An Election For Disunion
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Bell and Douglas had campaigned that they could save the Union from the inevitable result of disunion following a Lincoln election. Loyal army officers in Virginia, Kansas and South Carolina warned Lincoln of military preparations. Secessionists threw their support behind Breckinridge in an attempt to throw the election into the House, where the selection of President would be made by the Representatives elected in 1858, before the Republican majorities in both House and Senate achieved in 1860 were seated in the new 37th Congress. Mexican War hero Winfield Scott suggested to Lincoln that he assume powers of Commander-in-Chief before inauguration. But historian Bruce Chadwick observes that Lincoln and his advisors ignored the widespread alarms and threats of secession as mere election trickery. Indeed, voting in the South was not as monolithic as an Electoral College map appeared. Economically, culturally, and politically, the South was made up of three regions. In the states of the "Upper" South, also known as the "Border States" (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), unionist popular votes were scattered among Lincoln, Douglas, and Bell, to form a majority in all four. In four of the five "Middle" South states, there was a unionist majority divided between Douglas and Bell in Virginia and Tennessee; in North Carolina and Arkansas, the unionist vote approached a majority. Texas was the only Middle South state that Breckinridge carried convincingly. In three of the six "Deep" South, unionists won divided majorities in Georgia and Louisiana or neared it in Alabama. Breckinridge convincingly carried only three of the six states of the Deep South (South Carolina, Florida, and Mississippi). These three Deep South states were all among the four Southern states with the lowest white populations; altogether, they held only nine-percent of Southern whites. Of the 1,871 counties making returns, Breckinridge won 663 (35.44%), Lincoln won 557 (29.77%), Bell won 355 (18.97%), and Douglas won 256 (13.68%). The "Fusion" slate came first in 37 counties (1.98%). Two counties (0.11%) split evenly between Breckinridge and Bell while one county (0.05%) in Iowa split evenly between Lincoln and Douglas. The voter turnout rate in 1860 was the second-highest on record (81.2%, second only to 1876, with 81.8%). In the states that would become the Confederacy, the three states with the highest voter turnouts voted the most one-sided. Texas, with five percent of the total wartime South's population, voted 80% Breckinridge. Kentucky and Missouri, with one-fourth the total population, voted 68% pro-union Bell, Douglas and Lincoln. In comparison, the six states of the Deep South making up one-fourth the Confederate voting population, split 57% Breckinridge versus 43% for the three pro-union candidates. The four states that were admitted to the Confederacy after Fort Sumter held almost half its population. These voted a narrow combined majority of 53% for the pro-union candidates. In the eleven states that would later declare their secession from the Union and be controlled by Confederate armies, ballots for Lincoln were cast only in Virginia, where he received only 1.1 percent of the popular vote. In the four slave states that did not secede (Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware), he came in fourth in every state except Delaware (where he finished third). Within the 15 slave states, Lincoln won only two counties out of 996, both in Missouri. (In the 1856 election, the Republican candidate for president had received no votes at all in 10 of the 14 slave states with a popular vote).
Source (Popular Vote): Leip, David. 1860 Presidential Election Results. Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (July 27, 2005). Source (Electoral Vote): Electoral College Box Scores 1789–1996. Official website of the National Archives. (July 31, 2005). (a) The popular vote figures exclude South Carolina where the Electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote. Read more about this topic: United States Presidential Election, 1860 Famous quotes containing the word election:“Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism.” | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||