On this day in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States with almost 40 percent of the votes over John Breckenridge, John Bell and Stephen Douglas.
In 1860, the United States was divided over the issue of slavery. Four major political parties nominated candidates in the 1860 presidential election. Incumbent president James Buchanan, a Democrat, did not seek re-election. The anti-slavery Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln, a former one-term Whig Representative from Illinois, for president. Its platform promised not to interfere with slavery in the South, but opposed extension of slavery into the territories.
A group of former Whigs and Know Nothings formed the Constitutional Union Party, which sought to avoid disunion by resolving divisions over slavery with some new compromise. The 1860 Constitutional Union Convention put forward former Tennessee Senator John Bell for president.
After the 1860 Democratic National Convention adjourned without agreeing on a nominee, a second convention nominated Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas as the Democratic presidential candidate. Douglas’s support for the concept of popular sovereignty, which called for each territory’s settlers to decide locally on the status of slavery, alienated many radical pro-slavery Southern Democrats. With President Buchanan’s support, Southern Democrats held their own convention, nominating Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for president.
Lincoln received a majority in the Electoral College, with all his Electoral College votes coming from Northern states. He prevailed in 18 states, won 180 electoral votes, and received 39.7% of the popular vote. Douglas won the second-highest popular vote total, but won only the state of Missouri; he was the only candidate in the 1860 election to win electoral votes in both free and slave states. Breckinridge won 11 states, finishing third in the popular vote, while Bell finished fourth in the popular vote and won the electoral votes of the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Lincoln’s election as the first Republican president served as the main catalyst for Southern secession and the American Civil War. His election motivated seven Southern states, all having voted for Breckinridge, to secede from the United States before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861. The Civil War began less than two months after the inauguration with the Battle of Fort Sumter.
Now we’re adding labels to the White House????
Today is the birthday, in 1947, of John Wilson, drummer with the Northern Irish band Them who had the 1965 UK hits ‘Baby, Please Don’t Go’ and ‘Here Comes The Night’ with Van Morrison on lead vocals. Morrison quit the band in 1966 and went on to a successful career as a solo artist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbdA1_X913k
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