Election to the United States House of Representatives in 1856

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The election to the United States House of Representatives in 1856 began on August 4, 1856. The House of Representatives was elected on various election days in the United States . The election was part of the general election for the 35th United States Congress that year, which also elected a third of US Senators . At the same time, the presidential election of 1856 , won by Democrat James Buchanan , took place.

At the time of the election, the United States consisted of 31 states. The number of MPs to be elected was 237. The distribution of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1850 census . In 1856 the American political party landscape was restructured. The United States Whig Party , which was one of the two mainstream parties until the 1854 election, had collapsed. The short-lived Opposition Party no longer existed either. Many voters from the dissolved parties found themselves in the Republican Party , which was founded in 1854 and which first ran in the national elections in 1856. One of the main themes of the new party was the struggle to abolish slavery . Since this was mainly practiced in the south, the new party was mainly popular in the north. In the south it was not even on the ballot papers in many regions. Even so, the Republican Party won 90 seats straight away. The Democrats were also able to make up for part of the losses they had suffered in 1854. They won 49 seats and with 132 seats were again able to hold an absolute majority in the House of Representatives. However, the party was internally divided into a north and a south wing. These support the positions of the northern and southern states. The third party in the 1856 elections was the American Party , which lost 37 seats and was only a small minority with 14 seats. An election campaign topic that became more and more present and radical 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 1856 there were first violent attacks between supporters of the north and the south (Bleeding Kansas). The election of 1856 is also noteworthy because it was the first American Congress (and presidential election) in which the Democratic and Republican parties that still support the state faced each other.

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

Election result

Total: 237

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 35th 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

Web links