[193] THE VOTER REALIGNMENT IN THE MIDWEST DURING THE 1850s

American voting patterns exhibit long periods of relative stability in the voters ’ partisan preferences. This conti-nuity, however, is occasionally interrupted by a sudden shift in party loyalties. This inquiry focuses on the shift of party loyalties in the 1850s which gave rise to the Republican party. During the 1850s, the national party system underwent a massive reorganization. At the beginning of the decade, the Democrats and the Whigs were the major contenders for national political power, and the Democracy enjoyed domi-nance. A third party, the Free Soil, experienced limited success in the North. At the end of the decade, both the Whig party and the Free Soil party had vanished. A fourth party, the nativistic American, had emerged to contest the 1856 Presidential election, but it, too, had essentially disappeared from the Northern political scene by 1860. Only the Democracy survived the decade. A dynamic new element in American politics, the Republican party, contested the 1856 campaign and won the electoral votes of the six New England states, New York, Ohio