Freehling, William W., The Road to Disunion: Volume II. "Deep South" here in presidential popular votes refers to Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. Who ran against Lincoln in 1864? Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861, Chadwick, Bruce. Since 1860, and excluding unreconstructed Southern states prior to 1872, there have been two occasions where a Republican presidential candidate failed to poll votes in every state[nb 4], while national Democratic candidates have failed to appear on all state ballots in three elections since the introduction of the secret ballot, though in all three, the Democratic candidate nonetheless won the presidency,[nb 5], but none of them were in as many states as Lincoln in 1860. It was held on November 6, 1860. The election of Lincoln led to the secession of seven states in the South before the inauguration and the outright secession of four more (plus the partial secession of two others) once the Civil War began with the Battle of Fort Sumter. The Fusion slate consisted of 3 electors pledged to Douglas, and 2 each to Breckinridge and Bell. Abraham Lincoln ran against Stephen Douglas in the 1860 presidential election. Missouri convened a secession convention, which voted against secession and adjourned permanently. 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. [nb 6] Moreover, Lincoln's share of the popular vote would have been even less if there had been a popular vote in South Carolina. Besides the Democratic Parties in the Southern states, the Breckinridge/Lane ticket was also supported by the Buchanan administration. The incumbent president, James Buchanan, like his predecessor, Franklin Pierce, was a Northern Democrat with sympathies for the South. Political spectrum of 1860 with respect to slavery (scaled by popular vote). Retrieved July 31, 2005. Flag banner promoting Abraham Lincoln for the presidency in 1860. Former SenatorDaniel S. Dickinson from New York, SenatorRobert M. T. Hunter from Virginia(declined to be nominated), Senator Joseph Lane from Oregon(declined to be nominated), Senator Jefferson Davis from Mississippi(declined to be nominated). When Douglas ran for reelection in 1858, Lincoln opposed him in Illinois. 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. Gerrit Smith, a prominent abolitionist and the 1848 presidential nominee of the original Liberty Party, had sent a letter in which he stated that his health had been so poor that he had not been able to be away from home since 1858. If the President (and, by extension, the appointed federal officials in the South, such as district attorneys, marshals, postmasters, and judges) opposed slavery, it might collapse. On April 20, 1860, the party held what it termed a national convention to nominate Houston for president on the San Jacinto Battlefield in Texas. 2000? "[16], Former Representative Gerrit Smith from New York. Later mass meetings were held in northern cities, such as New York City on May 30, 1860, but they too failed to nominate a vice-presidential candidate. Lincoln was not unknown; he had gained prominence in the Lincoln–Douglas debates, and had served as a house representative from Illinois. In the four states of New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey where anti-Lincoln votes were combined into fusion tickets, Lincoln still won three and split New Jersey:[36] despite this, a shift of 25,000 votes to the fusion ticket in New York would have left Lincoln with 145 electoral votes - seven votes short of winning the Electoral College - and forced a contingent election in the House of Representatives. His victory, with 40 percent of … 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. In ten southern slave states, no citizen would publicly pledge to vote for Abraham Lincoln, so citizens there had no legal means to vote for the Republican nominee. [3], Even with such support from his home state, Lincoln faced a difficult task if he was to win the nomination. But what he had in policy he lacked in charisma and political acumen. Please select which sections you would like to print: Corrections? Delegates were in attendance from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, and Massachusetts. The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election. 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. William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois are the leading contenders from a field of 12 candidates. [14] They met in the Eastside District Courthouse of Baltimore and nominated John Bell from Tennessee for president over Governor Sam Houston of Texas on the second ballot. Answer Save. The building had been the First Presbyterian Meeting House (Two Towers Church) on Fayette Street, between Calvert and North Street, demolished before 1866 and occupied by the United States Courthouse. The 1860 presidential election conventions were unusually tumultuous, due in particular to a split in the Democratic Party that led to rival conventions. Not all of the Douglas supporters agreed to the Reading slate deal and established a separate Douglas only ticket. In theory, any document containing a valid or at least non-excessive number names of citizens of a particular state (provided they were eligible to vote in the electoral college within that state) might have been accepted as a valid presidential ballot, however what this meant in practice was that a candidate's campaign was responsible for printing and distributing their own ballots (this service was typically done by supportive newspaper publishers). Douglas won nearly 30 percent of the vote but won only Missouri’s 12 electoral votes. Virginia convened a secession convention, which voted against secession but remained in session. Lincoln, a Kentucky-born lawyer and former Whig representative to Congress, first gained national stature during his campaign against Stephen Douglas of Illinois for a U.S. Senate seat in 1858. [20][21], In their campaigning, Bell and Douglas both claimed that disunion would not necessarily follow a Lincoln election. Anonymous. Abraham Lincoln President-elect Lincoln Receiving Visitors in the State House Hugh McCullough Map of the 1860 Presidential Election The Great Exhibition of 1860 The Coming Man’s Presidential Career a la Blondin The National Game. North Carolina held a referendum on having a secession convention, which failed. Source (Electoral Vote): "Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996". [11][15], John Bell was a former Whig who had opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution. He gained great notability with his February 1860 Cooper Union speech, which may have ensured him the nomination. Lincoln was the second President-elect to poll no votes in any state which had a popular vote (the first was John Quincy Adams, who polled no ballots in the popular votes of two states in the election of 1824, although that was a unique election in which there were four major candidates, none of whom distributed ballots in every state). Sen. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was nominated as Lincoln’s running mate. He engineered that the convention would happen in Chicago, which would be inherently friendly to the Illinois based Lincoln. Lincoln's simple question caught Douglas in a dilemma. Yet it alienated Douglas with southerners he would need in 1860 when he ran for president against Lincoln. The split in the Democratic party is sometimes held responsible for Lincoln's victory[34] despite the fact that Lincoln won the election with less than 40% of the popular vote, as much of the anti-Republican vote was "wasted" in Southern states in which no ballots for Lincoln were circulated. 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. The 1860 Republican National Convention, in Chicago, nominated Lincoln, a moderate former one-term Representative from Illinois, as its standard-bearer. He also was firmly opposed to nativism, which further weakened his position. The first 1860 Democratic National Convention adjourned in Charleston, South Carolina, without agreeing on a nominee, but a second convention in Baltimore, Maryland, nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for president. Economically, culturally, and politically, the South was made up of three regions. The United States had become increasingly divided during the 1850s over sectional disagreements, primarily the extension of slavery into the territories. This vote is listed under the Fusion column, not the Breckinridge column as many other sources do, because this ticket was pledged to either of two candidates based on the national result. The electoral split between Northern and Southern Democrats was emblematic of the severe sectional split, particularly over slavery, and in the months following Lincoln’s election (and before his inauguration in March 1861) seven Southern states, led by South Carolina on December 20, 1860, seceded, setting the stage for the American Civil War (1861–65).