The Election That Broke Everything

On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States. He won with just under 40 percent of the popular vote, carrying every free state and none of the slave states. His name didn't even appear on the ballot in ten Southern states. Before he took office, seven states seceded. The system that elected him was the same system that broke apart because of him.

The 1860 election was a four-way race. The Democratic Party had split in two: Stephen Douglas ran as the Northern Democrat, John Breckinridge as the Southern. John Bell ran for the Constitutional Union Party. Lincoln, the Republican, won by consolidating Northern opposition to the expansion of slavery into the territories. He didn't call for abolition. He called for containment. The South heard a death sentence anyway.

Lincoln's victory proved that a candidate could win the presidency without a single Southern electoral vote. That mathematical reality terrified slaveholders more than any abolitionist speech. The system of compromises that had held the Union together since 1820 was finished. South Carolina seceded in December. Six more states followed before inauguration day. The election didn't cause the Civil War, but it made the war inevitable by proving the South had lost control of the federal government permanently.

Lincoln spent election night in Springfield, Illinois, waiting for telegrams. He stayed calm. He went home and told his wife he'd won. Four years later he would be dead, the Union preserved, slavery abolished, and the presidency transformed into something far more powerful than the framers intended. All of it traceable to a November night when 40 percent of the country chose a man the other 60 percent didn't want. That's how systems break. Slowly, then all at once.

electoral college results, 1860 presidential election — lincoln carried every free state. source: wikimedia commons