Election of 1860

Overview

• Half of the US voted for Republican Party (Lincoln)

  • All free states

• 81.2% of white men in America voted (Lincoln won 40% of popular vote)

• Only 2 counties voted for Lincoln in the south

• Results:

  • Lincoln: 180 electoral

  • Douglas: 12 electoral

  • Breckinridge: 72 electoral

  • Bell: 39 electoral

  • Other: none

Background

• 33 states total

• 1860: more free states than slave states

• Few Americans, aside from radical abolitionists, believed slavery could be eliminated completely

• America was split over the future of the South’s “peculiar institution" (slavery)

Major issue: whether slavery would be allowed in new territories + states (do we let it expand?)

Northern Democrats

Believed that popular sovereignty would keep slavery out of the new territories (state residents decide whether slavery is allowed or not in the state)

Southern Democrats

• Favored a "federal slave code” 

  • Insured the rights of slaveholders in slave territories

• Only 25% were actually slave owners but they all benefited from slave labor

Democratic Convention

• After 55 ballots, Democrats had not nominated a winner (rep against Lincoln)

  • 50 votes short of agreeing on one candidate

• June 18, 1860: convention reconvened in Baltimore, Maryland 

“Fire-Eaters”: 110 southern delegates walked out of the convention June 20

Stephen Douglas

• June 23, 1860: Stephen Douglas nominated for president

  • Herschel Vespasian Johnson (Georgia) for Vice President

• Popular sovereignty:  Part of the Democratic platform (formal declaration of the policy of a political party)

• Democratic Senator from Illinois (“Little Giant”)

• Defeated Abraham Lincoln (1858) for the Senate seat

• Lincoln-Douglas debates

Southern Democrats nominate:

• June 26, 1860: Southern Democrats (“Fire-Eaters”) met in Richmond, VA

• Nominated John C. Breckenridge ( Kentucky)

  • Current VP

• VP: Joseph Lane (Oregon)

• Platform: protect slavery and encouraged its expansion into the territories

Republicans nominate:

• Aka GOP (“Grand Old Party”)

  • concerned over expansion of slavery

  • formed to oppose Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854

• Republican Convention

  • Lincoln appealed to the Republican majority (gained national reputation from the 1858 Lincoln/Douglas debates)

    • Nominated on the third ballot

  • Platform:

    • Slavery to be illegal in the territories

    • Immediate admission of Kansas as a free state

Third Party

• Constitutional Union Party: believed that failing to take a firm stance on issue of slavery would table it

• John Bell (Tennessee) = President

• Edward Everett (Massachusetts) = VP

• Call to uphold the Constitution and Union appealed to voters in border states

Post-Election of 1860 (Secession and Formation of Confederacy)

• South Carolina: seceded (left the Union) on Dec 20, 1860

• Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana secede: Jan 1861

  • All formed their own Confederate States of America + had their own president (Jefferson Davis)

• February 1861:  Texas secedes

• February 4, 1861:  the Confederate States of America are formed

• Jefferson Davis elected as Confederate leader