Fremont wins in 1856

[minionofmidas]

Possibility 1: Civil War breaks out in 1856 just as in 1860.
Two choices: North wins anyways, continues much as OTL.
Or, North does badly, Dem wins in 58 midterms and 60 presidentials force peace. Utah declares independence. South quickly splinters and is now several 90odd% Black countries de facto dependent on North, mostly freed by violent revolution à la Haiti. Western history becomes very, very, interesting. Whole post-1914 World history might also be different, with European Nations stronger compared to US than in OTL.

Possibility 2: Southern States and Southern public opinion are unprepared to and shocked by result, no secession except perhaps an abortive South Carolinan effort ensues. Slavery dies a long drawn out and ugly death somewhere in the 1880s or 90s.

[minionofmidas]

First, in order to make a reasonable counterfactual, tell us how Fremont won.  Just saying "what if he won" doesn't cut it.

Oh come on, you make it sound like there's a universal law in this forum where we absolutely have to point out how someone would win an election in such a scenario. I mean, what about Tweed's "What if Communist William Foster had won the Presidency in 1932?"-thread? Or the countless other threads which are vague about their electoral outcomes and just say "What if..."? Do they have to give detailed explanations as well?

Well I generally ignore most of those....

One can't just make a timeline and say "right here, history completely changed in the blink of a second," which is the effect of stating a major change in an election without providing the context in which that happened. 

Says who? These discussions are not necessarily about discussing the circumstances in which someone is elected, but about the consequences of such a scenario. I don't know about you, but I think it can be fun to ponder, just for one second, what would have happened had, for instance, Geraldine Ferraro become President thanks to some great big cosmic accident. I think it's fair to say that we should be allowed to have these hypothetical discussions without the Realism Police coming along and ruining it for everyone concerned.

In other words (and I'm sorry to be rude here), if you don't like it, sod off and create your own bloody thread.

The thing is though, what happens after Frémont's win depends a lot on whether people expected him to win - ie, whether Southerners had been talking about secession all through 1856.