Sectional confrontations escalated during the 1850s, the Democratic Party split between
North and
South grew deeper. The conflict was papered over at the
1852 and
1856 conventions by selecting men who had little involvement in sectionalism, but they made matters worse. Historian
Roy F. Nichols explains why
Franklin Pierce was not up to the challenges a Democratic president had to face: :As a national political leader Pierce was an accident. He was honest and tenacious of his views but, as he made up his mind with difficulty and often reversed himself before making a final decision, he gave a general impression of instability. Kind, courteous, generous, he attracted many individuals, but his attempts to satisfy all factions failed and made him many enemies. In carrying out his principles of strict construction he was most in accord with Southerners, who generally had the
letter of the law on their side. He failed utterly to realize the depth and the sincerity of Northern feeling against the South and was bewildered at the general flouting of the law and the Constitution, as he described it, by the people of his own New England. At no time did he catch the popular imagination. His inability to cope with the difficult problems that arose early in his administration caused him to lose the respect of great numbers, especially in the North, and his few successes failed to restore public confidence. He was an inexperienced man, suddenly called to assume a tremendous responsibility, who honestly tried to do his best without adequate training or temperamental fitness. In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois—a key Democratic leader in the Senate—pushed the
Kansas–Nebraska Act through Congress. President
Franklin Pierce signed the bill into law in 1854. The Act opened
Kansas Territory and
Nebraska Territory to a decision by the residences on whether slavery would be legal or not. Previously it had been illegal there. Thus the new law implicitly repealed the prohibition on slavery in territory north of
36° 30′ latitude that had been part of the
Missouri Compromise of 1820. Supporters and enemies of slavery poured into Kansas to vote slavery up or down. The armed conflict was
Bleeding Kansas and it shook the nation. A major re-alignment took place among voters and politicians. The Whig Party fell apart and the new Republican Party was founded in opposition to the expansion of slavery and to the
Kansas–Nebraska Act. The new party had little support in the South, but it soon became a majority in the North by pulling together former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats. During the
Civil War, Northern Democrats divided into two factions: the
War Democrats, who supported the military policies of President Lincoln; and the
Copperheads, who strongly opposed them. No party politics were allowed in the
Confederacy, whose political leadership, mindful of the welter prevalent in antebellum American politics and with a pressing need for unity, largely viewed political parties as inimical to good governance and as being especially unwise in wartime. Consequently, the Democratic Party halted all operations during the life of the Confederacy (1861–1865). Partisanship flourished in the North and strengthened the Lincoln Administration as Republicans automatically rallied behind it. After the
attack on Fort Sumter, Douglas rallied Northern Democrats behind the Union, but when Douglas died the party lacked an outstanding figure in the North and by 1862 an anti-war peace element was gaining strength. The most intense anti-war elements were the
Copperheads. ==Party platform==