1856 Republican National Convention

The 1856 Republican National Convention was a presidential nominating convention that met from June 17 to June 19 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the first national convention in the history of the Republican Party, and was held to nominate the party's candidates for president and vice president in the 1856 election. The convention selected former Senator John C. Frémont of California for president and former Senator William L. Dayton of New Jersey for vice president. The convention also appointed the members of the newly-established Republican National Committee.

The Republican Party had been organized by opponents of the expansion of slavery in the territories following the passage of the 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act. With William Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and Charles Sumner all taking their names out of consideration, Frémont entered the Republican convention as the front-runner for the presidential nomination. Frémont had previously been nominated by

the North American Party, which consisted of anti-slavery members of the American Party who were unwilling to support the American Party candidate, Millard Fillmore. Though Associate Justice John McLean of Ohio had the backing of some delegates, Frémont clinched the presidential nomination on the first formal ballot of the Republican convention.

Dayton was nominated on the first formal vice presidential ballot, defeating former Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois and several other candidates. The Republican ticket carried several Northern states in the general election, but the Democratic ticket of James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge won the 1856 election.

Background[edit]

On June 19, 1855, a small gathering of like-minded individuals met in Washington, D.C. where they passed a resolution noting the recent abrogation of "all compromises, real or imaginary" by the opening of Kansas Territory and Nebraska Territory to the possible institution of slavery.^[1][2] These proclaimed themselves the "Republican Association of Washington, District of Columbia" and passed a simple four plank platform including the demand that "There should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for the punishment of crime, in any of the Territories of the United States."^[3] A number of state organizations were soon established along similar lines and the Republican Party was effectively born.

On January 17, 1856, representatives of Republican Party organizations in Ohio, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin — all Northern states in which slavery was prohibited — issued a joint call for an "informal Convention" to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on February 22, 1856, in order to perfect the national organization and to call a formal, properly delegated national convention to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States for the forthcoming November 1856 election.^[3] The gathering elected a governing National Executive Committee and passed various resolutions calling for the repeal of laws enabling slaveholding in free territories and "resistance by Constitutional means of Slavery in any Territory," defense of anti-slavery individuals in Kansas who were coming under physical attack, and a call to "resist and overthrow the present National Administration" of Franklin Pierce, "as it is identified with the progress of the Slave power to national supremacy."^[4]

The 22-member Republican National Committee, which included one representative from each state attending the Pittsburgh Convention, met in plenary session on March 27, 1856, at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, and issued a call for a formal presidential nominating convention.^[5] This was slated to begin on June 17, 1856, in Philadelphia.^[5] Each state organization was to be allocated six at-large delegates, plus three delegates for each congressional district.