During the 1856 Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio during the first week in June 1856, the Democratic Party had nominated James Buchanan as its candidate for president, believing him to be a less controversial alternative to both incumbent president Franklin Pierce and Stephen A. Douglas.

Lincoln delivered more than fifty speeches throughout Illinois during the 1856 campaign, including in southern Illinois. Turnout was low in southern Illinois, however, as relatively few Republicans lived in the area. Although William H. Herndon accompanied him during some of this stumping, there is no indication that Palmer accompanied Lincoln on any speaking tours during the election campaign of 1856.

Democrat Samuel S. Marshall was a candidate for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1856, representing Illinois’ Ninth Congressional District.

On July 2, the Senate brought the bill up to a vote and a debate on the bill ensued, during which Trumbull and others proposed multiple amendments. Douglas participated in this debate. Trumbull argued that because Toombs’ bill stipulated that the Kansas Territory’s voters be, in effect, re-registered under federal supervision, that the bill was asserting the right of the U.S. Congress to regulate and govern the territories and would therefore nullify laws which the Kansas Territorial Legislature had passed related to the management of its own elections. The Kansas-Nebraska Act did not specify that the U.S. Congress reserved the right to assert its authority over the territories’ elections. Although the Senate voted to amend the Toombs bill so that the Kansas Territory’s elections were merely postponed rather than forbidden until the “complete execution” of the act, Trumbull argued that the bill exposed Douglas and the Democrats’ hypocrisy on the concept of popular sovereignty. Trumbull proposed an amendment with language explicitly declaring “all the acts and proceedings” of the Kansas Territorial Legislature “null and void” as well as an amendment making it clear that the Kansas Territorial Legislature held the right “at any time to exclude slavery . . . or to recognize and regulate it therein.” The Senate rejected both of these amendments.

Toombs’ bill passed the Senate, which had a Democratic majority, on July 2, but ultimately failed in the U.S. House of Representatives, in which Republicans held a majority.

Illinois voters elected William H. Bissell governor over Democrat William A. Richardson and American Party candidate Buckner S. Morris. Bissell won nearly 47 percent of the vote to Richardson’s nearly 45 percent and Morris’s 8 percent. In Illinois’ Eighth Congressional District, which Trumbull predicted would give both Fremont and Bissell a “big majority,” Fremont won only one of the nine counties which comprised the District: Saint Clair County. Similarly, Bissell won only Saint Clair County and Madison County. Every other county in the state’s Eighth Congressional District returned strong majorities for both Buchanan and Richardson.

Trumbull’s predictions that the Republican Party would likely encounter difficulties in both southern and central Illinois and in Illinois’ Ninth Congressional District, specifically, were proven correct. In the contest for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, voters in the state’s two southern congressional districts—eight and nine—elected Democratic candidates over Republican candidates by strong margins. In the Ninth Congressional District, which Trumbull worried would vote against the Republicans “en masse,” Democratic candidate Marshall triumphed over Republican candidate Benjamin L. Wiley with 82.5 percent to 17.4 percent of the vote. The Democratic Party also won strong majorities in nearly every county in the Ninth Congressional District in both the gubernatorial and presidential races. Only Edwards County and Wabash County broke pattern; voters in these counties awarded Bissell the majority in close contests for the governorship, and gave Fillmore narrow majorities in the presidential race.

In the central Illinois districts—four, five, six, and seven—the races for seats in the U.S. House were more competitive than the races in southern Illinois: Republicans won only the Fourth Congressional District, with 51.1 percent of the vote to Democrats’ 45.7 percent, yet lost the races in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Congressional Districts. In the race for the governorship, Richardson secured victories in every county in the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Congressional Districts except two: Henderson County, which Bissell won, and Piatt County, which Morris won. The gubernatorial race in the Fourth Congressional District was more competitive, with Richardson winning five counties and Bissell six. The outcome was the same in the Fourth Congressional District in the presidential contest: Buchanan won the same five counties that Richardson won, and Fremont won the same six counties as Bissell. Buchanan won every county in the Sixth and Seventh Congressional Districts except for Piatt County, which Fillmore won. Buchanan also won all but two counties in the Fifth Congressional District.

Democratic incumbent Thomas L. Harris also ultimately won Illinois’ Sixth District’s seat over Republican John Williams in the race that Palmer refused to join.