The Election of Abraham Lincoln & Secession: Fifth Grade Social Studies
The presidential election of November 1860 was the most momentous and consequential election in American history, resulting in the victory of Abraham Lincoln and prompting the slaveholding states of the Deep South to tear the Union apart through secession.
The Shattered Political Landscape of 1860
As the presidential election of 1860 approached, the national political parties—the last institutions holding the fragile Union together—fractured along sectional lines. The Democratic Party, which had dominated national politics for decades, met for its national nominating convention in Charleston, South Carolina, in April 1860.
Northern Democrats backed Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who supported popular sovereignty. However, radical Southern Democrats ("fire-eaters") demanded a federal slave code guaranteeing the protection of slavery in all western territories. When Douglas's supporters refused, delegates from eight Southern states walked out of the convention in protest. Unable to agree on a candidate, the Democrats met again in Baltimore, where the party fractured completely into two opposing tickets:
- Northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who campaigned on popular sovereignty.
- Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, who campaigned on the unyielding expansion and federal protection of slavery in all territories.
Meanwhile, moderate politicians from the Upper South and former Whigs formed the Constitutional Union Party, nominating John Bell of Tennessee. Their platform ignored the slavery issue entirely, advocating solely for "The Constitution of the Country, the Union of the States, and the Enforcement of the Laws."
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| THE FOUR-WAY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1860 |
| |
| CANDIDATE PARTY KEY PLATFORM |
| ----------------- --------------------- ------------------|
| ABRAHAM LINCOLN Republican Party Halt expansion of |
| slavery; protect |
| free soil & tariff|
| |
| STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS Northern Democratic Popular |
| Party sovereignty |
| |
| JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE Southern Democratic Federal slave code|
| Party protecting slavery|
| in all territories|
| |
| JOHN BELL Constitutional Union Preserve Union and|
| Party Constitution; |
| ignore slavery |
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Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Platform
Meeting in the bustling railroad hub of Chicago inside a giant temporary wooden auditorium called the "Wigwam," the Republican Party gathered to select its presidential nominee. The frontrunner was Senator William H. Seward of New York. However, Seward was viewed by many as too radical in his anti-slavery views.
Party leaders turned instead to Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. Lincoln was a moderate, self-made lawyer born in a Kentucky log cabin who had earned national fame during the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates for the U.S. Senate. Although Lincoln had lost that Senate race, his eloquence, integrity, and humble frontier background made him an appealing candidate capable of carrying the vital battleground states of Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. On the third ballot, Lincoln won the Republican nomination.
The Republican platform was crafted to appeal to a broad coalition of Northern voters:
- Firmly opposed the expansion of slavery into any federal territories, while reassuring the South that Republicans had no constitutional intention or desire to interfere with slavery where it already existed in the states.
- High protective tariffs to protect Northern manufacturing from foreign competition.
- A federal Homestead Act offering 160 acres of free western land to family farmers.
- Federal funding to construct a transcontinental railroad linking the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The Election Results: A Nation Divided
The election of 1860 was essentially two separate regional elections: Lincoln faced Douglas in the North, while Breckinridge faced Bell in the South.
Southern leaders made no secret of their intentions: they publicly warned that if the "Black Republican" Lincoln was elected, the Southern states would secede from the Union. Anti-Lincoln rhetoric in the South was so hysterical and intense that Lincoln's name was not even placed on the presidential ballot in ten Southern states.
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| THE ELECTION OF 1860 RESULTS |
| |
| CANDIDATE POPULAR VOTE (%) ELECTORAL VOTES |
| ----------------- ---------------- --------------- |
| ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1,865,908 (39.8%) 180 (59.4%) - WON! |
| J.C. BRECKINRIDGE 848,019 (18.1%) 72 (23.8%) |
| JOHN BELL 590,901 (12.6%) 39 (12.9%) |
| STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 1,380,202 (29.5%) 12 (4.0%) |
| |
| TOTAL ELECTORAL VOTES: 303 | NEEDED TO WIN: 152 |
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On November 6, 1860, the votes were counted. Abraham Lincoln won a commanding victory in the Electoral College, capturing 180 electoral votes—well over the 152 needed to win. Lincoln carried every single free Northern state (except for a partial split in New Jersey).
However, Lincoln won less than forty percent of the national popular vote, and did not receive a single electoral vote from any slave state. For the first time in American history, a president had been elected entirely by the votes of one geographic section of the country.
To Southern slaveholders, Lincoln's election was a political catastrophe. The South realized that the demographic growth of the free North through European immigration had given the free states permanent control of the presidency and the House of Representatives. Southerners believed that even if Lincoln did not immediately abolish slavery, his administration would surround the South with free states, choking off slavery's expansion until the institution withered and died.
Secession: The Deep South Tears Away
South Carolina acted immediately. On December 20, 1860, special delegates met in Charleston and voted unanimously (169 to 0) to pass the Ordinance of Secession, declaring: "The union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved." Charleston erupted in wild celebrations with fireworks, ringing church bells, and military parades.
