The Election of 1860

"King Lincoln" - The Unpopular

Quick! Create a mental checklist of the greatest presidents in U.S. History and we guarantee that Abraham Lincoln is on it. Recorded into historical memory as “Honest Abe”; his face is on our currency, several cities named in his honor, he’s one of only four presidents to have his visage carved into the side of a freakin’ mountain, not to mention that his mascot is busy racing other presidents at Nationals’ home baseball games. If you were to look at public opinion polls taken since 1948 of popular U.S. presidents, Lincoln beats out even George Washington himself as our nation’s most beloved leader.

 

Abraham Lincoln is now a legend in American history, but the real Abraham Lincoln had the bad luck of commanding a nation in its darkest hour and got unrelenting flack for doing so. Before he even had a chance to be sworn in as president, one newspaper was already slamming Lincoln’s ability to lead during a crisis. The Salem Advocate had this to say about him:  “His weak, wishy-washy, namby-pamby efforts, imbecile in matter, disgusting in manner, have made us the laughing stock of the whole world. The European powers will despise us because we have no better material out of which to make a President.” And that's coming from a newspaper in his home state!

 

And the jibes just kept on coming. Southern secessionists called him a devil and took potshots at his awkward appearance by referring to him as “the baboon.” His opponents complained that he was out to destroy the Constitution while his “friends” called him weak and slow to act. In fact, Lincoln might have lost the 1864 election to one of the most incompetent generals in U.S. history---we’ll talk more about George McClellan later-- had it not been for the capture of Atlanta, giving Honest Abe a last-minute popularity boost.

 

The Presidential Election of 1860 was unlike any in the history of American politics, and that made southern slave owners nervous. For starters, no U.S. president had ever been elected without the support of the slave states- until now. Stephen Douglas, the candidate of the more conservative Democratic Party, was all for popular sovereignty, a policy that said 'let the states and territories decide if slavery would be allowed'. Southern plantation owners thought putting slavery to a democratic vote was too risky and called Douglas a traitor.

 

The brand new Republican Party was definitely pro-northern. The Republicans favored the abolition of slavery, the expansion of industry and railroads, and tariffs to protect northern manufactured goods- basically everything the South hated. Their man for president was an unknown backwoods lawyer from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. Douglas and Lincoln squared off in a series of seven debates that pushed Lincoln into the White House and the nation into civil war.

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The Lincoln-Douglas debates brought “the negro issue” front and center on the political stage. Lincoln stood firm in his position that slavery was immoral and that the United States could not exist half free and half slave. Ultimately the entire country would have to become all free or all slave because “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Lincoln’s words fired up the hot-heads in the South who feared that the Republicans were secretly (and some not so secretly) plotting to end slavery.

 

Douglas tried to discredit Lincoln by playing on fears and racial prejudices. He gave speeches claiming that Republicans were going to stop at nothing less than full equality for African-Americans. In a nation where the majority believed in racial supremacy this really freaked people out. “Are you in favor of conferring upon the Negro the rights and privileges of citizenship?” Douglas painted a picture where black men would out-compete with whites for their jobs by working for lower wages. Then he sealed the deal by telling the  crowd “If you think that the Negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, you have a perfect right to do so…”

 

Douglas knew well that most whites, even those against slavery, did not support racial equality. Even Lincoln- the future “Great Emancipator”- told his supporters that he did not favor giving African-Americans equal rights. His goal was to abolish slavery, but slowly, and in a way that wouldn’t upset the South.

 

Southerners were so upset by Lincoln that they didn’t believe a word “the baboon” said. In fact, ten southern states left Lincoln’s name off of the ballot entirely. However, the most staunchly conservative southerners didn’t like that 'Yankee' Stephen Douglas any better. When Douglas was named the Democratic nominee they stormed out in protest and chose their own man- Vice President John Breckenridge.

 

The Democrats now had two presidential candidates. The race for the Presidency was already split three ways when John Bell, a Tennessee slave-owner, threw his hat in the ring as the candidate for the brand new Constitution Party. With so much division, Lincoln easily won the 1860 election with 180 Electoral College votes out of 312.