Should The 1856: Should Slavery Be Abolished?

The 1856 election was a turbulent time in politics for America. Slavery was the key issue on everyone’s mind and many other political viewpoints were belittled in comparison to the more pressing question: should slavery expand? Should slavery be abolished? Should slavery be contained? Southerners and northerners were divided in their opinions, which would soon lead to the American Civil War. Before that, there was the presidential election of 1856; which had a lot on the line. America needed a man in charge who could please everyone, and in the end that happened to be a man who had little to no experience dealing with the most important issue either way. During this election, however, a new political superpower of a party emerged from the ashes

Whigs always stood for internal improvements to America: they wanted more transportation, federal banking, and are often referred to by politicians as putting, “morality in politics.” (History.com Staff). Knowing this, it seems like many Whigs would make the natural shift to the Republican Party due to its position of slavery being that it is morally wrong, and the fact that Republicans also advocated for greater connection through railroads. Due to their similar stances on slavery and transportation, the Whig Party was yet another perfect fit for the Republicans. With the support of the radical abolitionists, and the more conservative former political party, all that was left was the Democratic

Republicans stood for anti-slavery views, and they stole just about half of the electoral votes from the Democrats that they had the previous election in 1852. Disregarding third parties, in 1852, the Democrats had 254 votes while the Whigs only got 42; subsequently in 1856, the Democrats had 174 while the Republicans got 114 votes. (Election of 1852, and Election of 1856). From these numbers it is easy to see just how many Democrats were swayed to join the Republicans and give them a stronger showing than the Whigs in the previous election. Not only were the amount of electoral votes higher in 1856 for the Republicans than they were in 1852 for the Whigs, but the Democratic numbers went down as well, suggesting almost half of the previous Democrats switched to the Republican Party that year. The Republican Party knocked the country off of its foundation, and it introduced a new major political party that would become a mainstay for years to