1858–59 United States House of Representatives elections

← 1856 & 1857 June 7, 1858 – December 1, 1859[a] 1860 & 1861 →
All 238 seats in theUnited States House of Representatives[1][2] 120 seats needed for a majority
First party Second party   Leader John Sherman[b] Thomas Bocock Party Republican Democratic Leader's seat Ohio 13th Virginia 5th Last election 90 seats 132 seats Seats won 113 83[c] Seat change 23 49 Popular vote 1,387,921 1,823,106 Percentage 36.59% 48.06% Swing 0.39pp 1.21pp   Third party Fourth party   Party Opposition Know Nothing Last election new party 14 seats Seats won 19[d] 5 Seat change 19 9 Popular vote 224,147 133,839 Percentage 5.91% 3.53% Swing New Party[e] 11.68pp   Fifth party   Party Independent Last election 1 seat[f] Seats won 15[g] Seat change 14 Popular vote 261,964[h] Percentage 6.91% Swing 6.02pp
Results      Democratic gain     Democratic hold      Republican gain     Republican hold      Independent gain     Opposition gain      Know Nothing hold
Speaker before election James Orr Democratic ElectedSpeaker William Pennington Republican

The1858–59 United States House of Representatives elections were held on various dates in various states between June 7, 1858, and December 1, 1859. Each state set its own date for its elections to theHouse of Representatives. 238 representatives were elected in the new state of Oregon, the pending new state of Kansas, and the other 32 states before the first session of the36th United States Congress convened on December 5, 1859. They were held during PresidentJames Buchanan's term.

Winning a plurality for the first time, theRepublicans benefited from multiple factors. These factors included the collapse of thenativistAmerican Party, sectional strife in theDemocratic Party, Northern voter dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court's March 1857Dred Scott decision, political exposure of Democrats to chaoticviolence in Kansas amid repeated attempts to impose slavery against the express will of a majority of its settlers, and a sharp decline in President Buchanan's popularity due to his perceived fecklessness. In Pennsylvania, his home state, Republicans made particularly large gains.

The pivotal Dred Scott decision was only the second time the Supreme Court had overturned an Act of Congress on Constitutional grounds, afterMarbury v. Madison. The decision created apprehension in theNorthern United States, where slavery had ceased to exist, that the Supreme Court would strike down any limitations on slavery anywhere in the United States with a ruling inLemmon v. New York.

An inflammatory antislavery manifesto entitledThe Impending Crisis of the South had attracted attention during the previous session of Congress. The book's author,Hinton Rowan Helper, attacked theplanter class as a tyrannicaloligarchy and called on poorwhite Southerners to overthrow them, "peacefully if we can, violently if we must." The Republicans financed a special edition of Helper's book for mass circulation which was endorsed by 68 Republican members of Congress, including the Republican House leaderJohn Sherman. Following the elections, Republicans were the largest party in the House but lacked an overall majority and were forced to rely onSouthern Oppositionists to organize the chamber. These Southernersrefused to vote for Sherman to becomeSpeaker of the United States House of Representatives due to his association withThe Impending Crisis, resulting in the second-longest election in the history of the House of Representatives. Sherman eventually withdrew in favor ofWilliam Pennington, who was elected.^[4]

Republicans were united in opposing slavery in the territories andfugitive slave laws, while rejecting the abrogation of theMissouri Compromise, key aspects of theCompromise of 1850, theKansas–Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott decision. Though not yet abolitionist, Republicans openly derived a primary partisan purpose from hostility to slavery while furnishing a mainstream platform for abolitionism. None of the party's views or positions was new. However, their catalytic cohesion into a unified political vehicle, and the bold dismissal of the South, represented a newly disruptive political force.

Democrats remained divided and politically trapped. Fifteen Democratic members publicly defied their party label. Of seven Independent Democrats, six represented Southern districts. Eight Northern anti-Lecompton Democrats favored a ban on slavery in Kansas, effectively upholding the Missouri Compromise their party had destroyed several years earlier. Democrats lacked credible leadership and continued to drift in a direction favorable to the interests of slavery despite obviously widening and intensifying Northern opposition to the expansion of those interests. A damaging public perception also existed that President Buchanan had improperly influenced and endorsed the Dred Scott decision, incorrectly believing that it had solved his main political problem. Such influence would violate theseparation of powers. The wide gap between Democratic rhetoric and results alienated voters, while defeat in the North and intra-party defection combined to make the party both more Southern and more radical.

Democrats lost seats in some slave states as the disturbing turn of national events and surge in sectional tensions alarmed a significant minority of Southern voters. Southern politicians opposing both Democrats and extremism, but unwilling to affiliate with Republicans, ran on theSouthern Opposition Party ticket (not to be conflated with theOpposition Party of1854).^[i]

For 11 states, this was the last full congressional election until theReconstruction. Twenty-nine elected members quit near the end of the session following their states' secession from the Union, whose immediate motivation was the result of thepresidential election of 1860.

