Election to the United States House of Representatives in 1854

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The election to the United States House of Representatives in 1854 began on August 4, 1854. The House of Representatives was elected on various election days in the United States . The election was part of the general election for the 34th United States Congress that year, in which a third of the US Senators were elected. Since the elections took place around the middle of President Franklin Pierce's term of office ( Midterm Election ), they were also considered a vote on the previous policy of the President.

At the time of the election, the United States consisted of 31 states. The number of MPs to be elected was 234. The distribution of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1850 census . At that time the American party landscape was in a state of upheaval. The United States Whig Party , which until the 1854 election was one of the two mainstream parties, was falling apart. For the last time, it provided 13 senators. It no longer played a role in the House of Representatives. Its members divided among the other parties, especially the American Party and later the Republican Party . In addition, the short-lived Opposition Party emerged , which mainly opposed the policies of the Democratic-led federal government. The Democrats lost 74 seats, not only their two-thirds majority, but even an absolute majority. The strongest force was the newly formed Opposition Party , which won 100 seats straight away. The American Party also made an impressive return to Congress with 51 seats. An election campaign topic that became more and more present in the years up to and including 1860 was the question of slavery and the rights of the individual states in the run-up to the American Civil War . In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act was at the center of the election campaign. This law was particularly rejected in the north of the United States. As the Democrats stood up for the law, they lost massive support in this region, which contributed significantly to the election defeat. Since there were no clear majorities in the House of Representatives after the election, a kind of coalition was formed between the Opposition Party and the American Party .

Women and slaves were neither eligible nor eligible to vote. Free African Americans were also excluded from voting in many states .

Election result

Total: 234

The results of the last election two years earlier are in brackets. Changes in the course of the legislative period that do not affect the elections themselves are not included in these figures, but are noted in the article on the 34th Congress in the section on the members of the House of Representatives under the corresponding names of the representatives. The same applies to elections in states that joined the Union after the beginning of the legislative period. As a result, the sources sometimes contain different information, as changes during the legislative period were sometimes incorporated into the figures and sometimes not.

See also

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