On December 20, 1860, the South Carolina convention voted unanimously 169–0 to dissolve their union with the United States. South Carolina acted almost immediately, calling a convention to declare secession. The election of Lincoln and the perceived threat to the institution of slavery proved too much for the deep southern states. Since the Republican platform prohibited the expansion of slavery in future western states, all future Confederate states, with the exception of Virginia, excluded Lincoln’s name from their ballots. Lincoln was trailed by Breckinridge with his 72 electoral votes, carrying eleven of the fifteen slave states Bell came in third with 39 electoral votes and Douglas came in last, only able to garner 12 electoral votes despite carrying almost 30 percent of the popular vote. Lincoln received less than 40 percent of the popular vote, but with the field so split, that percentage yielded 180 electoral votes. Of the voting electorate, 81.2 percent came out to vote-at that point the highest ever for a presidential election.
#Image 1 of the battle cry of freedom free
Lincoln carried all free states with the exception of New Jersey (which he split with Douglas). The Constitutional Unionists, composed of former Whigs who teamed up with some southern Democrats, made it their mission to avoid the specter of secession while doing little else to address the issues tearing the country apart.Ībraham Lincoln’s nomination proved a great windfall for the Republican Party. The electoral landscape was further complicated through the emergence of a fourth candidate, Tennessee’s John Bell, heading the Constitutional Union Party. Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, as a relatively unknown but likable politician, rose from a pool of potential candidates and was selected by the delegates on the third ballot.
Seward’s pro-immigrant position posed a potential obstacle, particularly in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. New York Senator William Seward, a leading contender, was passed over. A consensus emerged at the May 1860 convention that the party’s nominee would need to carry all the free states-for only in that situation could a Republican nominee potentially win. Several leading Republican men vied for their party’s nomination. Initially, the Republicans were hardly unified around a single candidate themselves. The nation’s oldest party had split over differences in policy toward slavery. Breckinridge of Kentucky, as their presidential candidate. A subsequent convention in Baltimore nominated Douglas, while southerners nominated the current vice president, John C. The Democrats ended up with two presidential candidates. The parties leaders’ refusal to include a pro-slavery platform resulted in southern delegates walking out of the convention, preventing Douglas from gaining the two-thirds majority required for a nomination.
Northern Democrats pulled for Senator Stephen Douglas, a champion of popular sovereignty, while southern Democrats were intent on endorsing someone other than Douglas.
The goal was to nominate a candidate for the party ticket, but the party was deeply divided. In April, the Democratic Party convened in Charleston, South Carolina, the bastion of secessionist thought in the South. The 1860 presidential election was chaotic. The Civil War was a defining event in the history of the United States and, for the Americans thrust into it, a wrenching one. Simultaneously, women thrust themselves into critical wartime roles while navigating a world without many men of military age. African Americans, both enslaved and free, pressed the issue of emancipation and nurtured this transformation. Most northern soldiers went to war to preserve the Union, but the war ultimately transformed into a struggle to eradicate slavery. 1 The war touched the life of nearly every American as military mobilization reached levels never seen before or since. The American Civil War, the bloodiest in the nation’s history, resulted in approximately 750,000 deaths.
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