'Buck' Taking the 'Pot'
lithograph, 1856

Ultimately, James Buchanan captured the 1856 election. "Going it blindly," Millard Fillmore failed to ever generate a strong campaign. John Frémont, seen here stumbling over the "rock of disunion," was defeated by his allegiance to an all-Northern political party. Together, competition for votes between two secondary political parties, the Know-Nothings and the Republicans, actually contributed to Buchanan's pyrrhic victory.