1860+Election

The Election of 1860

By Leon T.
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Background
Slavery was an ovewhelmingly large issue in America before the election of 1860. The North and the South often fought over whether new states joining the Union would be slave states or non-slave states. Many different solutions to this problem were thought up by the leaders of the country. An important compromise made by the country was The Compromise of 1850. This compromise had four main points. The first was that the territories of New Mexico and Utah would be given over to "popular sovereignty", which meant that once the territory was eligible to become a state, the people in the state would vote on whether they became a slave state or not. The second condition was that there would no longer be any slave trade in the capital Washington D.C. The third was that California, which was ready to become a state, would join the Union as a free state. The effect of this was that the North now had a majority in the Senate with sixteen states to the South's fifteen. The North also had majority amount of representation by 1850, having almost double of that of the South. Though the Senate and House of Representatives were leaning more towards the North, the president elected in 1856 was a Democrat, named James Buchanan. The South was content with this situation because it still had a significant amount of power, because of the President's power. In 1859, the year before the election, John Brown raided Herpers Ferry an armory in West Virginia. After this incident all Republicans were automatically linked to Brown in their views on slavery, and power between the North and South.

Parties
Political parties are always changing, as they have throughout history. The first well-known abolitionist party was the "Free Soils," who first became a force in 1848. By this time, the Whig party had begun to fade away, leaving the Democrats as the only Southern Party. By 1856 the two main parties were the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrat running in 1856 was James Buchanan, who went on to win the election and become the president. The Republicans were still a small party, whose origin was the "Free Soil Party." In 1860, the Republicans and Democrats remained the two prominant parties. The Democrats were viewed more as the anti-slavery party, while the Republicans were viewed as the pro-slavery party. As the two parties grew apart and started nominating different people from each other, another party came into play to run a candidate themselves. This group became known as the Constitutional Union Party. As the name sugests its main priority was keeping the Union together, and keeping the country as a whole.

Nominations[[image:breckinridge.jpg width="326" height="436" align="right" caption="The runner up in the 1860 election, John Breckinridge, a Democrat"]]
The Democratic party's national convention was held in Charleston, South Carolina on April 23rd, 1860. At this convention the majority of people voted to have Stephen Douglas represent them, but radical Southerners did not like this decision because Douglas was too moderate. As a result of this convention, the disapproving Sotherners nominated a new candidate named John C. Breckenridge, who was more of a radical than Douglas. A main difference between him and Douglas, was that Douglas avoided talking about slavery, while Breckenridge, and the men who chose him, felt that slavery was a larger issue than the rest of the parties conveyed it to be. The South at this time was threatened by the possibility of having a Republican president, fearing that a Republican president would throw the power balance out of proportion.

The Republican party's national convention was held in Chicago, Illinois on May 16th, 1860. Before the convention took place, there had been much speculation as to who would be chosen to run. Many believed that the most prominent man was Senator William Seward, from New York. The Republican party however made the decision to have Abraham Lincoln run for them, as he was a relativly unknown and agreeable candidate. He seemed to have virtually no enemies, and his strengths outweighed his weaknesses. He was a former anti-slavery Whig, but at that time, he had developed a reputation as a moderate Republican. Needing 233 votes to be nominated, he had only received 231 by the end of the convention, but right before the convention was adjourned, he unexpectedly gained four. By this time the Constitutional Union Party had already held their convention on May 9th in Baltimore, Maryland. They had elected John Bell from Tennessee to represent their party.

Elections
After the separate conventions took place, and each party had decided on their candidates, campaigning and elections took place. Lincoln's campaign was carried mainly by the New England states, and in the first ballot in Chicago he received nineteen votes. Throughout the entire election Lincoln did not win a single Southern state, due to many Southerners viewing him as an abolitionist set on getting rid of slavery and the Southern power. In truth, Lincoln's number one priority was to keep the states together, and to have no state secede. He had no intention of interfering with the slavery in the South, but at the same time embraced free black colonization. Democratic press had a tendency to make him seem like a "wild-eyed frantic" searching for Southern domination, and inevitably would always bring up Harpers Ferry and John Brown as the representation of the Republican party. As he progressed in his campaign, much of his focus was on the border states, because they had a large population, and were on the brink of secession. Democrat John Breckenridge was a radical Southerner who stood for slavery and the power of the states. Breckenridge was the most radical of all of the candidates, and he was the most fixated of keeping the ways of the South. Bell, from the Constitutional Union, had a very different mission in the entire election. His party knew from the beginning they had no chance of winning, but that was not the point of them having Bell run. His mission was to take votes away from Lincoln so the vote would have to go to the House. The only part of their plan which worked was getting the vote to the House. The second half, taking votes away from Lincoln, was not as successful.



Results
The results of the 1860 election were that Lincoln was the winner, with Breckenridge as runner up. After them came Bell, then Douglas with the third and fourth most electoral votes. No one candidate won more than half of the popular vote, with Lincoln receiving the most at forty percent. Fortunately, Lincoln did receive the majority of electoral votes, with 180 of 303 total. Breckenridge received seventy two electoral votes, but only eighteen percent of the popular vote, putting him as the third most popular candidate. Bell recieved thirty nine electoral votes, but he got the least number of popular votes, only receiving about twelve percent of the popular vote, making him overall the least popular candidate. Lastly, Douglas only won twelve electoral votes, while getting about thirty percent of the popular vote. This means that he may not have been popular to the electors, but he was the second most popular among the people. Taking in the election as a whole, Lincoln was the most popular, among the people and among the electors. He didn't have had more than fifty percent of the popular vote, but he was still the most popular, because he had the highest percentage of people backing him, and voting for him. Among the electors he was by far the most popular, for he received over fifty percent of the electoral vote, much more than any of the other candidates.

The election of 1860 is viewed by many as the most important election in the history of the Unites States of America. This election took place during a time when the nation was going though many hardships, and was fighting against itself. The South was feeling alienated by the North, and the North disapproved of the way the South operated. As the North slowly gained power, the South managed to cope and continued to cooperate, because they still had one stronghold, the president. Lincoln winning this election was removing the South's last hold on power, because he was a Republican. Shorty after Lincoln was elected president, many states began to secede. The first state to take the step on becoming a separate entity was South Carolina. Within less than a month, four other states seceded as well, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama and Georgia. Quick to follow were Louisiana and Texas. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and lastly Tennessee only seceded to the Confederacy after the first battle in the Civil War. Luckily for the new president, the border states, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware stayed loyal to the Union as the war broke out.

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