One seat each was added for the new states ofOregon^[5] andKansas.^[6]

State	Type	Date	Total seats	Democratic[j]		Know Nothing		Opposition		Republican
				Seats	Change	Seats	Change	Seats	Change	Seats	Change
Oregon[k]	At-large	June 7, 1858	1	1	1	0		0		0
Arkansas	Districts	August 2, 1858	2	2		0		0		0
Missouri	Districts	August 2, 1858	7	5[l]		1	1	0		1	1
Vermont	Districts	September 7, 1858	3	0		0		0		3
Maine	Districts	September 13, 1858	6	0		0		0		6
Florida	At-large	October 4, 1858	1	1		0		0		0
South Carolina	Districts	October 10–11, 1858	6	6		0		0		0
Indiana	Districts	October 12, 1858	11	4[m]	2	0		0		7	2
Iowa	Districts	October 12, 1858	2	0		0		0		2
Ohio	Districts	October 12, 1858	21	6	3	0		0		15	3
Pennsylvania	Districts	October 12, 1858	25	5[n]	10	0		0		20	10
Delaware	At-large	November 2, 1858 (Election Day)[o]	1	1		0		0		0
Illinois	Districts		9	5		0		0		4
Massachusetts	Districts		11	0		0		0		11
Michigan	Districts		4	0		0		0		4
New Jersey	Districts		5	2[p]	1	0		0		3	1
New York	Districts		33	7[q]	5	0		0		26	5
Wisconsin	Districts		3	1	1	0		0		2	1
Late elections (after the March 4, 1859 beginning of the term)
New Hampshire	Districts	March 8, 1859	3	0		0		0		3
Connecticut	Districts	April 4, 1859	4	0	2	0		0		4	2
Rhode Island	Districts	April 7, 1859	2	0		0		0		2
Virginia	Districts	May 26, 1859	13	12[r]	1	0		1	1	0
Alabama	Districts	August 1, 1859	7	7		0		0		0
Kentucky	Districts	August 1, 1859	10	5	3	0	2	5	5	0
Texas	Districts	August 1, 1859	2	2[s]		0		0		0
North Carolina	Districts	August 4, 1859	8	4	3	0	1	4	4	0
Tennessee	Districts	August 4, 1859	10	3	4	0	3	7	7	0
California	At-large	September 7, 1859	2	2		0		0		0
Georgia	Districts	October 3, 1859	8	6		0	2	2	2	0
Mississippi	Districts	October 3, 1859	5	5		0		0		0
Minnesota	At-large	October 4, 1859	2	0	2	0		0		2	2
Louisiana	Districts	November 7, 1859	4	3		1		0		0
Maryland	Districts	November 8, 1859	6	3		3		0		0
Kansas[t]	At-large	December 1, 1859	1	0		0		0		1	1
Total			238[u]	98[c] 41.4%	35	5 2.1%	9	19 8.0%	19	116 48.5%	26

• 
  District results by vote share

There were special elections in 1858 and 1859 to the35th United States Congress and36th United States Congress.

Special elections are sorted by date then district.

California held its election September 7, 1859. From statehood to 1864, California's members were elected at-large, with the top finishers winning election.

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Seenon-voting delegates, below.

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Elections held September 13, 1858.

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Minnesota became a new state in 1858 havingalready elected its first two members at-large in October 1857 to finish the current term. The state then held elections to the next term October 4, 1859.

Elections held late, on October 3, 1859.

District	Incumbent			This race
	Member	Party	First elected	Results	Candidates[17]
Mississippi 1	Lucius Q. C. Lamar	Democratic	1857	Incumbent re-elected.	▌YLucius Q. C. Lamar (Democratic) 100%
Mississippi 2	Reuben Davis	Democratic	1857	Incumbent re-elected.	▌YReuben Davis (Democratic) 94.49% ▌G. Q. Martin (Opposition) 5.51%
Mississippi 3	William Barksdale	Democratic	1853	Incumbent re-elected.	▌YWilliam Barksdale (Democratic) 100%
Mississippi 4	Otho R. Singleton	Democratic	1857	Incumbent re-elected.	▌YOtho R. Singleton (Democratic) 77.19% ▌Franklin Smith (Unionist Democratic) 22.81%
Mississippi 5	John J. McRae	Democratic	1858(special)	Incumbent re-elected.	▌YJohn J. McRae (Democratic) 100%

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Seenon-voting delegates, below.

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Ohio elected its members October 12, 1858, netting a 3-seat Republican gain.

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Elections held late, on August 4, 1859.

• 1858 United States elections
  • 1858–59 United States Senate elections
• 35th United States Congress
• 36th United States Congress

• Dubin, Michael J. (March 1, 1998).United States Congressional Elections, 1788-1997: The Official Results of the Elections of the 1st Through 105th Congresses. McFarland and Company.ISBN 978-0786402830.
• Martis, Kenneth C. (January 1, 1989).The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress, 1789-1989. Macmillan Publishing Company.ISBN 978-0029201701.
• McPherson, James M. (1988).Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Moore, John L., ed. (1994).Congressional Quarterly's Guide to U.S. Elections (Third ed.). Congressional Quarterly Inc.ISBN 978-0871879967.
• "Party Divisions of the House of Representatives* 1789–Present". Office of the Historian, House of United States House of Representatives. RetrievedJanuary 21, 2015.
• Auman, William T. (January 23, 2014).Civil War in the North Carolina Quaker Belt: The Confederate Campaign Against Peace Agitators, Deserters and Draft Dodgers. McFarland and Company.ISBN 9781476612997.

• Office of the Historian (Office of Art & Archives, Office of the Clerk, U.S. House of Representatives)

• 1858 United States House of Representatives elections
• 1859 United States House of Representatives elections
• Presidency of James Buchanan
• Bleeding Kansas
• Schuyler Colfax

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