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The Election of 1856

© Craig E. Hutchison

The Election of 1856 is an interesting study in just how much the slavery issue had started to affect American politics and how sectionalism would facilitate the coming of the Civil War. At the time of the election, the Republican party was only a year old and was a coalition of groups who had one goal: the containment of slavery. Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, who had gained recognition thru his explorations of the Western frontier. The Democrats had a number of candidates to choose from, but when it appeared there was a deadlock between Stephen Douglas and James Buchanan, Douglas removed himself from the race and Buchanan was nominated.

The ongoing sectional tension shaped the campaign and the election outcome. Fremont and the Republican party did not even appear on the election ballots in most southern states, and many southern politicians vowed that their states would secede if Fremont were elected. These threats prompted many former Whigs and others of a conservative mindset to throw their support to Buchanan and the Democrats as the sole alternative to the catastrophe of disunion.

In the end, the margin of victory for the Democrats was very narrow. Buchanan won only a plurality of the votes cast. Republicans won eleven of the sixteen free states. In the five states that Fremont lost, the margin was small. Buchanan won the election because his electoral votes in the South were greater than Fremont's electoral votes in the North. It was obvious that, from now on, it would be sectional loyalties that would determine the fate of the Union. The election in 1856 brought a weak president to leadership in a badly divided nation.

Buchanan personally opposed slavery, but as a public official he felt bound to sustain it where sanctioned by law. As president, his many domestic and foreign programs fell victim to the rising slavery controversy. Buchanan wrote: "The great object of my administration will be to arrest ... the agitation of the slavery question at the North and to destroy sectional parties." He excluded sectional extremists from his cabinet, choosing instead conservative and nationalist politicians. The four years of his term were spent trying to avoid Civil War. Before Buchanan left office in March of 1861, seven states had seceded from the Union and the Confederate States of America was formed. When 7 of the 15 slave states seceded, Buchanan refused to use force to hold them in the Union. He hoped they would grow discouraged and return to the Union. He felt that a warlike policy might cause all the slave states to secede, making a peaceful settlement impossible. His policy delayed the Civil War until after his successor, Abraham Lincoln, took office.

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