War Politics
During the 1860 Presidential Election, two men from Illinois were among the four major candidates. Illinois voted in favor of Springfield resident Abraham Lincoln (172,171 votes or 50.7% of the ballots cast) over Chicagoan Stephen Douglas (160,215; 47.2%). Of minor consequence in the state-wide results were Southern candidates John C. Breckinridge (2,331; 0.7%), and John Bell (4,914; 1.5%).
Throughout the war, Illinois politics were dominated by Republicans under the energetic leadership of Governor Richard Yates and Senators Lyman Trumbull and Orville H. Browning. Democrats scored major gains in the 1862 election by attacking Lincoln's emancipation plan as danger to the state since it would bring in thousands of freed slaves. As a result the Democrats had a majority in the legislature and in 1863, Browning's Senate seat, formerly held by Douglas prior to the war, was filled by the Democrats with the election of William Alexander Richardson.
In the 1864 presidential election, Illinois residents supported Lincoln's reelection, giving the president 189,512 votes (54.4% of the total) to General George McClellan's 158,724 votes (45.6%). Within a year, Lincoln was dead and his remains had been returned to Springfield for burial.
Read more about this topic: Illinois Civil War Regiments
Famous quotes containing the words war and/or politics:
“Since the war nothing is so really frightening not the dark not alone in a room or anything on a road or a dog or a moon but two things, yes, indigestion and high places they are frightening.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“His talk was like a spring, which runs
With rapid change from rocks to roses:
It slipped from politics to puns,
It passed from Mahomet to Moses;
Beginning with the laws which keep
The planets in their radiant courses,
And ending with some precept deep
For dressing eels, or shoeing horses.”
—Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839)