Abraham Lincoln became president in 1860 with only 39.8% of the popular vote. He beat three serious rivals, two of them Democrats, in a race that was really two separate elections, one in the North and one in the South.
It started in the spring of that year, when the Democratic Party walked into its national convention as one party and walked out as two.
How the Democrats split
The Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23, 1860, and they fought over slavery in the western territories. Southern delegates wanted the platform to back a federal slave code.
Stephen Douglas, the Illinois senator who had defeated Lincoln in a Senate race two years before, knew that plank would lose him every Northern state. When it failed, about 50 Southern delegates led by William L. Yancey of Alabama walked out.
The party rules demanded a two thirds majority to nominate, and nobody could reach it. After 57 ballots the delegates gave up and agreed to meet again in Baltimore.
Two Democratic tickets
Baltimore went even worse. In June, after another brawl over which delegates should be seated, the convention nominated Douglas.
The delegates who had bolted held their own convention and nominated the sitting vice president, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, on a pro slavery platform. The Democrats now had two candidates running against each other.
A fourth man with a bell
The fourth contender came from a party that was barely a month old. On May 9, a group of mostly former Whigs met in Baltimore, founded the Constitutional Union Party and nominated John Bell of Tennessee, a former speaker of the House and secretary of war.
His running mate was Edward Everett, a onetime president of Harvard. The new party refused to write a real platform, saying it stood for no political principle beyond the Constitution and the Union, and Bell’s supporters rang bells at their rallies.
A strangely quiet campaign
Most of the candidates barely campaigned at all:
- Lincoln stayed home in Springfield, as nominees traditionally did.
- Breckinridge gave a single speech.
- Bell said nothing.
- Douglas broke with custom and toured the country, the Deep South included.
Douglas spent much of that tour answering one question over and over, which was what would happen if Lincoln won.
Two elections in one
In practice the country held two separate contests. Lincoln was not even on the ballot in 10 Southern states, where the race was Breckinridge against Bell, while in the North it was Lincoln against Douglas.
Lincoln’s opponents tried to merge their slates of electors in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New Jersey. It worked only in New Jersey, and Lincoln still took four of that state’s seven electors.
Also read: An 11-Year-Old’s 1860 Letter Talked Abraham Lincoln Into a Beard
Numbers all over the map
The results looked lopsided in every direction. Lincoln won 1,867,198 votes and 180 electoral votes, well beyond the 152 he needed.
Douglas finished second in the popular vote with 29.4%, yet came last in the Electoral College with 12 electoral votes, all of Missouri plus New Jersey’s other three. Breckinridge carried 11 slave states for 72 electoral votes, and Bell won Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee for 39.
The split did not decide it
It is tempting to think Lincoln won only because his opponents divided the vote. The numbers say otherwise.
Lincoln won outright majorities in 15 states worth 169 electoral votes. Even if every Douglas, Breckinridge and Bell voter had backed one candidate, that candidate would have had about 60% of the popular vote and still lost the Electoral College by 169 to 134.
His support was packed into the populous North, and that was enough. South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860, before Lincoln had even taken the oath of office.
Also read: Members of Congress Still Get Paid in a Shutdown, and 3 Other Capitol Hill Myths
Based on reporting by Mental Floss
By Thomas Reed | History