Existing comment:
Politics in the Election of 1860 erupted over slavery. After a decade of divisive debate, the oracle of South Carolina, the Charleston Mercury, declared: "The North and South... are not only two peoples, but they are rival, hostile Peoples."
Nothing frightened the Southern aristocracy more than losing control of the Federal Government. The meteoric ascent of Abraham Lincoln and the Northern Republican party -- which opposed expansion of slavery into the western territories -- threatened the balance of power. "No other 'overt act' can so imperatively demand resistance on our part," a North Carolina congressman declared, "as the simple election of their candidate."
Lincoln won. The first Republican President captured only 40 percent of the popular vote, but his majority showing in the more populous Northern states provided a comfortable electoral vote advantage. "The great revolution has actually taken place," wrote Charles Francis Adams of Massachusetts, whose father and grandfather had served as President. "The country has once and for all thrown off the domination of the Slaveholders."
Slave population of the Southern states, 1860:
Slaves were concentrated mostly on large farms and small plantations in the Cotton Belt from South Carolina to Texas, the rice coast of South Carolina and Georgia, the sugar cane fields of Louisiana, and the tobacco fields of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. Few slaves lived in the mountainous Appalachian counties. One in four Southern households held slaves, but only 1 percent of the white population owned more than 100 slaves. In some counties in agriculturally rich South Carolina and Mississippi, nearly half of the households owned slaves.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
-- Abraham Lincoln, 1858
Lincoln-Hamlin political poster:
Beardless, 51, and a nationally known lawyer from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was not the leading candidate when the Republicans convened in Chicago. However, "Honest Abe's" allies adroitly outmaneuvered their opponents, using Lincoln's log-cabin lineage as the "symbol of frontier, farm, opportunity, hard work, and rags to riches." The "rail splitter's" nomination on the third ballot solidified the Midwest for the Republicans and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine helped deliver the voters in New England.
Lincoln strides ahead:
Four candidates raced for the White House in the election of 1860; Lincoln, the rival of Democrats Breckinridge and Douglas, and John Bell -- shown running last in this caricature. Bell led a compromise party whose platform "the Constitution... the Union... and the Enforcement of the Law" resonated in parts of the South, where Lincoln's name did not appear on the ballot in ten states. Ironically, Bell's effort eroded supported for the Southern Democrat Breckinridge, virtually assuring Lincoln's plurality victory.
Currier and Ives political cartoon, 1860:
Slavery splintered the Democratic Party during the 1860 Presidential election. Southern Democrats, led by Vice President John C. Breckinridge, refused to compromise on the expansion of slavery. Northern Democrats, led by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, refused to accept a slavery-extension platform that meant certain doom with voters in the North. The Democrats' split enabled Lincoln's minority party to steam to victory. |