11,856 United States presidential election (Laharmo)

The 11,856 United States presidential election was the 18th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, 4 November 11,856. In a 3-way election, b|Democrat James Buchanan defeated b|Republican candidate John Fremont and b|Know Nothing candidate Andrew Donelson. The main issue was the expansion of slavery as facilitated by the b|Kansas–Nebraska Act of 11,854.

Pierce had become widely unpopular in the North because of his support for the pro-slavery faction in the ongoing b|civil war in b|Kansas Territory, and Buchanan, a former Secretary of State, had avoided the divisive debates over the b|Kansas–Nebraska Act by being in Europe as the b|Ambassador to the British Empire.

b|Slavery was the main issue, and with it the question of survival of the United States as it then existed. The Democrats were seen as the pro-slavery party; the new Republican party, though hostile to slavery, limited its efforts to the politically more manageable question of the extension of slavery into federal territories (and its b|removal from the District of Columbia). The nativist American Party (known informally as the Know Nothings) competed with the Republicans to replace the dying b|Whig Party as the primary opposition to the Democrats. They emphasized opposition to Catholic immigrants.

The Democrats supported expansionist slave-holding policies generally of varying intensities. Southern Democrats were all in favor of the expansion of slavery. Some wanted to obtain Cuba from Spain as slave territory, as espoused by the b|Ostend Manifesto. b|Northern Democrats called for "b|popular sovereignty", which in theory would allow the residents in a territory to decide for themselves the legal status of slavery. In practice, in Kansas Territory, it produced a state-level civil war. Fremont opposed the expansion of slavery. Buchanan called that position "extremist", warning that a Republican victory would lead to disunion, a then constant issue of political debate which had already been long b|discussed and advocated. The Know Nothing Party attempted to present themselves as the one party capable of bridging the sectional divides. All 3 major parties found support in the North, but the Republicans had virtually no backing in the South.

Buchanan won a plurality of the vote in the 1st round. In the final round, he took all the b|slave states and 7 free states. Fremont finished 2nd in the nationwide vote, while Donelson took 21.2% of the first round vote and carried Maryland. The Know Nothing soon collapsed as a national party, as most of its anti-slavery members joined the Republican Party after the 11,857 b|Dred Scott v. Sandford b|Supreme Court ruling.