Download The Election of 1860

The Election of 1860
The Whig Party
The northern wing of the Whig Party
had become antislavery
 The southern wing was proslavery
 The result of the break up was the
creation of the Republican Party in 1854
 The party was made up of antislavery
Whigs and Democrats

The Democratic candidates that ran for
President in 1860 were Stephen Douglas
of Illinois (L) and then Vice President John
Breckenridge of Kentucky
 Douglas was antislavery and Breckenridge
was proslavery


With the split in Democratic votes for
Douglas and Breckenridge, the
Republican Party’s Abraham Lincoln
easily won the election
The Republicans’ Platform…

Republicans opposed the spread of
slavery
Lincoln elected…
Lincoln won the election
without receiving ONE
electoral vote from a
southern state
His election laid the
groundwork for secession
and the Civil War
Lincoln’s address to country


In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in
mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will
not assail you. You can have no conflict without being
yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in
heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most
solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must
not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not
break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory,
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be,
by the better angels of our nature.
Georgia reacts…

While many Georgians were for the Union,
they felt more strongly for states’ rights
 They didn’t want the Federal Government
telling them what to do
(below: the Georgia secession flag of 1861)
Joseph E. Brown was Georgia’s
governor when Lincoln was elected
 Brown reacted to Lincoln’s election by
calling a legislative session to discuss
seceding from the Union

Secession
Alexander Stephens gave a fiery
speech to the legislature opposing
secession from the Union
 Robert Toombs and Thomas Cobb
interrupted Stephens many times,
arguing for secession
 On November 21, 1860, Gov. Brown
called for a secession convention

South
Carolina
Secedes

South Carolina, knowing that a Lincoln
victory would ensure the end of slavery,
seceded from the Union on December
20, 1860 (just one month after Lincoln’s
election)
After South Carolina’s secession, extremists in other
southern states were loudly yelling to follow
 By February 1, 1861, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, and TX had
followed
 The Confederate States of America was formed,
naming Jefferson Davis of Mississippi its president
