Election of 1860

(Edited from Wikipedia)

The presidential election of 1860 was the 19th presidential election. The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860, and served as the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the .

The United States had been divided during the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners. Incumbent President , like his predecessor , was a northerner with sympathies for the South. He recommended that Supreme Court Justice Robert Grier vote pro slavery in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case. This was so unpopular it backfired on Buchanan's presidency, allowing the Republican Party to win a majority in the House in 1858 and full control of Congress in 1860. All Buchanan wanted to do was safely get out of office, so in 1860 he declined to seek re-election.

In 1860, these issues broke the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided opposition, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured a majority of the electoral votes, putting in the White House with almost no support from the South.

Before Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven slave-holding Southern states declared their secession from the Union and formed the Confederacy. This later precipitated a civil war that lasted up until April 1865.

The 1860 presidential election conventions were unusually tumultuous, due in particular to a split in the Democratic party that led to the meeting of rival conventions.

Democratic National Convention

At the Democratic National Convention held in Institute Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1860, 51 walked out over a platform dispute. The extreme pro-slavery "Fire-Eater" William Lowndes Yancey and the Alabama delegation first left the hall, followed by the delegates of Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, three of the four delegates from Arkansas, and one of the three delegates from Delaware.

1 Six candidates were nominated: Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, James Guthrie of , Robert Mercer Taliaferro Hunter of Virginia, Joseph Lane of , Daniel S. Dickinson of New York, and of . Three other candidates, Isaac Toucey of Connecticut, James Pearce of Maryland, and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi (the future president of the Confederate States) also received votes. Douglas, a moderate on the slavery issue who favored "popular sovereignty," was ahead on the first ballot, but needed 56.5 more votes to secure the nomination. On the 57th ballot, Douglas was still ahead, but 51.5 votes short of nomination. In desperation, the delegates agreed on May 3 to stop voting and adjourn the convention.

The Democrats convened again at the Front Street Theater in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 18. This time, 110 Southern delegates (led by "Fire-Eaters") walked out when the convention would not adopt a resolution supporting extending slavery into territories whose voters did not want it. After two ballots, the remaining Democrats nominated the ticket of Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for president. of Alabama was nominated for vice-president, but he refused the nomination. That nomination ultimately went instead to Herschel Vespasian Johnson of Georgia.

Southern Democratic Party Nomination

The Charleston bolters re-convened in Richmond, Virginia on June 11. When the Democrats reconvened in Baltimore, they rejoined (except South Carolina and Florida, who stayed in Richmond).

When the convention seated two replacement delegations on 18 June, they bolted again, now accompanied by nearly all other Southern delegates. This larger group met immediately in Baltimore's Institute Hall. They adopted the pro-slavery platform rejected at Charleston, and nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President, and Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon for Vice President.

Yancey and some (less than half) of the bolters, almost entirely from the Lower South, met on 28 June in Richmond, along with the South Carolina and Florida delegations. This convention affirmed the nominations of Breckinridge and Lane.

Republican Party Nomination

The Republican National Convention met in mid-May 1860, after the Democrats had been forced to adjourn their convention in Charleston. With the Democrats in disarray and a sweep of the Northern states possible, the Republicans felt confident going into

2 their convention in Chicago. William H. Seward of New York was considered the front runner, followed by Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and Missouri's .

As the convention developed, however, it was revealed that Seward, Chase, and Bates had each alienated factions of the Republican Party. Since it was essential to carry the West, and because Lincoln had a national reputation from his debates and speeches as the most articulate moderate, he won the party's nomination for president on the third ballot on May 18, 1860. Senator of Maine was nominated for vice-president, defeating Cassius Clay of Kentucky.

The party platform promised not to interfere with slavery in the states, but suggested an opposition to slavery in the territories. The platform promised tariffs protecting industry and workers, a Homestead Act granting free farmland in the West to settlers, and the funding of a transcontinental railroad.

There was no mention of Mormonism (which had been condemned in the Party's 1856 platform), the Fugitive Slave Act, personal liberty laws, or the Dred Scott decision. While the Seward forces were disappointed at the nomination of a little-known western upstart, they rallied behind Lincoln. Abolitionists, however, were angry at the selection of a moderate and had little faith in Lincoln.

Constitutional Union Party Nomination

The Constitutional Union Party was formed by remnants of the defunct Whig Party who hoped to stave off Southern secession by avoiding the slavery issue. They met in the Eastside District Courthouse of Baltimore and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for president over Governor of Texas on the second ballot. was nominated for vice-president at the convention on May 9, 1860, one week before Lincoln.

John Bell was a former Whig who had opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution. Edward Everett had been president of Harvard University and Secretary of State in the Fillmore administration. The party platform advocated compromise to save the Union with the slogan "The Union as it is, and the Constitution as it is."

The Election

The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860, and was noteworthy for

3 exaggerated sectionalism in a country that was soon to dissolve into civil war. Voter turnout was 81.2%, the highest in American history up to that time, and the second-highest overall (exceeded only in the election of 1876).

All six Presidents elected since won re-election in 1832 had been one-term presidents, the last four with a popular vote under 51 percent.

Lincoln won the Electoral College with less than 40 percent of the popular vote nationwide by carrying states above the Mason–Dixon line and north of the , plus the states of California and Oregon in the Far West. Unlike all of his predecessors, he did not carry even one slave-holding state.

The Republican victory resulted from the concentration of votes in the free states, which together controlled a majority of the presidential electors. Population increases in the free states had far exceeded those seen in the slave states for many years before the election of 1860, hence their dominance in the Electoral College.

The split in the Democratic party is sometimes held responsible for Lincoln's victory, but he would still have won in the Electoral College, 169 to 134, even if all of the anti-Lincoln voters had united behind a single candidate. At most, a single opponent nationwide would only have deprived Lincoln of California and Oregon (both of which he only won via a plurality of the statewide vote), whose combined total of seven electoral votes would have made no difference to the result; every other state won by the Republicans was won by a clear majority of the vote.

Like Lincoln, Breckinridge and Bell won no electoral votes outside of their regional sections. While Bell retired to his family business, quietly supporting his state's secession, Breckinridge served as a Confederate general. He finished second in the Electoral College with 72 votes, carrying 11 of 15 slave states (including South Carolina, whose electors were chosen by the state legislature, not popular vote). He won a distant third in national popular vote at 18 percent, but he accrued 50–75 percent in the first seven states that would become the Confederate States of America and took nine of the eleven states that eventually joined.

Douglas was the only candidate who won electoral votes in both slave and free states (free New Jersey and slave Missouri). His support was the most widespread geographically; he finished second behind Lincoln in the popular vote with 29.5 percent, but last in the Electoral College. The popular vote for Lincoln and Douglas combined was 70% of the turnout.

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