LINCOLN ELECTED WITH POPULAR VOTE MINORITY
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected 16th President of the United States becoming the first member of his Republican Party to win the presidency.
The final electoral vote was...
Abraham Lincoln (R) 180, John C. Breckinridge (SD) 72, John Bell (CU) 39, Stephen A. Douglas (ND) 12.
Mr. Lincoln, who opposed the spread of slavery into the western territories, won 40 per cent of the popular vote. He carried every Northern state but one.
The Democrats split over the slavery issue into northern and southern factions. A third party, the Constitutional Unionists, sought to avoid disunion over the slavery issue.
According to Miller Center, the Election of 1860 "positioned the nation on the brink of fundamental change." Southern dominance in all three branches of the federal government ended.
Southerners could not abide a "Black Republican*" in the White House and so eleven states, beginning with South Carolina in December 1860, seceeded from the Union. The War Between the States would soon follow.
*Black Republican in 1860 referred to a member of the Republican Party who was sympathetic to the abolition movement. The term was included in the title of a speech delivered by professor James P. Holcombe of the University of Virginia in January 1860.
SOURCES
"The Campaign and Election of 1860," UVA, Miller Center, www.millercenter.org/
"The Election of a Black Republican President, An Overt Act of Aggression on the Right of Property In Slaves," by James P. Holcombe, Professor of Law University of Virginia, January 2, 1860, "The Shelf," Harvard Library, www.blogs.harvard.edu/
