The Election of 1860- Abraham Lincoln

The Election of 1860

        A well known and famous president won the elections held on November 6, 1860 for the office of President of the United State, named Abraham Lincoln. With the election of  in 1860, and its success in guiding the Union to victory and abolishing slavery, it came to dominate the national scene until 1932. There were two main opposing sides which consisted of the Republican, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas from the democrat from the Illinois Senate. Although these were the main opposition there were also other people involved such as John C. Breckinridge representing Southern Democrats and John Bell from the Constitutional Union. Stephen A. Douglas, the candidate of the Northern Democrats, was opposed by John C. Breckenridge as a candidate of the Southerners. The "Constitutional Union" (late "American") party nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, while the Republicans offered as their candidate Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, whose record on the question at issue was embraced in a sentence of a recent speech: "I believe this government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free." The issue between freedom and slavery was for the first time clearly defined in a political contest. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery were pitted against each other in the most momentous election-contest the country had ever known. Lincoln might have been elected in any case. The  met in mid-May, after the Democrats had been forced to adjourn their convention in Charleston. With the Democrats in disarray and with a sweep of the Northern states possible, the Republicans were confident going into their convention in , Wigwam. Lincoln believed that, “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. He declared that USA was a house divided, and the country could not continue forever to be split on slavery issue. This attracted voters as well as enemies that disapproved his thoughts such as Douglas and Dred Scott. Overall, the republican candidate, Lincoln, appealed to economic and political concerns of the North. This was because it offered them cheap homestead for white Americans, fair farmer prices, just wages, tariffs for industrialists, and called on Congress to abolish slavery and admit Kansas as a free state. In the face of a divided and dispirited opposition, the , dominant in the North, secured enough electoral votes to put  in the  with very little support from the South.