Election of 1860 and secession

A dark horse candidate emerges

Amidst the repeated failures of compromise, Americans prepared to contest the election of 1860, a referendum on the prospective fate of the country. No clear frontrunner dominated the national political scene, and incumbent President James Buchanan decided not to seek reelection, meaning that a handful of prominent politicians sensed opportunities, including Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, both Democrats, and Senator William Seward of New York of the emerging Republican Party. When the Republicans gathered in **Chicago **for their nominating convention, Seward emerged as the early frontrunner but failed to earn the necessary votes to secure the nomination. After multiple rounds of voting and significant negotiations, Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois lawyer who had gained an important national profile from his recent campaign against Douglas for the Senate, secured the Republican nomination for the presidency.

While the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 Illinois Senate campaign had garnered national headlines, Lincoln’s political views were still relatively unknown and/or easily susceptible to intense criticism. Southerners distrusted Lincoln and avowed that he was an abolitionist while abolitionists themselves frequently denounced Lincoln as being too friendly to slaveowners and southern interests.

Abraham Lincoln, Cooper Union Address, New York, February 27, 1860

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored - contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man - such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care - such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance - such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did.

Democratic split

While the Republicans quickly coalesced around Lincoln after his nomination in May 1860, the Democrats fractured their party at their initial nominating convention in Charleston, South Carolina, ultimately splitting into two nominating conventions, both held in Baltimore in June 1860. Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas from Illinois while southern Democrats nominated John Breckinridge of Kentucky. With Douglas facing widespread southern opposition to his candidacy and Breckinridge facing widespread northern opposition to his candidacy, the fracturing of the Democratic Party in 1860 increased the likelihood of a Republican victory in November.

Compromise candidate

Before any of these Democratic and Republican candidates were nominated, however, another party, the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John C. Bell of Tennessee, a former US Representative, Senator, and Secretary of War who, while personally owning slaves, opposed the expansion of slavery into newly acquired territories; Bell steadfastly opposed secession, arguing that the Constitution protected slavery in the southern states.

Fire-eaters and wide awakes

Throughout the 1860 campaign, political groups and newspaper publishers argued for constant vigilance lest their political opponents attempt to unfairly influence the outcome and/or impose their will upon the American people. Labeled **fire-eaters **by their critics and opponents, the most vociferous advocates of secession, including Robert Barnwell Rhett of South Carolina and William Lowndes Yancey, called for southern states to form their own Confederacy if and when northern abolitionists sought to interfere with slavery anywhere in the country, including in newly acquired territories. By contrast, the northern wide awake movement featured chapters of young men organized similarly to military units who escorted Republican candidates and officials and led torch-lit nighttime marches in many cities to reinforce the idea that they were vigilantly watching how their opponents, particularly southerners and their northern allies, were organizing for the election and potentially for war.

Lincoln’s victory

On November 6, 1860, the 4 primary candidates for the presidency and millions of Americans gathered in homes and near newspaper and telegraph offices waiting for the election results. Voter turnout exceeded 80% of eligible voters, an admirable percentage in some respects in American history, but one that excluded millions of women and African Americans from voting in these consequential elections. Lincoln won most of the northern and western states, earning 180 electoral votes, and clearly winning the election, even though his share of the popular vote was only 40%. Breckinridge finished second in the electoral vote, sweeping most of the deep south and the border states of Maryland and Delaware, while John Bell won the electoral votes of Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Stephen Douglas, despite finishing second in the popular vote, won only Missouri and 3 electoral votes from New Jersey’s split electoral total.

Secession

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina’s secession convention issued its ordinance of secession announcing South Carolina’s intention to sever its political ties with the United States, specifically mentioning the impending inauguration of Abraham Lincoln in March 1861 as the culmination of years of hostility directed by northern states as southern states and slaveowners. By the beginning of February 1861, 6 more southern states - Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas - issued their own ordinances of secession; later in February 1861, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a former Secretary of War, was named President of the Confederate States of America (CSA) with Alexander Stephens of Georgia being named Vice President of the Confederacy. After the attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor in April 1861, 4 additional states - Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia - joined the Confederacy; once Virginia joined the Confederacy, the Confederate capital was relocated from Montgomery, Alabama to Richmond, Virginia, approximately 100 miles from the US capital of Washington D.C.