and thanks for joining us for our new american history tv series, historic presidential elections. during this current election season, we are looking back at past presidential races. this week, it's a look at the

contentious election of 1860. well, it was the eve of the civil war in november of 1860. abraham lincoln won the white house over several other candidates, but took less than 40% of the vote. he was the first republican to be elected president. and in december of that year, before he took office, a group of southern states pulled out of the union. abraham lincoln was sworn int office in march of 1861. within a few short weeks, the civil war had begun helping us to understand the election of 1860. as rachel sheldon, a history professor at penn state university. she teaches about that era and is the author of this book, washington the brotherhood, politics, social life and the coming of the civil war. she also directs the george and and richard civil war era center at penn state. professor sheldon, regardless of

who won the election of 1860, was civil war inevitable? well, you know, historians don't really think anything is inevitable. and we believe that everything is a result of a series of contingencies where people behave and express since the moment. so it's always hard to say something is inevitable. but in general, the conflicts over slavery tt had exied in the country for a very long time were likely to produce some sort of conflict over slavery that would have resulted in violence, whether it was going to happen in 1861 or 1870 or 1900. that was an open question. so lincoln's election did not necessarily mean civil war. even in 1860, there was not

necessarily going to be the civil war that we got. the secessn winter that came after. changed a lot about what the nature of that war was going to look like. there were possibilities for other states to join the confederacy. there were possibilities for states that joined the confederacy not to be in the confederacy. so everything is sort of contingent on the experiences of the people who lived through it. but conflict over slavery because slavery is what caused the civil war, certainly would have caused some conflict. but lincoln said it very well. in june of 1858, when he gave his house divided speech that the country was not going to be able to live divided half slave and half free. and that was going to cause some kind of conflict. just what that conflict look like is a little bit hard to predict. professor sheldon, besides slavery, were there other issues debated in the 1860 election?

well, i think the the main question in was whether slavery was going to exist in the territories. so when we think about the conflict over slavery, we sometimes think about it as a conflict over whether slavery is going to exist in the southern states, because eventually in the civil war, what happens is that slavery is eradicated in the southern states. but the real conflict was actually about extension of slavery, slavery in the territories that had not yet been formed into states. and the real question is about what the country was going to look like in the future rather than what the country looked like at that moment. and so people cared a lot about those kinds of issues. and that extends much further than just the question of what slavery looks like at that moment. but in general, most of those questions are connected to slavery. people did care about questions of immigration, particularly in the north.

there had been a massive immigration, particularly from catholic immigrants. and so those questions factored in somewhat to who was going to he nominee in the republican party. but in general, slavery is what was driving a lot of the questions of the election. why did the incumbent, james buchanan, decide not to run for reelection? buchanan had actually sworn at the beginning of his term that he would not run for reelection and was much more common in that period for presidents not to run for reelection. we had had a lot of one term presidency. some people wanted him to be to be running again. but he had already said that he was not going to run for reelection. is it fair to compare to the election of 1860 and the tensions that were felt to the tensions and dislocation felt today. you know, i think it's really hard to do that. and, of course, a lot of the

questions that we care about today were central to the 1860 election because the civil war is in many ways the defining moment of our country. with apologies to my friends who teach the american revolution in the framing of the constitution. i mean, the civil war is the moment where we really ce to grips with questions of whether the union will survive and what the meaning of that union is, whether democracy is a viable form of government, and what slavery and race will look like in this nation. and those are questions that matter a lot, i think, to who we are as a people today. but the landscape that existed in the 1860 election just looks so different. the people were so different. we were still even though there were cities, primarily an agrarian nation in 1860. our political system looked

very, very different. there were four candidates in the 1860 election. political parties operated very, very differently. there were the possibility for many different political parties. the fact that there were four candidates was not actually all that unusual. the electorate went to the polls in a very different way. so in thinking about that election, you can draw lessons from it. but i would be very concerned about thinking about the election as sort of a similar kind of election to this one that we are in right now. well, let's give you an idea of what the country looked like in 1860. james buchanan was the president. he declined to run again. the population was 31 million, nearly 4 million. of those 31 million were slaves. 33 states, ten organized territories. 90% of manufacture came from the northern states at the time.

