Cast a vote: For Southern Rights or for the Union!
Arlington House will be open by reservation for a special evening program at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, October 16, 2010 to commemorate the most important presidential election in American history: the election of 1860. That election decided the fate of the nation as northerners and southerners battled over who would be president and whether or not the nation would stay together or divide. Living historians will portray citizens and political campaigners of the period speaking on the issues. Visitors will have the opportunity to learn about what Americans cared most about in 1860, engage in spirited debate and cast a vote in a mock election. Exhibits focusing on the campaign and on Robert E. Lee’s political views will be on display in the house.
Event activities include performances of campaign music by The Federal City Brass Band and activities for children. Park Rangers and volunteers will be in the house and on the grounds to tell the story of the Custis and Lee families and the enslaved people of Arlington. The open house program offers a rare opportunity for the public to tour the house at night and view the Washington, D.C. evening skyline from the finest vantage point in the area.
Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial is a unit of the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Additional information is available by calling (703) 235-1530,
1860: The Candidates:
After the Election:
Prominent Ex-Candidates In and Out of Civil War
EDWARD EVERETT:
----> Continued his renowned career as a public orator in support of the Union cause; gave the introductory speech to Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” at the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg in November 1863
----> Undertook an exhausting campaign for Lincoln’s Union Party against George McClellan in the 1864 Election
----> After this effort, Everett retired to Boston, where he died in January 1865
President ABRAHAM LINCOLN:
----> Sixteenth President of the United States (1861-65); reelected in 1864 after the tide of the war turned in favor of the Union
----> Undertook aggressive actions during the conflict: suspended the writ of habeas corpus, created the state of West Virginia, and most notably, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863
----> Wanted reconciliation with Confederacy; assassinated at Ford’s Theatre, April 14, 1865; his successor, Andrew Johnson, pardoned Confederates in 1868
Senator HERSCHEL V. JOHNSON, C.S.A.:
----> Selected as a delegate to Georgia’s secession convention in 1861; opposed secession, but remained loyal to his state after it left the Union; Senator in the Second Confederate Congress (1862-65)
----> Led Georgia’s constitutional convention after war’s end (1865); gained election to the U.S. Senate in 1866, but was disqualified his involvement with the rebellion; became a circuit court judge in 1873, serving until his death in 1880
Major General JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE, C.S.A.:
----> As a senator, opposed Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops after the attack on Fort Sumter; fled Kentucky to avoid arrest by Union soldiers late in 1861; defected to the Confederacy
----> Volunteered for Confederate army; participated in the 1864 attack on Washington D.C.; became a major general and served as Confederate Secretary of War by war's end
----> Breckinridge fled to Canada after the war and remained there in exile until 1869, when he returned to Kentucky; practiced law there until his death in 1875
How to Run for President in 1860:
How to Run for President in 1860
Six Rules for an Effective Campaign
1 -- Don’t Campaign (at least not in person) — While nominees actively campaigned for other offices, the Presidency was still considered too sacred to be jockeyed for. Stephen Douglas, who undertook two stump speaking tours in 1860, was thought either opportunistic or desperate for his efforts.
2 -- Remember: Location, Location, Location — Campaigns were primarily local and focused on local issues. For example, while Republicans focused on slavery in the solidly northern states, they chose to highlight other issues (such as an industry supporting economic tariff) in battleground states like Pennsylvania.
Image Courtesy Library of Congress
3 -- When Possible, Fuse — While Lincoln had solid bases of support, local wings of the other three parties scrambled to oppose him. This resulted in “fusion tickets,” which advanced Douglas as Lincoln’s sole opponent in Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey and achieved partial fusions in Pennsylvania (mostly Douglas-Bell) and Texas (Douglas-Bell). National fusion under a separate candidate was discussed, but abandoned early in the campaign.
4 -- The College is Key — Lincoln’s opponents were hemmed in by varied state populations and the resulting math of the Electoral College. Of 303 total votes at stake there: New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania held 85 (28%); while 71 were up for grabs in battlegrounds like Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia (23%). No slave state marshaled more than 15 votes alone and the eleven Breckinridge states only had 72 combined (23%). 152 electoral votes were needed to win the White House.
