Loading...
Loading...
Four-way race split the vote regionally; Lincoln carried only Northern free states yet won the Electoral College. Deep South leaders read his victory as a threat to slavery's future and moved quickly toward secession.
Where this fits on the timeline. By 1860 the United States had argued about slavery in the western territories for more than a decade: the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, and John Brown's raid. The presidential election of November 6, 1860 was the moment the argument became a decision. Abraham Lincoln won without a single electoral vote from a slave state, and within six weeks South Carolina seceded. It is the first act of the Civil War journey.
The Democrats split, and the Republicans walked through the gap. The Democratic Party broke apart at its convention when Southern delegates demanded a federal guarantee of slavery in the territories and Northern delegates refused. Northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas, who wanted each territory to vote on slavery for itself; Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge, the sitting vice president, on a platform protecting slavery everywhere in the territories. A fourth party, the Constitutional Union, nominated John Bell and promised only to preserve the Union and the Constitution. The Republicans passed over the famous William Seward for Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, a moderate whose platform opposed any expansion of slavery but promised not to touch it where it already existed.
A minority of the votes, a majority of the map. Lincoln was not even on the ballot in ten Southern states, and he won just under forty percent of the popular vote nationwide. But he carried every free state except New Jersey, which he split with Douglas, and that was enough for 180 electoral votes, a clear majority. Breckinridge took the Deep South, Bell the upper South, and Douglas, who campaigned across the country warning of disunion, won only Missouri and part of New Jersey. The results map showed two nations voting against each other rather than one nation choosing a leader.
Not what Lincoln promised to do, but what his victory proved. Lincoln repeated that he had no lawful power to end slavery in the states. Southern leaders answered that the point was not this president but the next ones: a party pledged against slavery's growth had won the presidency without needing a single Southern vote, and the North's population was growing faster every year. Slavery, they argued, could survive only if it could expand, and a government that would not let it expand would eventually kill it. South Carolina's legislature called a secession convention before the votes were even counted, and six more states followed by February.
The secession winter. Between Lincoln's election and his inauguration in March 1861, seven states left the Union, seized federal forts and arsenals, and formed the Confederate States of America. Outgoing president James Buchanan declared secession illegal but said he had no power to stop it. Lincoln traveled to Washington in secret because of an assassination plot, took office promising to hold federal property but not to start a war, and within six weeks was answering the guns at Fort Sumter. Read the map of the results at the Library of Congress.
Primary sources first. The Library of Congress has campaign materials and the results, and the American Battlefield Trust explains the four-way race. Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals tells how Lincoln beat his famous rivals and then put them in his cabinet.
Recommended, age-appropriate books to explore this further. Links open a library catalog search.
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
How Lincoln won the nomination over famous rivals and then brought them into his cabinet; for grades 10 to 12.
Fields of Fury: The American Civil War
by James M. McPherson
Opens with the election and secession; ideal for grades 6 to 9.
Electoral map showed the nation voting in opposing sections, not as one middle ground
Lincoln's platform focused on stopping slavery's spread, not instant nationwide abolition
Deep South secession conventions began almost immediately after his win