The two frontrunners for the Republican presidential nomination were Lincoln and New York Senator William Seward. After three votes, Lincoln was nominated with Hannibal Hamlin as his running mate.
The Democratic Party was in shambles in 1860. They should have been the party of unity, but instead were divided on the issue of slavery. Southern Democrats thought slavery should be expanded but Northern Democrats opposed the idea.
States’ rights were also hotly debated. Southern Democrats felt states had the right to govern themselves while Northern Democrats supported the Union and a national government.
With such confusion among the ranks, it was unclear how the Democratic Party would ever nominate a candidate for the 1860 election. But on April 23, 1860, they met in Charleston, South Carolina to decide their platform and identify a nominee.
Stephen Douglas was the frontrunner, but Southern Democrats refused to support him because he wouldn’t adopt a pro-slavery platform. Many walked out in protest, leaving the remaining delates without the majority needed to nominate Douglas; the convention ended without a nominee.
The Democrats met again two months later in Baltimore. Once again, many Southern delegates left in disgust, but enough remained to nominate Douglas as their presidential nominee and his running mate, former Georgia governor Herschel Johnson.
Southern Democrats nominated John Breckinridge, a supporter of slavery and states’ rights, to represent them in the election. Oregon senator Joseph Lane was his running mate.
The Constitutional Union Party was mainly made up of disgruntled Democrats, Unionists and former Whigs. On May 9, 1860, they held their first convention and nominated Tennessee slaveholder John Bell as their presidential nominee and former Harvard University President Edward Everett as his running mate.
The Constitutional Union party claimed to be the party of law. They took no official position on slavery or states’ rights, but promised to defend the Constitution and the Union.
Still, Bell wanted to offer a compromise on the topic of slavery by extending the Missouri Compromise line across the United States and make slavery legal in new states to the south of the line and illegal in new states north of the line. They hoped to sway voters who were upset with the divisiveness of the Democratic Party.
None of the 1860 presidential candidates did anywhere near the level of campaigning seen in modern-day elections. In fact, except for Douglas, they mostly kept to themselves and let well-known party members and citizens campaign for them at rallies and parades. Much of the campaigning, however, was devoted to getting voters to the ballot box on Election Day.
Lincoln’s political experience and speeches spoke for themselves, but one of his main campaign goals was to keep the Republican party unified. He didn’t want his party to reveal any of the discord of the Democrats and hoped to divide the Democratic votes.
Douglas campaigned in the North and South to hopefully make up for the divided voter base in the South, and gave a series of campaign speeches in favor of the Union.
On November 6, 1860, voters went to the ballot box to cast their vote for President of the United States. Lincoln won the election in an electoral college landslide with 180 electoral votes, although he secured less than 40 percent of the popular vote.
According to DeSoto,
Section 3 of the amendment made it unlawful for those who took an oath of office to support the Constitution of the United States and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same” to hold federal office unless Congress — by a two-thirds majority — votes to remove the disability.
What Democrats and NeverTrump Republicans are trying to establish through state courts in Colorado, Minnesota and Michigan, so far, is that Trump engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the U.S. government on Jan. 6, 2021, and therefore should be ineligible to serve.
They are hanging their case on the conduct of some of the protesters in the Capitol incursion who became violent in an attempt to disrupt the Electoral College vote.
Democrats attempted and failed to stop Abraham Lincoln from becoming the U.S. president. That didn’t work. (In 2023), this same party of slave owners and the KKK is hoping to block President Trump from the ballot. It’s now up to the Supreme Court to shoot them down.
Source: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/12/last-time-democrats-took-gop-candidate-ballot-was/
The North had many more people than the South and therefore control of the Electoral College. Lincoln dominated the Northern states but didn’t carry a single Southern state.
Douglas received some Northern support—12 electoral votes—but not nearly enough to offer a serious challenge to Lincoln. The Southern vote was split between Breckenridge who won 72 electoral votes and Bell who won 39 electoral votes. The split prevented either candidate from gaining enough votes to win the election.
The election of 1860 firmly established the Democratic and Republican parties as the majority parties in the United States. It also confirmed deep-seated views on slavery and states’ rights between the North and South.
Before Lincoln’s inauguration, seven Southern states had seceded from the Union. Weeks after his swearing-in, the Confederate Army fired on Fort Sumter and started the Civil War.
Source: https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/election-of-1860
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