As of 2025, this remains the longest election for speaker in the history of the United States House, both in terms of ballots and duration, and a record 135 people received votes.

In May 1854, the 33rd Congress passed the Kansas–Nebraska Act with support from President Franklin Pierce, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, and pro-slavery Democratic members of the House.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was regarded as a major victory for pro-slavery activists, as the two Compromises had previously restricted any further legalization of slavery to lands south of parallel 36°30′ north.

Candidates opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the administration, included disaffected Democratic voters, won widely in the North from April 1854 through November 1855, but the Whig Party did not reap the benefit.

"[3] The anti-Nebraska coalition also had a wide range of positions on slavery, from abolitionists like Joshua Giddings, to former Whigs sympathetic to the slave-dependent economic order, like Solomon G.

In a conflict which would later come to be known as "Bleeding Kansas," the status of slavery was violently disputed between anti-slavery Free-Staters and pro-slavery Border Ruffians from neighboring Missouri.

These efforts were boosted on the eve of the opening session, when the administration Democrats adopted a caucus resolution authored by J. Glancy Jones of Pennsylvania which severely denounced nativism and the Know Nothing movement, thus leaving the southern American representatives-elect without any potential coalition partner.

"[1] They could only agree to a resolution presented by Joshua Giddings, to oppose any candidate who was not "pledged ... to organize the standing committees of the House by placing on each a majority of the friends of freedom.

Campbell consistently led the coalition on early ballots but fell well short of a majority, as a significant number of votes went to Nathaniel Banks.

At a general anti-Nebraska conference, the coalition agreed to push Campbell's vote as high as possible and, if it proved he could not be elected, throw their support behind Banks.

[1] Thus, on December 5, the third day of balloting, Campbell reached eighty-one votes but remained thirty short of a majority, as anti-slavery conservatives and anti-Nebraska Democrats refused their support.

[1] On December 6, before the start of balloting, Thomas R. Whitney withdrew the name of Humphrey Marshall, the southern American Party candidate, from the running.

[1] His accompanying statement also became a major issue on ensuing ballots, as the minority accused the fledgling Republican Party of attempting to secure the speakership by an improper quid pro quo.

[citation needed] With Campbell now out of the race, his supporters split further between Banks, Pennington, and others including Felix Zollicoffer of Tennessee and Benjamin B. Thurston of Rhode Island.

"[12] Banks's campaign was headed in the House by Anson Burlingame, Schuyler Colfax, and the three Washburn brothers, Cadwallader, Elihu, and Israel Jr.

Though Banks denied any knowledge of bribery, his supporter Horace Greeley privately remarked that the campaign had led him "to see the utility of rascals in the general economy of things.

Representative James Thorington of Iowa, a Banks supporter, offered a resolution "similar to that adopted at the commencement of the session in 1849," that "if, after the roll shall have been called three times, no member shall have received a majority of the whole number of votes cast, the roll shall again be called, and the member who shall receive the largest number of votes, provided it be a majority of a quroum, shall be declared to be Speaker.

"[citation needed] Though Thorington's motion was withdrawn, the plurality rule was introduced no fewer than fifteen times by Banks supporters during the election.

[citation needed](January 4) Others called longer or continuous sessions, an exhaustive ballot, the appointment of a speaker pro tempore, the collective resignation of all representatives-elect inducing a snap election, or the curtailment or prohibition of debate.

[1] Representative Jacob Broom of Pennsylvania sought to curtail debate by proposing a petition to the Supreme Court to request an advisory opinion on the constitutionality of Congressional regulation of slavery in the territories, previewing the upcoming arguments in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

President Pierce urged the resumption of business, and there was genuine belief in the possibility of a Democratic victory if the Fuller men were forced to choose between Richardson and Banks.

Richardson's failure to denounce the Wilmot Proviso as an unconstitutional restriction on slavery offended some Democratic loyalists, and three South Carolinians deserted him on the next ballot.

Philemon T. Herbert of California spoke in favor while denouncing those willing to "clothe [Banks] with power, who but a few days since expressed in their own hearing a doubt as to the superiority of the white man over the negro."

William W. Boyce of South Carolina denounced "a single step toward the election of Mr. Banks... as one of the greatest misfortunes that could happen to this country ... as death to the Constitution and the Union."

[15][a] Last-ditch efforts to pass a compromise resolution, including one to appoint Banks, Aiken, and Fuller to vote on a Speaker as a committee of three, failed.

Smith argued that while he had voted against the rule before, the results of the previously day demonstrated that "a well-known man of sound, national principles, under its operation, may be elected."

Six northern representatives-elect (Jacob Broom, Bayard Clark, Elisha D. Cullen, Henry Winter Davis, William Millward, and Thomas R. Whitney) held out and voted for Fuller.

[18] Contemporaries immediately began to refer to Banks's election as the "first Northern victory" in the emerging sectional conflict over slavery which would lead to the American Civil War.

Joshua Giddings wrote to his daughter, "On Saturday we were in the wood, the dark and dreary forest was and around us, but on Monday we were in the promised land which flowed with milk and honey."

Alexander Stephens called the election the first "purely sectional" vote for speaker and noted Banks declined to make a typical pledge to "save the Union.