The nation was sliding towards crisis by 1856. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had fatally weakened incumbent president Franklin Pierce and Democrats were handed a resounding defeat in the 1854 midterms. The DNC was held in Cincinnati on June 2-6, the slavery issue being a major bone of contention. The delegates fell behind James Buchanan, current minister to Great Britain and former Secretary of State. This was the first time a sitting president was denied renomination by his own party. For a running mate they selected Kentucky's John Breckinridge.Although the Whigs had collapsed following the Kansas-Nebraska Act, their place was quickly taken when the Republican Party was founded in Illinois in 1854. The anti-Democrat opposition in the midterm elections was a patchwork of different groups although the nascent Republicans grabbed 13 House seats and eventually expanded to absorb most of the other factions. The party held its first national convention in Philadelphia on June 17-19 in which they called for Federal funding for a transcontinental railroad, for Congress to have exclusive authority in legislating for the territories, and for military force against the polygamous Mormons. Of several possible Republican presidential contenders, most were unwilling to run as they believed the new party was unlikely to win this election and they would prefer to wait until 1860. The delegates voted for John Fremont and running mate William Dayton.
The nativist American (Know Nothing) Party, which opposed Catholic immigration from Europe, formed and held its convention in Philadelphia in June and would end up running former president Fillmore despite his lack of prior involvement with the Know Nothings or any nativist movements. During the campaign, Fillmore merely called for sectional unity and avoided mentioning nativism at all. The dying Whig Party held one last national convention in Baltimore on September 17-18 but ultimately the Whigs decided not to run a presidential candidate and instead endorsed the American Party.During the general election, which saw no candidates do any active campaigning, Democrats ridiculed the Republican Party as a collection of malcontents, "race amalgamationists", socialists, feminists, and other fringe groups. They also mocked John Fremont for having been born out of wedlock. More menacingly, the Democrats predicted that dire consequences would result from a Fremont victory and that it was likely to provoke the secession of the Southern states from the union. The Republican platform denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Act and charged the Pierce Administration with causing the mini-civil war raging in Kansas. They called for Kansas to be admitted as a free state at once. Opposing the further expansion of slavery, the GOP also denounced the Ostend Manifesto, which proposed annexing Cuba.
Buchanan won an easy electoral victory on Election Day with 174 electoral votes and 19 states to become the first and so far only president from Pennsylvania. Fremont, who was not on the ballot in most of the slave states, won 11 states all along the northern edge of the nation while the American Party won Maryland and its eight electoral votes. GOP leaders were not disappointed; most had not really expected to win on the party's first presidential attempt and they would spend the next four years building their national organization.
>>18347516Fuck James Buchanan that retarded faggot fuck
>>18347660Based
>>18347523>a collection of malcontents, "race amalgamationists", socialists, feminists, and other fringe groupsThey were right of course, but very quickly pounced on the urban catholic immigrant bloc shortly thereafter
