Topic 5.7 Notes – Election of 1860 and Secession

How Lincoln’s Election Changed the Political Balance

Lincoln’s win mattered because it showed a sectional candidate could become president without Southern electoral votes. That had not happened before, and many white Southerners saw it as proof they were becoming a permanent minority.

The deeper cause had been building for years. After the Mexican-American War, every new territory raised the same question. Would slavery expand? The Compromise of 1850, Kansas-Nebraska Act, Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott decision, and John Brown’s raid all made that fight sharper and more violent.

The Republican position was narrower than many students remember. Republicans believed in free-soil and free-labor ideas. Western land should go to free farmers and workers, not slave plantations. Lincoln opposed slavery’s expansion into territories, but he did not call for immediate abolition where slavery already existed.

Southern leaders still saw this as a long-term threat. If slavery stopped expanding, the South would lose power in Congress and the Electoral College. To them, nonextension meant slavery was being placed on a path to “ultimate extinction.”

The Election of 1860

By 1860, one election contained four different answers to the slavery crisis.

The candidates

Why Democrats split

At Charleston, Democrats broke apart over slavery in the territories. Northern Democrats backed Douglas and popular sovereignty. Southern Democrats backed Breckinridge and federal protection for slavery. This wrecked one of the last national parties.

Lincoln’s rise

Lincoln became nationally known in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. His House Divided speech said the nation could not stay half slave and half free forever. Douglas hurt himself with Southern Democrats through the Freeport Doctrine, which said territories could still block slavery by refusing to protect it.

Results

The electoral map makes the sectional split easy to see.

1860 presidential election map

• Lincoln 180
• Breckinridge 72
• Bell 39
• Douglas 12

Lincoln won about 40 percent of the popular vote, carried every free state except part of New Jersey, got no Southern electoral votes, and was not even on the ballot in most of the Deep South. The Democratic split helped him, but the bigger fact was Northern population growth. The North now had enough electoral power to elect a president on its own.

Why Secession Happened

Secessionists argued the South faced a hostile government it could no longer control. What they wanted to protect was tightly connected:

• slavery as property
• racial hierarchy and white supremacy
• political influence in the federal government
• state sovereignty language, usually in defense of slavery

The constitutional fight turned on two ideas. Secessionists used compact theory and said sovereign states could leave voluntarily. Unionists, including Lincoln, said the Union was perpetual and secession was legally void.

Southern opinion was divided:

• fire-eaters wanted immediate secession
• cooperationists wanted the South to act together
• conditional Unionists resisted secession unless force was used

Primary sources make the motives clear. Mississippi said slavery was “thoroughly identified” with its position. South Carolina attacked Northern hostility and weak fugitive slave enforcement. Georgia and Texas also centered slavery and white supremacy.

From Secession to War

The first wave came fast:

1. South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860.
2. By February 1, 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed.

Creation of the Confederacy

At Montgomery, Alabama, the seceded states formed the Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis became president and Alexander H. Stephens vice president. The Confederate Constitution explicitly protected slavery, and Stephens’s Cornerstone speech openly tied the new nation to racial inequality and slavery.

Failed final compromises

• Crittenden Compromise proposed extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific.
• Corwin Amendment would protect slavery in the states.

Republicans rejected expansion of slavery, so compromise collapsed.

Fort Sumter and the second wave

1. Buchanan said secession was unconstitutional but also thought coercion was unconstitutional.
2. Southern states seized federal property, but Fort Sumter stayed under U.S. control.
3. In his First Inaugural, Lincoln said he would not interfere with slavery in the states, but secession was illegal.
4. Confederates fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.

Bombardment of Fort Sumter, April 1861

5. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers.
6. The Upper South seceded: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee.
7. Slave states that stayed in the Union were Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri.

Why This Election Matters

Lincoln’s election was the catalyst, not the sole cause. Seven Deep South states seceded before he took office, the Confederacy formed, compromise failed, and the fight over federal property turned into war at Fort Sumter. The deeper cause was the long struggle over slavery’s expansion, and secession in defense of slavery turned an election crisis into the Civil War.