How did the party system change in the 1850s?

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Figure false: John and Jessie Frémont Poster
Figure false: The election of 1856 marked the first time a candidate’s wife appeared on campaign items. Jessie Benton Frémont helped plan her husband’s campaign, coauthored his election biography, and drew northern women into political activity as never before. “What a shame that women can’t vote!” declared abolitionist Lydia Maria Child. “We’d carry ‘our Jessie’ into the White House on our shoulders, wouldn’t we.” Museum of American Political Life.

SINCE THE EARLY 1830s, Whigs and Democrats had organized and channeled political conflict in the nation. This party system dampened sectionalism and strengthened the Union. To achieve national political power, the Whigs and Democrats had to retain their strength in both the North and the South. Strong northern and southern wings required that each party compromise and find positions acceptable to both sections.

The Kansas-Nebraska controversy shattered this stabilizing political system. In place of two national parties with bisectional strength, the mid-1850s witnessed the development of one party heavily dominated by one section and another party entirely limited to the other section. Rather than “national” parties, the country had what one critic disdainfully called “geographic” parties, a development that thwarted political compromise between the sections.

CHRONOLOGY

1854

  • –American (Know-Nothing) Party emerges.
  • –Republican Party is founded.

1856

  • –James Buchanan is elected president.