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The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin [2] won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states already had abolished slavery, and a national ...
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Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was the candidate of the generally antislavery Republican Party. The Democratic Party split in two. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the champion of popular sovereignty policy, was the Northern Democrats’ candidate, and Vice Pres. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky was the candidate of the Southern Democrats, whose campaign was based on the demand for federal legislation and intervention to protect slaveholding. Sen. John Bell of Tennessee was the candidate of the new Constitutional Union Party, the political home for former Whigs and other moderates who rallied to support the Union and the Constitution without regard to slavery.
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popular sovereignty
Learn more about popular sovereignty, the controversial political doctrine that stated that the people of federal territories should decide for themselves whether their territories would enter the Union as free or slave states.
Why was the U.S. presidential election of 1860 important?
Nothing less than the fate of the Union was at stake in the U.S. presidential election of 1860. The Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision of 1857, which voided the Missouri Compromise (1820) and made slavery legal in all U.S. territories, confirmed many Americans’ belief that compromise had been exhausted as a solution of the problem of slavery, the source of heated sectional conflict and the most important issue in mid-19th-century America. Many Southerners saw the potential election of Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the antislavery Republican Party, as a threat to their way of life and the harbinger of secession.
Following on the heels of the Dred Scott decision of 1857, in which the U.S. Supreme Court voided the Missouri Compromise (1820), thus making slavery legal in all U.S. territories, the election of 1860 was sure to further expose sectional differences between those, especially (but not solely) in the North, who wanted to abolish slavery and those who sought to protect the institution. The Democratic Party held its convention in April–May 1860 in Charleston, S.C., where a disagreement over the official party policy on slavery prompted dozens of delegates from Southern states to withdraw. Unable to nominate a candidate (Sen. Stephen A. Douglas received a majority of the delegates’ support but could not amass the required two-thirds majority needed for nomination), Democrats held a second convention in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 18–23, though many of the Southern delegates failed to attend. At Baltimore the Democrats nominated Douglas, who easily defeated Kentuckian John C. Breckinridge, the sitting vice president of the United States. Trying to unite Northern and Southern Democrats, the convention then turned for vice president first to Sen. Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama, who declined nomination, and eventually to Herschel V. Johnson, a former U.S. senator and former governor of Georgia, who was chosen as Douglas’s running mate. Disaffected Democrats, largely Southerners, then nominated Breckinridge, with Sen. Joseph Lane of Oregon as his running mate. Both Douglas and Breckinridge claimed to be the official Democratic candidates.
The Republican convention was held in Chicago on May 16–18. The party, which had formed only in the 1850s, was largely opposed to the extension of slavery in the U.S. territories. Though many party members favoured the total abolition of slavery, the party pragmatically did not call for abolition in those states that already had slavery. Entering the convention, Sen. William H. Seward of New York was considered the favourite for the nomination, and on the first ballot he led Abraham Lincoln, who had been defeated in Illinois in 1858 for the U.S. Senate by Douglas, as well as a host of other candidates. On a second ballot the gap between Seward and Lincoln narrowed, and Lincoln was subsequently nominated on the third ballot. Sen. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was nominated as Lincoln’s running mate.
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Trying to transcend the sectional divide was the Constitutional Union Party, which was formed in 1859 by former Whigs and members of the Know-Nothing Party. The Constitutional Unionists named former senators John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts as their presidential and vice presidential nominees, respectively. The party’s platform particularly appealed to border states in its attempt to ignore the slavery issue and focus instead on fealty to the U.S. Constitution:
Resolved, that it is both the part of patriotism and of duty to recognize no political principles other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws; and that, as representatives of the Constitutional Union men of the country in national convention assembled, we hereby pledge ourselves to maintain, protect, and defend, separately and unitedly, these great principles of public liberty and national safety against all enemies, at home and abroad, believing that thereby peace may once more be restored to the country, the rights of the people and of the states reestablished, and the government again placed in that condition of justice, fraternity, and equality which, under the example and Constitution of our fathers, has solemnly bound every citizen of the United States to maintain a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.
After his nomination, Lincoln put aside his law practice and ran a stay-at-home campaign, in which he made no stump speeches, though he did give full time to the direction of his campaign. His “main object,” he had written, was to “hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks,” and he counseled party workers to “say nothing on points where it is probable we shall disagree.” With Republicans united, and with division within the Democratic Party and surrounding Bell’s candidacy, the primary fear that Republicans had was that some disunity might appear and hamper their chances. Breckinridge also did little campaigning, giving only one speech. Douglas, however, was an active campaigner, in both the North and the South, where he gave a passionate defense of the Union and strenuously opposed secession. Still, much of the campaigning that did follow consisted of parades and rallies that boosted interest in the election (on election day some four-fifths of eligible voters turned out).
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Despite four main candidates (and Douglas’s forays into the South), the contests in the states were sectionally fought, with Douglas and Lincoln dominant in the North and Breckinridge and Bell dueling for support in the South. On election day Lincoln captured slightly less than 40 percent of the vote, but he won a majority in the electoral college, with 180 electoral votes, by sweeping the North (with the exception of New Jersey, which he split with Douglas) and also winning the Pacific Coast states of California and Oregon. Douglas won nearly 30 percent of the vote but won only Missouri’s 12 electoral votes. Breckinridge, with 18 percent of the national vote, garnered 72 electoral votes, winning most of the states in the South as well as Delaware and Maryland. Bell, who won 12.6 percent of the vote, secured 39 electoral votes by winning Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. The results in the South are instructive in understanding the deep sectional divide. Lincoln did not win any votes in any state that would form the Confederacy, with the exception of Virginia, where he garnered only 1 percent of the total vote (Douglas won slightly less than 10 percent). By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration in March, seven Southern states had seceded, and barely a month after Lincoln became president, the country became engaged in civil war.
The 1860 election is regarded by most political observers as the first of three “critical” elections in the United States—contests that produced sharp and enduring changes in party loyalties across the country (although some analysts consider the election of 1824 to have been the first critical election). After 1860 the Democratic and Republican parties became the major parties in a largely two-party system. In federal elections from the 1870s to the 1890s, the parties were in rough balance—except in the South, which became solidly Democratic. The two parties controlled Congress for almost equal periods, though the Democrats held the presidency only during the two terms of Grover Cleveland (1885–89 and 1893–97).
For the results of the previous election, see United States presidential election of 1856. For the results of the subsequent election, see United States presidential election of 1864.
Dec 1, 2017 · Learn about the pivotal presidential election of 1860 that divided the country over slavery and states' rights. Abraham Lincoln won the electoral college but not the popular vote, while the South seceded from the Union before his inauguration.
Oct 19, 2022 · Presidential Election of 1860: A Resource Guide. In a four-way race, Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of 1860. This guide provides access to digital materials at the Library of Congress, links to external websites, and a print bibliography.
1860 Election Facts. Welcome: Minnesota and Oregon become states during this election cycle; Original 13 states control fewer than 50% of total Electoral Votes for first time; Lincoln received only about 40% of the popular vote in a divided nation on the brink of Civil War
The votes of the Electoral College were split among four candidates in the 1860 presidential election. The states that Lincoln won are shown in red, Breckenridge in green, Bell in orange and Douglas in brown.
The 1860 United States elections elected the members of the 37th United States Congress. The election marked the start of the Third Party System and precipitated the Civil War.
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