What if... Stephen Douglas wins the Democratic nomination in 1856?

[A18]

How does history turn out? Does he get re-elected in 1860?

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Buchannan was selected in 1856 largely beacuse he had no ties to the disasater known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

I think Illinois would have ended up in the Republican column in 1856 while Kentucky, Louisiana, and Tennesee ended up in the American party column.

Douglas-133EV
Fremont-125EV
Fillmore-38EV

Even without the loss of Illinois, if you want to dispute that, the election would have ended up in the Congress.

Whoever Douglas has as his running mate easily picks up the Vice Presidency in the Senate, however, I think it's quite possible that Millard Fillmore becomes the fifteenth President.  Fremont can't win in the House, especially the House of the lame duck 34th Congress.  However the Republicans can probably throw enough votes to Fillmore to make certain that the man they despise doesn't become President.

[minionofmidas]

Ernest, you're presuming the Southern Democrats would have swallowed Douglas in 1856.
I don't believe that.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Why shouldn't Southrons support the man who opened Kansas up for slavery with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854?  It wasn't until after 1856 that the South began to abandon him.  Lecompton and Dred Scott were yet to come.  Douglas' main problem in 1856 wouldn't have been Southern Democrats, it would have been Northern Democrats.  It's what kept him from getting the nomination in 1856.  His efforts to redress the problem had he somehow been nominated would have cost him some support in the South, but most Southerners would have taken them as the empty words of a man who would be dependent upon them for support in Congress.

[minionofmidas]

Nah, Douglas was not gonna be anybody's tool, and nobody would have been fooled into believing it. The man's character was well known.
Kansas-Nebraska was not popular in the South, the way I remember it...I'd have to look it up though. And what's Dred Scott got to do with it?
EDIT - Last one's easy. The Freeport Doctrine. My bad for not thinking of it.
I didn't find an answer on the popularity of Kansas-Nebraska. The Wiki article is actually self-contradictory. It claims that the measure was supported (in Congress) by Southerners and Northern Democrats - a vast majority - , but also that passage required a lot of skillful wheeling and dealing.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Kansas-Nebraska not only created a Kansas small enough potentially to become a slave state, it opened up the territory to slavery so that it could become a slave state.

[minionofmidas]

Kansas-Nebraska not only created a Kansas small enough potentially to become a slave state, it opened up the territory to slavery so that it could become a slave state.

Yes, but it didn't actually happen, and Douglas predicted it wouldn't actually happen.