1858–59 United States House of Representatives elections

The 1858–59 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 the House 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 the 36th United States Congress convened on December 5, 1859. They were held during President James Buchanan's term.

1858–59 United States House of Representatives elections

← 1856 & 1857 June 7, 1858 – December 1, 1859[a] 1860 & 1861 →
All 238 seats in the United States House of Representatives[1][2] 120 seats needed for a majority
First party Second party   Leader William Pennington Thomas Bocock Party Republican Democratic Leader's seat Virginia 5th Last election 90 seats 132 seats Seats won 113 83[b] Seat change 23 49 Popular vote 1,387,921 1,823,106 Percentage 36.59% 48.06% Swing 0.39% 1.21%   Third party Fourth party   Party Opposition Know Nothing Last election new party 14 seats Seats won 19 5 Seat change 19 9 Popular vote 191,074 133,839 Percentage 5.04% 3.53% Swing New Party 11.68%   Fifth party Sixth party   Party Whig Independent Last election pre-creation[c] 1 seat[e] Seats won 4 15[f] Seat change 4 14 Popular vote 33,073 261,964[g] Percentage 0.87% 6.91% Swing New Party[d] 6.02%
Results      Democratic gain      Democratic hold      Republican gain      Republican hold      Independent gain      Opposition gain      Know Nothing hold
Speaker before election James Orr Democratic Elected Speaker William Pennington Republican

Winning a plurality for the first time, Republicans benefited from multiple factors including the collapse of the nativist American Party, sectional strife in the Democratic Party, Northern voter dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court's March 1857 Dred Scott decision, political exposure of Democrats to chaotic violence 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, after Marbury v. Madison. The decision created apprehension in the North, 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 in Lemmon v. New York.

Short of a majority, Republicans controlled the House with limited cooperation from smaller parties also opposing the Democrats. Republicans were united in opposing slavery in the territories and fugitive slave laws, while rejecting the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, key aspects of the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas–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 the separation 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 the Southern Opposition Party ticket (not to be conflated with the Opposition Party of 1854).^[h]

For 11 states, this was the last full congressional election until the Reconstruction. 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 the presidential election of 1860.