query: country united states presidential election
supports: The United States presidential election of 1856 was the 18th quadrennial presidential election , held on Tuesday , November 4 , 1856 . Incumbent president Franklin Pierce was defeated in his effort to be re-nominated by the Democratic Party . James Buchanan , an experienced politician who had held a variety of political offices , was serving as the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom and won the nomination instead . Slavery was the omnipresent issue , and the Whig Party , which had since the 1830s been one of the two major parties in the U.S. , had disintegrated . New parties such as the Republican Party ( strongly against slavery 's expansion ) and American , or `` Know - Nothing , '' Party ( which ignored slavery and instead emphasized anti-immigration and anti-Catholic policies ) , competed to replace it as the principal opposition to the Democratic Party . The Republican Party nominated John C. Frémont of California as its first presidential candidate . The Know - Nothing Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore , of New York . Frémont condemned the Kansas -- Nebraska Act , and decried the expansion of slavery . Buchanan warned that the Republicans were extremists whose victory would lead to civil war . The Democrats endorsed popular sovereignty as the method to determine slavery 's legality for newly admitted states . Buchanan won a plurality of the popular vote , but a majority of the electoral , and defeated Fillmore and Frémont , with the latter receiving fewer than 1200 popular votes in the slave states , with all of these coming from upper ones . The results in the Electoral College indicated that the Republican Party could possibly win the next presidential election by capturing only two more states . Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767  June 8, 1845) was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh President of the United States from 1829 to 1837 and was the founder of the Democratic Party. He was born somewhere near the then-unmarked border between North and South Carolina, into a recently immigrated Scots-Irish farming family of relatively modest means. During the American Revolutionary War, Jackson, whose family supported the revolutionary cause, acted as a courier. At age 13, he was captured and mistreated by the British army. He moved to new lands in Tennessee becoming a lawyer, planter and militia commander. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate but was not prominent there. The President of the United States (POTUS) is the elected head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. Her Majesty's Government (HMG), commonly referred to as the UK government or British government, is the central government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The United States House of Representatives is the lower chamber of the United States Congress which, along with the Senate, composes the legislature of the United States. James Buchanan, Jr. (April 23, 1791June 1, 1868) was the 15th President of the United States (185761), serving immediately prior to the American Civil War. He represented Pennsylvania in the United States House of Representatives and later the Senate, then served as Minister to Russia under President Andrew Jackson. He was named Secretary of State under President James K. Polk, and is the last former Secretary of State to serve as President of the United States. After Buchanan turned down an offer to sit on the Supreme Court, President Franklin Pierce appointed him Ambassador to the United Kingdom, in which capacity he helped draft the Ostend Manifesto. The United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (known formally in the United Kingdom as Ambassador of the United States to the Court of St James's) is the official representative of the President and the Government of the United States of America to the Queen and Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Franklin Pierce (November 23, 1804October 8, 1869) was the 14th President of the United States (185357). Pierce was a northern Democrat who saw the abolitionist movement as a fundamental threat to the unity of the nation. His polarizing actions in championing and signing the KansasNebraska Act and enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act alienated anti-slavery groups while failing to stem intersectional conflict, setting the stage for Southern secession and the US Civil War. Historians and other scholars generally rank Pierce as among the worst of US Presidents. Pennsylvania (Pennsylvania German: "Pennsylvaani"), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle. The commonwealth borders Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, and New Jersey to the east. The Ostend Manifesto, aka Ostend Circular, was a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. Cuba's annexation had long been a goal of U.S. slaveholding expansionists, and was supported by a faction in Cuba itself. At the national level, American leaders had been satisfied to have the island remain in weak Spanish hands so long as it did not pass to a stronger power such as Britain or France. The Ostend Manifesto proposed a shift in foreign policy, justifying the use of force to seize Cuba in the name of national security. It resulted from debates over slavery in the United States, Manifest Destiny, and the Monroe Doctrine, as slaveholders sought new territory for slavery's expansion. James Knox Polk (November 2, 1795  June 15, 1849) was the 11th President of the United States (184549). Polk was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. He later lived in and represented Tennessee. A Democrat, Polk served as the 13th Speaker of the House of Representatives (183539)the only president to have served as House Speakerand the first of two (the other being Andrew Johnson) to serve as Governor of Tennessee (183941). Polk was the surprise (dark horse) candidate for president in 1844, defeating Henry Clay of the rival Whig Party by promising to annex the Republic of Texas. Polk was a leader of Jacksonian Democracy during the Second Party System. The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States fought from 1861 to 1865. The Union faced secessionists in eleven Southern states grouped together as the Confederate States of America. The Union won the war, which remains the bloodiest in U.S. history.
candidates: cuba ireland jersey kingdom of great britain mecklenburg north carolina northern ireland republic of texas russia united states united states of america
answer: united states of america