5 -- The Dirtier, the Better — Politicians and the press were merciless mudslingers during this period in American political history. The press (often newspapers run by party members) could be brutal with their insults and charges.
6 -- Have Fun — Political campaigns were (as they remain today) gatherings to discuss and debate the issues. But during this time, they were also celebrations of the democratic process. Party gatherings were often supplemented by parades of supporters, while alcohol-laden soirées and elaborate fireworks demonstrations punctuated the festivities.
Constitutional Union Party
“No North, No South, No East, No West, Nothing but the Union”
The first group to hold a party convention in 1860 was also the newest entrant in the electoral race. A group of conservative ex-Whigs and Know-Nothings, put out by raging sectional disputes in the Democratic Party and resisting new Republican ideas, banded together to found the Constitutional Union Party.
At its May 1860 convention, Constitutional Unionists chose Bell, a Tennessee slaveholder, as their candidate for President. Edward Everett, a Massachusetts native and former President of Harvard University, was selected as the vice presidential nominee. Seeking to avoid accusations of disunion from its opponents, the party took no position on slavery or any other specific issue. Instead, they pledged to defend “no political principle other than the Constitution... the Union... and the Enforcement of the Laws.”
Constitution Union strategy relied not on winning the election, but on syphoning voters away from its opponents. If no candidate received the 152 electoral votes necessary to win outright, the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment threw the vote to the House of Representatives. If this goal were achieved, Bell would be in a better position to reach the White House.
To this end, party members sought “fusion tickets,” where all three non-Republican entrants combined, creating a single-candidate ticket in strategic states. This tactic had some success: all three fused in Rhode Island, New York, and New Jersey (where a Douglasled ticket split the state’s seven electoral votes with Lincoln); Bell and Douglas fused in Texas while a partial fusion occurred in Pennsylvania.
Despite their pro-Union platform, Constitutional Union support came mostly from the South: fewer than 24% of voters in every free state went for Bell, while he won more than that in every slave state. He carried only three border states: Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, losing to Lincoln and Breckinridge.
Northern Democrats
“Mind Your Own Business, and Let Territories Alone”
After winning the White House twice in the 1850s, Democrats saw nothing but greatness in the forecast for 1860. Also known as “The Democracy,” this dominant alliance of southern slave owners and western farmers had already vanquished strong challenges from the Whig and Know-Nothing parties. Stephen A. Douglas, their expected candidate for 1860, already forewent the nomination in the 1852 and 1856 elections, stepping aside for winners Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. Both he and his party believed continued triumph lay ahead.
That all changed at the party’s conventions in Charleston and Baltimore. Douglas was nominated, but only after most southern delegates (and their states’ electoral votes) had left in disgust. The remaining Democrats battled Republicans for votes in northern states. They condemned their “sectional” opponents and claimed to be the only national party left in the election.
Their electoral platform reached back to ideas that won in 1852 and 1856: defending the possible expansion of slavery westward, but only on the basis of Douglas’ idea of “popular sovereignty,” where a territory’s citizens would vote whether or not to approve slavery within their borders when they submitted for statehood.
The fate of Northern Democrats was closely tied to that of Douglas, who undertook a precedent-setting campaign of the Northeast in the summer of 1860. By October, he was convinced that Lincoln would win the election; so he set out upon a perilous speaking tour of the South in a last ditch effort to avoid secession and Civil War.
Taking the Stump: Stephen Douglas' New England Campaign:
“It is not a seemly or a welcome sight to see any man whom a large portion of his countrymen have thought fit for the Presidency, traversing the country and soliciting his own elevation thereto... [T]he Presidency is still a high office--too high to be reached by a mere stump-speaker [and] too dignified to be canvassed for like... a seat in Congress. A candidate for that place is supposed to have either friends who can speak for him; or a history which speaks for itself. Mr. Douglas ought not to lack either.”
