alternatehistory.com

The 1853 Democratic National Convention was dominated by the same faces as the one last year with the top two candidates being Michigan senator Lewis Cass and former Secretary of State James Buchanan. The Democratic party eventually rallied around James Buchanan with his vice presidential running mate being choose as the intern president David Rice Atchison. The Whig party on the other hand still reeling from the defeat last year choose former president Millard Fillmore with former Secretary of the Navy William Alexander Graham as his running mate. Aided by public sympathy following the deaths of Pierce and King, the democratic party would win the 1853 election with an even larger margin than the last.

One of Buchman's first act was to sign into law the Kansas–Nebraska Act in the May of 1854. The act created the two new territories of Kansas and Nebraska from the unorganized lands of the Louisiana purchase. The act instituted a policy of popular sovereignty for both territories under which the residents could vote on whether or not slavery would be allowed. The act effectively repelling the Missouri Compromise, increased tensions between the North and South over the issue of Slavery. Southerners expected Nebraska to become free state while Kansas to be a slave state, however things would not be so simple. While Nebraska dominated by abolitionists , Kansas on the hand was a mix of those in who were pro-slavery and abolitionists with both sides encouraging supporters to head to the new territory. These factions would come to bloody blows over the coming years, a prelude to an even larger conflict over the fate of slavery spanning two countries.