1860 United States presidential election

The United States presidential election, 1860 was held on 6 November 1860. Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln ran as the Republican Party's nominee, with Hannibal Hamlin serving as his running mate. Lincoln had made a reputation for himself as an opponent of the expansion of slavery, and he had previously debated the Democratic Party presidential nominee Stephen A. Douglas when they were both campaigning for a US Senate seat in Illinois in 1858.

Southerners feared that Lincoln's election would lead to the abolition of slavery, and 51 reactionary Southern Democrats walked out of the Democratic National Convention in April 1860 due to a platform dispute. The election therefore saw a rising Republican Party face a Democratic Party that was divided between Douglas' conservative northern Democrats and John C. Breckinridge's reactionary Southern Democrats, and the conservative Constitutional Union Party also ran John Bell as its candidate, hoping to preserve the union at all costs. The Constitutional Union Party won the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, taking many traditionally-Democratic states. The Southern Democrats won all of the Deep South, while Douglas won only New Jersey and Missouri. The Republicans were able to win all of the northeast (bar New Jersey) and much of the Midwest and the American West, giving them the presidency.

Four months before Lincoln's inauguration, eleven southern states announced their secession from the USA in reaction to the Republican victory, and they would go on to form the pro-slavery Confederate States of America. The Southern Democrats led the new secessionist country, and the southerners took up arms to defend states' rights against the government's attempts to abolish slavery across the country. Therefore, the 1860 election was the most direct cause of the American Civil War of 1861-1865.

Background[]

Two of the four major candidates for the presidency in 1860 - Lincoln and Douglas - had been opponents in the senatorial campaign in Illinois two years before.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln accepted the challenge to unseat the powerful Democrat Senator from Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas. Their seven public debates were transcribed by reporters and published across the nation. Although his calm, logical arguments frequently discomfited Douglas, Lincoln lost by 4,000 votes. Yet he gained a reputation as a restrained anti-slavery moderate.

History[]

A number of outspoken Southern advocates of secession were opposed not only to any compromise with the North, but also to the Union itself. Known by their opponents as "fire-eaters", they were hostile to the growing power of the North, and any open discussion of abolition fueled their commitment to an independent South. They included men like Virginian Edmund Ruffin, who had long spoken out in defense of slavery. He actually hoped that the Republicans would win the election, since this would force Southerners to "choose between secession and submission to abolition domination."

The Democrats divided[]

In late April 1860, the Democrats gathered in Charleston, South Carolina, to nominate their candidate. They could not have chosen to meet in a more polarized city. Street orators called for disunion, while fire-eaters among the Southern delegates openly scorned Senator Stephen A. Douglas and his Northern supporters. at a certain point, the Northern majority reaffirmed its support for popular sovereignty, which allowed the local voters to determine the legality of slavery in the territories. In reaction to this, Southern delegates stormed from the hall.

After 57 failed ballots and a hasty compromise, the convention was rescheduled for June in Baltimore, Maryland, but radical Southerners again disrupted the proceedings and marched out. While the remaining Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas, the Democrats of the Deep South and their allies reconvened in Richmond, where they chose Vice President John C. Breckinridge as their candidate for President.

Lincoln, Bell, and Douglas[]

In mid-May, the Republicans gathered in Chicago in a newly built convention center - dubbed the Wigwam - that could hold 12,000. Promising not to threaten slavery in the South, the Republican candidates repeated their opposition to its spread into the West. They also pledged free homesteads for westward-bound settlers and tariffs to protect Northern industry.

Recognizing the need for a moderate candidate who would be able to carry Pennsylvania and the Midwestern states, Republican delegates selected Abraham Lincoln on the third ballot. Lincoln was not an abolitionist, but he articulated the sentiment of a growing number of Northerners who saw slavery as the gravest threat to the Union and the future greatness of the nation.

Following the division of the Democrats, a new coalition and rival faction came together in Baltimore. The Constitutional Union Party was made up of conservative ex-Whigs and men from the border states who opposed disunion. By ignoring the issue of slavery they appealed to the Southern residents of Tennessee, Virginia, and Kentucky who threw their support behind them. The party's presidential nominee, John Bell of Tennessee, promised to abide by the Constitution and preserve the Union.

A vicious campaign ensued. In traditional election spirit, public speakers and political newspapers attacked and defamed their opponents using sectional language and personal insults. Douglas traveled the country warning against disunion, despite facing hostile crowds and accusations of drunkenness. Racial epithets were flung at the Republicans, who were called advocates of African-American equality and mixing of the races. Lincoln's running mate, the swarthy senator from Maine, Hannibal Hamlin, was often described as a mulatto. John Breckinridge faced souths of "traitor" and "destroyer of the Union," while Bell was characterized as the leader of an elderly and irrelevant faction.

Lincoln elected[]

Although Lincoln won a majority of the electoral votes with 180, he carried less than 40% of the national popular vote and 54% of the Northern popular vote. Douglas won only New Jersey and Missouri, while Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia selected John Bell. Breckinridge carried the remaining Southern states, most of which barred Lincoln's name from appearing on the ballot. Lincoln won, but he faced a nation in which one region had given him almost no support. He would be vulnerable in four years and many believed he would be forced to form a cautious, conservative government.

Although the states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee rejected the Democratic and Republican candidates, they recognized the risk they faced as states of the Upper South bordering free states. Living along the northern boundary of a slave republic, their slaves would be tempted by the freedom that lay across the border. Also, if it came to war, it was the Upper South that would become the likely battlefield.

In the majority of these slave states, many wealthy slaveholders hoped to preserve the Union. They believed slavery was safer protected by federal law than within an independent slave state bordering free territory. Many of these states had also developed more mixed economies and were less dependent on cotton exports. They had broad connections to their Northern neighbors, but feared they would face hostility from the Deep South.

A chance for compromise?[]

No candidate captured a majority of the popular vote, and neither Lincoln nor Breckinridge received much more than a bare majority in his region. Lincoln's opponents together outpolled him by nearly a million votes. In the South, Breckinridge lost the popular vote in the slave states to a combined opposition, which received 55% of the total Southern vote. The upper South wanted compromise, not conflict.

Aftermath[]

The nation was divided. Northerners disagreed among themselves, but a majority opposed the expansion of slavery. Most white Southerners owned no slaves, but were connected to slave society by ties of exchange and kinship.

Within days of Lincoln's election, South Carolina passed a bill scheduling a secession convention. On 20 December, it severed its union with the United States. In the months between his election and his inauguration on 4 March 1861, Lincoln hoped disunion could be averted. But the day after his inauguration he found a desperate dispatch on his desk from Fort Sumter.