-- The New York Times, August 10, 1860
... Presidential nominees doing their own stump speaking was unheard of before the election of 1860. With this in mind, Douglas tried to disguise his northern campaign as a visit to see his mother. These sources show he was unsuccessful.
Republican Party:
"Free Territory for a Free People"
Candidate: Abraham Lincoln of Illinois:
Republicans based their 1860 electoral strategy on lessons learned from the failed campaign of John C. Fremont in 1856. Despite losing, Fremont succeeded in carrying 33% of the popular vote and the electoral votes of much of the North. These accomplishments were stunning for a party in its first Presidential election. Based upon these results, Republicans concluded that they only had to capture the burgeoning frontier states of Illinois and Indiana along with Pennsylvania from the Democrats to succeed in 1860.
With this in mind, Republicans tinkered with their campaign approach in 1860, trying to make further advances into Democratic territory. They nominated Lincoln, a native son of Illinois, and pushed for a trade tariff that would help industry in states like Pennsylvania. They then gave Lincoln broader appeal by creating his mythical persona (the "Rail Splitter") and with their new national campaign group, the "Wide Awakes". Their enthusiastic and youthful members held torchlight parades all over North and Border states, inspiring eligible voters (81% of whom voted in the election, the second highest turnout in American history) to vote for their man.
Republicans, like their counterparts in the Constitutional Union Party, were recent comers to American politics. Organized in 1854, they gathered a large following in the North by unconditionally opposing the expansion of slavery. Their 1860 platform accused Democrats of corruption, insisted that slavery could not be legally spread westward, and called for the admission of a free Kansas under the recently approved Leavenworth Constitution. Lincoln said he would not inhibit slavery in the South, but did call its existence "regrettable" and hoped it would gradually die out.
Political Cartoons in the Election of 1860:
Most American newspapers in the Nineteenth Century were propaganda circulars owned and distributed by the influential and wealthy supporters of each political party. As such, the political cartoons featured within them tended to express the prejudices and political extremes of this period in American history.
Southern Democrats
“The Sovereignty and Equality of the States”
Candidate: John C. Breckinridge
The Democratic National Convention assembled in Charleston, South Carolina on April 23, 1860 to select a nominee for the November election. Over the next two
months, the party drifted apart, then split in two over the expansion of slavery into America’s new western territories. Southern slaveholders wanted to bring their slave
property there with them, while Democrats from the North wanted the issue left to settlers in each territory (known as “popular sovereignty”). When their platform containing a Federal Slave Code (which would have permitted slavery in some form in those territories) was rejected by allies of the northern candidate, Stephen Douglas, southern delegates left the convention and met separately, picking John C. Breckinridge as their candidate for President.
Many involved knew that Breckinridge, a moderate lawyer from Kentucky and youngest Vice President in American history, had little chance to win the election outright. Slave states held only 120 of the 303 electoral votes contested in 1860 (with 152 needed to win). Moreover, southerners were deeply divided between radical pro-slavery “Fire Eaters,” loyal Unionists, and undecided citizens trapped between them (like Robert E. Lee and his family).
This oft-overlooked diversity among the supporters of Southern Democrats makes their electoral strategy difficult to precisely identify. A likely explanation (given the electoral math) is that they were seeking a similar outcome to that of the Constitutional Union: an indecisive election result leading to a run off vote in the House. Also, if no clear winner emerged by March 5, 1861, the Senate (which, along with the House, had at least a third of its caucus seated from southern states) would have chosen the President from the top two finishers in the Vice Presidential election (Southern Democrat Joseph Lane and Republican Hannibal Hamlin). Both of these outcomes were within reach of southern politicians if they could somehow stop Lincoln or Douglas from achieving clear victory in the Electoral College.
John Bell, Breckinridge’s main opponent, thought differently: he accused these southerners of splitting the Democratic Party intentionally, assuring Lincoln’s election and justifying their true desire—secession from the Union.
Breckinridge’s decision to lead the Democratic walkouts puzzled many.
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