalized Republicans petitioned Congress for the immediate abolition of slavery, and prominent Republicans such as Seward called for decisive action in the form of “an aggressive war on slavery.” Speaking in Faneuil Hall in Boston, H. L. Raymond, in a particularly acerbic moment, crassly impugned the memory of the nation’s most beloved Founder, George Washington. “Remembering that he was a slaveholder,” Raymond declaimed, “I spit on George Washington.” Comments such as these, coming from hard-liners both North and South, added fuel to an already combustible situation. And it was Fremont whose campaign suffered the most from this increasingly polarized, militant sectionalism.
To add still further to an already potentially explosive campaign season, the parties resorted to mean-spirited calumny and rumormongering. Democrats dismissed Fremont as a political lightweight, a coarse wilderness adventurer who lacked the qualities of statesmanship needed for the crisis at hand. Democrats also unabashedly played the anti-Catholic card, claiming that Fremont was a crypto-Catholic, a move that was cynically intended to thwart a possible Republican/Know-Nothing alliance. Fremont was in truth an Episcopalian, but to his credit, he remained silent regarding his faith and refused to respond to the claims that he was Catholic, forthrightly insisting that his campaign was not only about freedom from slavery, but also religious freedom, and Americans were free to be Catholics if they so desired. Additionally, Fremont was accused by his political enemies of being a heavy drinker, and doubts were cast about his background. He was also accused of having been at one time a slaveholder, and rumors were circulated that Fremont was actually of foreign birth. (Fremont was born in Savannah, Georgia; his father, who actually was a Catholic, was born in France but died when Fremont was a young child.) The Republicans were generally more inclined to avoid negative campaigning, focusing instead on the new vision they offered to the voters. But they were not above the occasional passing swipe, criticizing Fillmore for his age and ridiculing Buchanan, a lifelong bachelor, for his choice not to marry. The Democrats were accused of being corrupt and dated, and, given their support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, immoral defenders of slavery, a charge that was not entirely without merit. In this campaign, the worst mudslinging came from the Democrats, who were given over to bigotry and slander.
Republicans were energized and enthusiastic. Clubs known as the “Wide-Awakes,” “Rocky Mountain Clubs” (so named for Fremont’s experience as an explorer), “Freedom Clubs,” and “Bear Clubs” (an allusion to Fremont’s role in liberating and governing California) formed to promote Fremont’s campaign. They produced the old torchlight rallies that had been in use since the time of Andrew Jackson, and the more prominent Republican figures took to the campaign trail to give speeches on behalf of their candidate. These clubs consisted mostly of young unmarried men and assumed an air of quasi-military discipline, but, noticeably, some of these rallies involved the participation of a number of women, an atypical development for politics in the first half of the nineteenth century. Stumping for Fremont, a number of Republican surrogates, among them Chase, Greeley, Lincoln, and Sumner, were joined by luminaries such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Wendell Phillips. Republicans saw themselves as the “hard-charging” party of change and reform, and they sought ways to stress Fremont’s warrior spirit and the need for such a figure given the troubled times that the country now faced. Fremont supporters distributed thousands of copies of The Republican Campaign Songster. One such song included the following lyrics:
BEHOLD! the furious storm is rolling
Which Border Fields, confederate, raise.
The Dogs of War, let loose, are howling,
And lo! Our infant cities blaze.
And shall we calmly view the ruin,
While lawless force with giant stride
Spreads desolation far and wide,
In guiltless blood his hands imbruing?
Arise, arise, ye braves,
And let our war-cry be,
Free Speech, Free Press, Free Soil, Free Men,
FRE-MONT and Victory!
Such high-spirited effusions were common coming from the Republicans. The pervasively enthusiastic young party mounted a vigorous and compelling campaign, but in the end, it was one that would fall far short of victory. Strengthened by their experience, influence, and broader familiarity, the more established Democrats won the day.
Buchanan and Breckinridge won just over 1,800,000 popular votes (amounting to around 45%), with Fremont and Dayton taking slightly over 1,300,000 (33%). Fillmore-Donelson’s anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic Know-Nothing (American Party)/Remnant Whig ticket impressively snared approximately 870,000 popular votes, which was then (as it remains now) a significant number for a third party, and at 21 percent, it would become the highest percentage of the popular vote won by a third party to that date; to this day, it remains the second-highest percentage received by a third party (to be exceeded only by the great Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose/Progressive campaign of 1912). Even though Buchanan could not muster a popular majority (falling a full 5% short), his election was far more impressive when considering the outcome of the Electoral College, where he won 174 votes (just under 59%) to Fremont’s 114 (38.5%) and former president Fillmore’s meager 8 (Maryland’s electors, representing just under 3%). Portentously, Fremont did not win a single popular vote in the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas (electors were still appointed by the state legislature in South Carolina, which, predictably, committed its electoral votes to Buchanan); and in Kentucky, Virginia, and Maryland, the remaining Southern and border states, Fremont received separate totals of only 314 votes, 291 votes, and 281 votes, respectively.
Punctuating the sectional divide, Fremont swept in New England and won New York (still the largest Electoral College prize), and he also picked up the Midwestern states of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa, which were the stronghold of the Republican Party. As indicated above, the Democrats swept the South, and they picked up New Jersey and Buchanan’s home state of Pennsylvania, as well as the four electors from Fremont’s home state of California, where Buchanan won the popular vote by a two-to-one ratio. With the exceptions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California, the sectional division was utterly crystallized, a reality magnified by the fact that Fremont won fewer than 1,000 votes throughout the entire South.
Looking back, the outcome of the Campaign of 1856 was a severe symptom of a country in crisis, one that was already so severely polarized that peaceful reconciliation was fast becoming no longer viable. There was no question that many in the South considered a result in Fremont’s favor intolerable, and thus they were already firm in their belief that a Republican victory would serve as sufficient grounds for secession. The stage was clearly set, and the following election of 1860 would prove to be the fatal flashpoint.
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