James Buchanan

In 1857, the new Democratic President Buchanan deferred to popular sovereignty, and tried to get Kansas admitted as a slave state. He hoped the Dred Scott decision would help, because it held that African-Americans have no rights in the United States anyway. Northerners accused him of agreeing secretly with Supreme Court Justices to render a decision in favor of the South. Buchanan was not up to solving the difficult challenge that faced him, and his approach was all wrong.

The Panic of 1857 caused financial panic throughout the United States when the New York City branch of Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Co. failed. That caused a sudden recession in the economy, but recovery came quickly afterward.

In 1858, Lincoln said in a speech before the Republican state convention: "a house divided against itself cannot stand," quoting the Bible. He copied the application of this concept to slavery from many others who had used it previously. Lincoln's words were prophetic. But Douglas, a wittier speaker, elicited a chuckle from another crowd when he said he would speak without claiming to have special authority from God.

Meanwhile, two new states were added to the Union while Buchanan served as president: Minnesota was admitted in 1858, and Oregon was admitted in 1859.

The first transatlantic cable/telegraph joining the United States to Britain was laid across the ocean floor in 1858, but high voltage damaged it. In 1866, a better cable was completed and it transmitted many messages between the nations.

The Election of 1860

Lincoln became the "Rail Candidate" for president in 1860 because he opposed slavery in the territories but accepted it (as the Constitution did) in the South. He "rode the rail" of that principle right to the White House. As a former attorney for the wealthy railroads (which depended on keeping the Union together), the image stuck to him. Recall that in 1856 Lincoln had switched from the Whig Party to the Republican Party.

Douglas lost the support of both the North and South due to his "Freeport Doctrine," described above. After the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that a slave is property who cannot be taken away from the slave owner, Lincoln asked Douglas, "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?" In his answer, Douglas adopted a position in the middle between Lincoln's view that slavery should not be allowed in territories and the Supreme Court's view that slavery must be protected everywhere as pure property. Douglas said that the people in each territory can decide whether to allow slavery, and if they prohibited it then as a practical matter the slave owner could not keep a slave there. This angered the South, which became afraid that a popular vote could deprive them of their slaves (each slave was worth $30,000 in today's money, and slave owners often had many slaves). Douglas's position also cost him votes in the North. By trying to take a middle position, Douglas lost support on both sides and could win only one "border" state, Missouri (which bordered the North and the South), in the presidential election of 1860. Lincoln coasted to victory in the presidential election.

But within 5 years of the election of 1860, both Lincoln and Douglas had passed away. The task of rebuilding the nation would fall on others.