Sectional confrontations escalated during the 1850s, the Democratic Party split between North and South grew deeper.
The conflict was papered over at the 1852 and 1856 conventions by selecting men who had little involvement in sectionalism, but they made matters worse.
Thus the new law implicitly repealed the prohibition on slavery in territory north of 36° 30′ latitude that had been part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
The new party had little support in the South, but it soon became a majority in the North by pulling together former Whigs and former Free Soil Democrats.
[9] Partisanship flourished in the North and strengthened the Lincoln Administration as Republicans automatically rallied behind it.
The War Democrats demanded a more aggressive policy toward the Confederacy and supported the policies of Republican President Abraham Lincoln, when the American Civil War broke out a few months after his victory in the 1860 presidential election.