Opposition Party (Northern U.S.)

Scholars such as Kenneth C. Martis have adopted a convention to explain the congressional coordination of anti-Pierce and anti-Buchanan factions as the "Opposition Party."

In the Congressional election of 1854 for the 34th United States Congress, the new Republican Party was not fully formed, and significant numbers of politicians, mostly former Whigs, ran for office under the Opposition label.

Since independence, a major political issue had been conflict, whether open or structural, between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions in the United States, fought more on the basis of regional and class affiliations than strictly along party lines.

In the resulting 34th United States Congress, the U.S. House's 234 Representatives were made up of 100 Oppositionists, 83 Democrats, and 51 Americans (Know Nothing).

As a provisional coalition more united by what it opposed and not yet fully having agreed on what it stood for, being the largest party did not lead to control of Congress.

By the 1856 elections, the Republican Party had formally organized, while the Democrats enjoyed a fleeting political recovery from damage done by the Kansas–Nebraska Act.