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Chapter VIII - The Democrats Divided, Lincoln Elected
The Democrats Divided, Lincoln Elected 1860
Amidst the hysteria generated by John Brown's raid and subsequent execution, political parties energetically campaigned for their presidential candidates. By the beginning of 1860 the Democratic Party was the only one that remained intact. "One after another," wrote a Mississippi editor, "the links which have bound North and South together have been severed . . . but the Democratic party looms gradually up . . . and waves the olive branch over the troubled waters of politics." Nevertheless, by summer even the Democratic Party had split in two. On one side were the Douglas supporters who pleaded for congressional noninterference with slavery. On the other side were the radical Southerners who demanded that federal laws protect slavery in the territories.
In Charleston, South Carolina, delegates from states supporting the radicals stormed out of the emotionally charged Democratic convention. Unable to continue, the delegates decided to hold their convention in Baltimore in June. Douglas was nominated by his supporters after a series of hotly contested roll calls. However, Southern radicals selected John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky as their presidential candidate. Thus, the issue of slavery divided the last remaining national party.
Between the Republicans and Democrats were the moderates who came mainly from the border states. Their Constitutional Union Party vaguely called for preservation of Union and Constitution. In contrast to the ambiguity of the moderates and the dissension of the Democrats, the Republicans quietly selected Abraham Lincoln as their candidate on the third ballot. While their political platform denounced John Brown's raid as "among the gravest of all crimes," it also demanded that slavery not be allowed to extend into the territories.
During the election of 1860, Douglas, Breckinridge and the Constitutional Union Party's nominee, John Bell, repeatedly stressed their support for the Union. However, while both Douglas and Breckinridge irritated politicians with their inconsistent attitudes, Lincoln remained steadfast in his views. He also persistently refused to offer any reassurance or to further clarify his position on slavery. Considering the unstable circumstances of the election, the results were surprising. Douglas, Bell and Breckinridge combined received many more votes than Lincoln. Douglas won only a few states, while Breckinridge carried nine Southern states, and Bell won in Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. However, even with less than forty percent of the popular vote, Lincoln's victories in eighteen Northern states gave him a clear majority of electoral votes - 180. Even a united Democratic Party could not have defeated him.
Elated by Lincoln's success, the Republicans refused to believe that the radical Southerners would actually push the South toward secession. Republican Carl Schurz openly scoffed at the threat, recalling that a year earlier Southern congressmen had walked out over the selection of an antislavery speaker of the house. Schurz chuckled that the congressmen had taken a drink and then come back. After Lincoln's election, Schurz predicted, they would walk out, take two drinks, and come back in again. Unfortunately for the United States, Schurz was wrong. Those Southern congressmen would not return until six hundred thousand Americans would spill their blood from the flourishing cotton fields of the South to the once-silent pine forests of the North.
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