James Buchanan was chosen as a candidate for the presidential campaign of 1856 for the Democratic Party because unlink President Pierce, Buchanan was not related to the “Bleeding of Kansas”, and had been safely out of the country during recent controversies as a minister to England. Buchanan won a narrow victory over Frémont and Fillmore, who ran with the sad remnant of the Whig Party. In the year Buchanan took office, a financial panic struck the country, followed by a depression that lasted several years. In the North, the depression strengthened the Republican Party because distressed manufacturers, workers, and farmers came to believe that the hard times were the result of the unsound policies of southern-controlled Democratic administrations. They expressed their frustrations by moving into an alliance with antislavery elements and thus into the Republican Party. The Dred Scott Decision was under Buchanan’s presidency, a case that can bee seen here. Taney’s Sweeping opinion on the case was infamous, and resulted in a national debate. Buchanan timidly endorsed the Dred Scott decision, and tried to resolve the controversy over Kansas by supporting its admission to the Union as a slave state. In response, the pro-slavery territorial legislature called an election for delegates to a constitutional convention. The free-state residents refused to participate, claiming that the legislature had discriminated against them in drawing district lines. Both sides were in a locked battle, with the Lecompton Constitution being rejected. Finally, in the closing months of Buchanan’s administration in 1861, after several southern states had already withdrawn form the Union, did Kansas enter the Union – as a free state.