Within six weeks, six other states of the Deep South followed South Carolina out of the Union: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
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| THE FIRST WAVE OF SECESSION (1860-1861) |
| |
| 1. SOUTH CAROLINA - December 20, 1860 (First to secede!) |
| 2. MISSISSIPPI - January 9, 1861 |
| 3. FLORIDA - January 10, 1861 |
| 4. ALABAMA - January 11, 1861 |
| 5. GEORGIA - January 19, 1861 |
| 6. LOUISIANA - January 26, 1861 |
| 7. TEXAS - February 1, 1861 |
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In February 1861, delegates from the seven seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to draft a constitution and establish a new independent nation: the Confederate States of America (commonly called the Confederacy). They elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a former U.S. senator and Secretary of War, as provisional President, and Alexander Stephens of Georgia as Vice President.
The Confederate Constitution was modeled closely on the U.S. Constitution, but with critical changes: it explicitly protected the institution of slavery, guaranteed the right of citizens to own enslaved people in any territory, and strictly prohibited protective tariffs. In a famous speech in Savannah, Georgia, Vice President Alexander Stephens articulated the foundational ideology of the Confederacy in his "Cornerstone Speech," proclaiming: "Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition."
The Lame-Duck Crisis and Lincoln's First Inaugural Address
Between Lincoln's election in November 1860 and his inauguration on March 4, 1861, the nation suffered under the paralyzed, "lame-duck" presidency of James Buchanan. Buchanan declared that while secession was unconstitutional, the federal government had no constitutional power to stop a state from seceding. As Buchanan watched helplessly, Confederate state authorities seized federal customs houses, post offices, mints, and military arsenals across the South.
Last-minute compromise efforts in Congress collapsed. Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky proposed the Crittenden Compromise, which offered to extend the old 36°30' Missouri Compromise line all the way to California through an unamendable constitutional amendment. Lincoln firmly rejected the proposal, refusing to compromise on the core principle of his election: "Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there is, all our labor is lost... Have none of it. Stand firm. The tug has to come, and better now, than any time hereafter."
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| LINCOLN'S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS |
| (March 4, 1861) |
| |
| KEY CONSTITUTIONAL DECLARATIONS: |
| 1. Secession is legally VOID and an act of REBELLION: |
| "The Union of these States is perpetual... No State upon |
| its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union." |
| 2. Pledged not to interfere with slavery where it exists. |
| 3. Vowed to "hold, occupy, and possess" federal property. |
| |
| CLOSING PLEA FOR PEACE: |
| "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." |
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On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln stood on the East Portico of the unfinished U.S. Capitol building—under the shadow of a construction crane erecting the giant cast-iron dome—to take the oath of office.
In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln spoke with calm firmness and poignant beauty. He declared that the Union was perpetual and that secession was legally void, defining secession as "the essence of anarchy." He promised that he would not initiate violence, but warned that he was bound by his constitutional oath to "hold, occupy, and possess" all federal forts and properties in the South.
Addressing the Southern people directly, Lincoln concluded with an emotional plea for peace: "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.' We are not enemies, but friends... The mystic chords of memory... will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Tragically, Lincoln's plea fell on deaf ears in the South, where Confederate artillery was already zeroed in on a lone federal fortress in Charleston Harbor: Fort Sumter.
Chapter Review and Exercises
Summary Review Exercises
Exercise One asks students to explain how the fracturing of the Democratic Party into Northern and Southern factions in 1860 made the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln possible. The response should explain that Northern Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas on popular sovereignty while Southern Democrats nominated John C. Breckinridge on federal slave codes, splitting the Democratic vote and allowing Lincoln to sweep the populous Northern states to secure a decisive majority in the Electoral College.
Exercise Two asks students to analyze the primary reasons why the states of the Deep South seceded from the United States immediately following Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860. The response should detail the Southern belief that the demographic dominance of the free North left them politically powerless, explaining their conviction that Lincoln's Republican administration would halt the expansion of slavery in the territories, ultimately strangling the institution upon which Southern wealth and social order depended.
Exercise Three requires students to summarize the constitutional arguments presented by Abraham Lincoln in his First Inaugural Address regarding the legality of secession and the defense of federal property. The response should explain Lincoln's assertion that the Union was perpetual and that individual states possessed no lawful authority to leave, highlighting his pledge to enforce federal law and hold federal property while appealing to "the better angels of our nature" to avert war.
Detailed Solutions
Solution to Exercise One clarifies that the Democratic split was an ideological rupture over federal protection for slavery. By fielding rival candidates, the divided Democratic Party surrendered northern battlegrounds to Lincoln, whose disciplined Republican coalition won a decisive Electoral College victory based entirely on Northern free-state support.
Solution to Exercise Two reveals that secession was an aggressive preemptive strike to safeguard human slavery. As articulated in Confederate founding documents and Alexander Stephens's "Cornerstone Speech," the deep South seceded explicitly because they viewed a Republican president committed to halting slavery's western expansion as an existential threat to their slave-based civilization.
Solution to Exercise Three details that Lincoln's First Inaugural Address defined the constitutional stakes of the conflict. By framing secession as illegal rebellion and refusing to surrender federal property, Lincoln placed the moral burden of firing the first shot squarely upon Confederate leaders, while maintaining that the democratic republic must prove it was capable of preserving itself.