Lincoln's Pathfinder

John C. Fremont and the Violent Election of 1856

John Bicknell, John Bicknell

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781613737972
• eBook ISBN: 9781613738009
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

The 1856 presidential race was the most violent peacetime election in American history. War between proslavery and antislavery settlers raged in Kansas; a congressman shot an Irish immigrant at a Washington hotel; and another congressman beat a US senator senseless on the floor of the Senate. But amid all the violence, the campaign of the new Republican Party, headed by famed explorer John C. FrÉmont, offered a ray of hope: a major party dedicated to limiting the spread of slavery. For the first time, women and African Americans actively engaged in a presidential contest, and the candidate's wife, Jessie Benton FrÉmont, played a central role in both planning and executing strategy, and was a public face of the campaign. Even enslaved blacks in the South took hope from FrÉmont's crusade. The 1856 campaign was also run against the backdrop of a country on the move, with settlers continuing to spread westward facing unimagined horrors, a terrible natural disaster that took hundreds of lives in the South, and one of the most famous Supreme Court cases in history, which set the stage for the Civil War. FrÉmont lost, but his strong showing in the North proved that a sectional party could win a national election, blazing the trail for Abraham Lincoln's victory four years later.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: The Pathfinder
• Prologue: “We Can’t Conceive of a Greater Piece of Mischief”
• 1 “A New Man”
• 2 “A Fugitive from Freedom”
• 3 The First Northern Victory
• 4 “Not a Mere Aggregation of Whigs, Know-Nothings, and Dissatisfied Democrats”
• 5 Bleeding Nebraska
• 6 A Month of Violence
• 7 “The Union Is in Danger”
• 8 “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, and Frémont”
• 9 “The Severest Deadliest Blow upon Slavery”
• 10 “The Hardships That We Should Have to Endure”
• 11 “A Roseate and Propitious Morn Now Breaking”
• Epilogue: “Does Any Man Dream That It Would Settle the Controversy?”
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index