The 1854–55 United States House of Representatives elections were held in 31 states for all 234 seats between August 4, 1854, and November 6, 1855, during President Franklin Pierce's term. Each state legislature separately set a date to elect representatives to the House of Representatives before the 34th Congress convened its first session on December 3, 1855.
This midterm election was among the most disruptive in American history, auguring the collapse of the Second Party System. Both major parties, the Democratic Party and the Whig Party, lost critical voter support. The two parties had been organized as rivals for roughly 20 years. Northern voters strongly opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska Act shifted sharply against the Democrats. The Whigs also lost seats as the party disintegrated over the issue of slavery.
The elected majority temporarily coalesced as the Opposition Party. This transitional party included Whigs, Free Soil members, American Party members or Know Nothings, the People's Party of Indiana, Anti-Nebraska candidates, disaffected Northern Democrats, and members of the nascent Republican Party, which soon would absorb most of these factions and replace the Whigs to rival the Democrats.
Candidates opposed to the Democratic Party won widely in the Northern United States through November 1854. The American Party, ignoring slavery and opposing immigration (particularly by Catholics from Ireland and Germany) won seats from both major parties, but to the net loss of Democrats, in New England and the Southern United States from November 1854 into 1855.
Congress had passed the Kansas–Nebraska Act in May 1854 after aggressive sponsorship by the Pierce Administration and Democrats led by Senator Stephen Douglas, including radical pro-slavery legislators. With widely foreseen risks and immediately negative results, the Act discredited the Democratic Party, fueling new partisan and sectional rancor. The Act repealed the 1820 Missouri Compromise and triggered the violent Bleeding Kansas conflict, creating uncertainty on the Western frontier by abruptly making slavery potentially legal in territories originally comprising the northern portion of the Louisiana Purchase. The numerous contemporary settlers of these territories then were expected to determine the status of slavery locally. This idea appealed to Democratic politicians and to some voters, but proved unworkable particularly in Kansas where more numerous Northern settlers and geographically closer Southern settlers violently disputed the status of slavery. Even some proslavery legislators and voters, particularly Southern Whigs, felt that repealing the Missouri Compromise was politically reckless, and that attempting to push slavery by law and force into territories where most settlers predictably were unlikely to want it could endanger slavery nationally, or even in the South. These fears proved prescient.
More than 21 representatives vied for the post of speaker of the House. After two months and 133 ballots, American Party representative Nathaniel Banks of Massachusetts, also a Free Soiler, defeated Democrat William Aiken of South Carolina by plurality, 103–100.[5] To date, Banks is the only speaker to come from a third party.
^Includes two Anti-Broderick Democrats (California), one Anti-Benton Democrat (Missouri), one Hard-Shell Democrat (New York), and four Soft-Shell Democrats (New York)
^Includes votes for those who ran labeled as an Anti-Broderick Democrat, Anti-Benton Democrat, Hard Shell Democrat or Soft-Shell Democrat.
^Includes votes for those who ran labeled as an Independent, Benton Democrat, Independent Democrat, or Independent American.
^Compared to Whigs, Free Soilers, and Independents elected in the previous election of 1852.
^In 1845, Congress passed a law providing for a uniform date for choosing presidential electors (see: Statutes at Large, 28th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 721). Congressional elections were unaffected by this law, but the date was gradually adopted by the states for congressional elections as well.
^Compared to just Whig Party members elected in the previous election of 1852. If Whig Party and Free Soil Party members are counted together, the increase was only 25.
^Listed as unsuccessful for re-election in Congressional bio, but no votes listed in source.
^Bennett led 578–560 in returns that included the results of Ottoe (175–95 Bennett), Richardson (76–36 Bennett), Dacotah (25–0 Chapman), and Burt (14–10 Chapman) counties. Gov. Izard excluded those results due to irregularities.
^Nevins, Allan (1947). Ordeal of the Union, Volume II: A House Dividing 1852-1857. New York. pp. 413–415.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
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