5 min read•june 18, 2024
Dalia Savy
Dalia Savy
As the approached, it became clear that the country was more deeply divided than ever over the issue of slavery in the territories. The four main candidates in 1860 campaigned on different solutions to that issue and the American vote split.
Prominent Democratic senator from Illinois, , faced a tough re-election battle in 1858 against newcomer and Republican . The nation watched the election for the Senate seat closely, as the debates brought in crowds as big as 12,000 people to hear them discuss the issues of slavery, popular sovereignty, and the expansion of the United States.
Lincoln was not an abolitionist. As a moderate who was against the expansion of slavery, he spoke effectively of slavery as a moral issue. He argued that the nation had reached the crisis point in the struggle between slavery and freedom stating the following:
“.” 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
Southerners heard this and viewed Lincoln as a radical. Lincoln continued to go with the theme that Douglas was a covert defender of slavery because he was not a principled opponent of it. Douglas responded in what became known as the , where slavery could not exist in a community if the local citizens did not pass laws (slave codes) maintaining it. Basically, a territory could exclude slavery simply by not adopting laws that protect it.
Despite these intense debates, Douglas won the U.S. Senate seat in 1858. Lincoln's performance, however, made him a national figure and a future star for the .
The election was held during a period of great tension and division in the country, with the issue of slavery being a major point of contention. There were four candidates running at the time:
On November 6, 1860, Lincoln won the presidential election with 180 electoral votes, while Douglas received 12, Breckinridge 72, and Bell 39. Lincoln only won 40% of the popular vote in the election, but he won in a majority of the Northern states, which gave him the electoral votes needed to secure the presidency.
Because Lincoln, as a Republican, was determined to stop the spread of slavery out west, the South reacted with horror. They feared Lincoln’s leadership would stop the spread of slavery, embolden abolitionists in the North, and possibly even attack slavery in the Southern states.
The election of 1860 demonstrated the South’s political weakness because a Northern Republican could win the presidency without a single electoral vote from the South.
In an effort to stop the impending of some Southern states, some lawmakers proposed the . The compromise proposed to extend the (36° 30' parallel) westward and northward to California. It would have made slavery illegal in territories North of the line and would have allowed it in territories South of the line. It would have also proposed a constitutional amendment to guarantee the rights of slaveholders and would have protected the , which required citizens to assist in the capture of runaway slaves.
The compromise failed to gain enough support from either side and was never passed by Congress.
In response to the Election of 1860 and the fear of the abolition of slavery, several southern states began to secede. was the first state to secede from the Union in December of 1860, but the soon followed after. This response was fast, as Lincoln hasn't even been inaugurated (March 1861). Imagine how much tension there was.
These cotton-growing states created the on the basis of and against the fear that Lincoln would interfere with their slaves either out West or even down South (see the states’ secession declarations). Jefferson David was the President of the Confederate States of America.
Lincoln waited for the South to make the first move, and eventually, in April 1861, the rebels attacked the Federal arsenal at Ft. Sumter in South Carolina. They attempted to force the Union garrison stationed there to surrender.
The attack on was a major catalyst for the outbreak of the , as it rallied Northern public opinion behind the Union cause and led to the call-up of 75,000 volunteers to put down the rebellion. The call for volunteers caused the to secede as well because they opposed the use of violence to force fellow Southern states back to the Union.
Remember that Fort Sumter was the site of the first shots of the American Civil War.