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Part Twenty-Five: Houston's Triumph
Time for the next update. It's a bit short, but I couldn't think of more to add to the election.
Part Twenty-Five: Houston's Triumph
Kearny Statehood Act:
While the violence in Kearny Territory had generally died down when Houston entered into office, the tensions in the territory still ran high. Kearny continued to grow in population with settlers on their journey to the Rockies, and there were increasing calls for the territory to be admitted to the Union as a state. However, there was still struggle in both Kearny and in Washington over if it should be admitted as a free or a slave state.
In the summer of 1857, a solution was proposed by Indiana representative Joseph A. Wright. The bill would divide the territory of Kearny in two, with the two provisional governments serving as the state legislatures. This way, the balance of free and slave states would not be upset. After a census determined that the area was indeed populous enough to warrant the creation of two states from the territory, Congress spent the next months deciding where the boundary of the two states would fall. The southerners of course wanted the border to be as far north as possible while many northerners desired a border that included Council Grove in their state, which was then the seat of the freesoilers government in Kearny Territory. The border was soon agreed to be at 38 degrees 30 minutes north, and in October of 1857, President Houston admitted the states of Kearny and Calhoun into the Union.
Election of 1860:
The election of 1860 saw the Liberty Party struggle to retain its votes after the success of Houston in maintaining the middle-ground on the issue of slavery. After the votes were counted, they only kept votes in Georgia and South Carolina with Joseph Brown and South Carolina Congressman Andrew Bulter as their candidates. The Republicans, on the other hand, gained votes in much of the North as the idea of abolition became more widespread and people became more vocal about it.
While Fremont and his new running mate Horace Greeley were boosted by public sentiment and the use of Greeley's New York Tribune as a mouthpiece for the part, it was not enough to gain the Republicans the Presidency. Houston and Bayard kept their moderate stance, and achieved reelection based on the success of Houston's first term, despite losing the rest of New England to the Republicans. In March of 1861 Houston was inaugurated, and it seemed that the country would be truly united. However, many of the deep-rooted divisions in the United States were still unresolved. This was most evident in that if Pennsylvania, which had been a close-run affair in the election, had gone Republican, Fremont would have been the first Republican president.