Studies in American History 
447 
tion as well as temperance continued to alienate many Ger- 
man voters. .The elections of 1855 resulted in Republican 
victories in the 2 states which elected state tickets, but com- 
pared with 1854 the results were not encouraging.^® The 
outcome in Wisconsin was long in doubt, and, tho Barstow 
took office, when the Supreme Court entered a decision against 
him, he resigned.®® 
The presidential and congressional elections of 1856, and 
the election of state tickets in 3 of the 5 states, gave the 
Republican party of the Northwest the first chance to show 
its real strength. After local reverses in Indiana in 1855 
the bulk of the Fusionists of 1854 joined the Republican party. 
The Know-Nothings split on slavery and rapidly disintegrated. 
The campaign of 1856 welded the various elements of Illinois 
Republicanism into a party. A few old-line Whigs were lost 
in the process, and a number of important Anti-Nebraska 
Democrats remained loyal to their party until the Kansas- 
Nebraska Law was made a test of Democratic orthodoxy. 
A few of the old conservative Whigs of Michigan went 
over to the Democratic party as the only organization ca- 
pable of preventing the dissolution of the union.^®® Issues, 
not men, were the center of interest in the campaign of 1856, 
and of the issues slavery overshadowed all others. But tem- 
perance, naturalization, Nativism, rivers and harbors, and, 
in Wisconsin, state political scandals, had their influence as 
well. Kansas and her trouble furnished the most powerful 
arguments for the Republicans. Kansas bled not only in 
the newspapers and in Congress, but in the minds of men as 
well. The campaign was seriously and closely contested and 
feeling ran high and bitter. The Republican motto of “Free 
Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, and Fremont” was amended by 
the Democrats to read “Free Niggers, Free Dirt, Free Fight, 
Free Whiskey, Fremont, and Freedom”. ^®^ “Buchanan and 
Breckenridge, the Union now and forever” was the motto of 
the Democrats. Local talent was not enough to satisfy the 
Chase’s vote in Ohio was 146,770 as against 131,019 for Medill and 24,276 for 
Trumbull, American party candidate. 
'•'•’The official vote as tabulated in the Argus (Madison, Wis,), December 25, was: 
Barstow, 36,355 : Bashford, 36,198. The court was silent on the subject of fraud, but 
decided that the State Board of Canvassers had no power to go back of the county 
returns and count the precinct and supplementary returns. 
Appeal of 69 Whigs of Detroit to the Whigs of Michigan. Detroit Free Press, 
August 23, 1856. 
Democratic Herald (Chicago, 111.), March 29, 1860. 