in a macro sense, professor sheldon, what was it like to live in america at that time? that's a good question. it was a it was a violent place to live. you know, in every single person who lived in the united states would have been much more familiar with violence. was a place where p in experienced violence much more in their lives. it was a place where people were worried about the future and where they understood that democracy was fragile. they their experience with democracy was that it had not survived previously, that it was something that they did not know would survive. it was a situation in which people were worried about their own well-being. they had just gone through a financial panic in 1857. they weren't sure about the future of their economic benefits.

people living in the north in particular, especially in the region we now call the midwest, but mostly people called the west in this period were very interested in moving into the territories. of course, native americans had been displaced and were being displaced by white americans living in the north who wanted to move into the west. but they were very interested in moving their families west, which is part of the reason why they were so concerned about questions of slavery. many of these people wanted to move into the western territories to be free of questions of race and slavery. it wasn't necessarily because they were concerned about the problems of slavery and concern for african-americans. it was because they wanted to be free of african-americans. they wanted to live in a white nation. and so they were hoping to move west and find a better life for their families in these areas. and so in general, there was a lot of instability in the united

states in this period. a lot of worry about the future and a lot of instability in the political system because there were all these questions about what the future would look like. well, as you mentioned earlier, there were four political parties in this presidential race of 1860. the republicans, for the first timead abraham lincoln and hannibal hamlin, the democrats, stephen douglas and herschel johnson, southern democrats, john breckinridge d seph lane and the constitutional union party. john bell and edward everett. if you could give us a snapshot of those parties and the men on the ticket. absolutely. so in general, when we think about politicapaies, we imagine this very long campaign season, and that did exist in the 19th century campaigns for the presidency began.

the minute that the previous president was elected. but it di't work the same way in terms of political primaries. so party organization did not control parties the way we think of today. they were really much more grassroots organizations, and there were no political primaries. instead, people thought about their political parties as convention oriented. so candidates were actually chosen at conventions. there was no expectation of who was going to be the candidate before the convention. and so the convention mattered quite a bit. so in 1860, at the start out, there were going to be three candidates. at least that's what people thought, because the democrats had not yet decided that they were going to split up. they got ready in 1860 and april to choose a democratic candidate. and it just so happened that

they had decided to meet in convention in charleston, south carolina, in april. and that was a really unfortunate for the moats decision to meet in charleston, because that was the home of the biggest fire had population fire had fire eaters cu me, population fire eaters were the people who were most interested in seceding fr union. and they caused all kinds of havoc in the democratic convention in a bunch of southern delegates to that convention, walked out without choosing a standard bearer for the democratic party. so they leave that convention and they were there in all kinds of disarray. they end up reconvening in june in baltimore, trying to pick somebody from that party. and still the southerners are unhappy with what is going on in that convention. and so they also leave that convention. and what happens is northerners who remain and you southerners end up picking stephen douglas to be their party's nominee.

and he is, as as most people know, lincoln's sort of chief rival in illinois. he'd been involved in party politics for a very long time, mostly responsible for the compromise of 1850. one of the most important pieces of legislation that had passed congress in many years involving the fugitive slave act, involving the compromise that had sort of kept the union together, supposedly in in previous times in conflicts over slavery. and herschel johnson from georgia, who is sort of a someone that's meant to keep southerners in line in terms of this ticket. he was a massive slaveholder and someone who really had had been a pro douglass guy for a long time. so there was an expectation that maybe they could bring along some other democrats. but the southerners convene

elsewhere and they decide to nominate john c breckinridge, who was the sitting vice president under buchanan. so a different democratic ticket. and they their their vice president, while candidate lane is a is a someone from oregon who actually came from indiana. he is very pro-slavery. he ends up being very pro confederate or oregon or actually not really that in favor of him, but he ends up being the vice presidential candidate on that ticket. so the democrats are split. this is really devastating for a lot of democrats. there are all kinds of efforts to try to rejoin the democratic party. there are even some people who try to put in substitute democrats. there are all kinds of schemes to to get roger tawney, the chief justice of the supreme court is the new democratic candidate for president. but none of this works. and so you end up with two democratic candidates. then you have the constitutional

union party, which is a group of folks who are really concerned about the future of the union. it's made up of what people called conservatives in this period. we think of conservatives in a very particular way today, but conservatives are more like what you would imagine to be moderates. people who were worried that there was a trend toward more and more sectionalism. it's really all about trying to stick to the compromise that had existed in the past. they come together in convention. ey nominate john bell of tennessee, a long standing potical player in washington, very concerned about the future of the union and their vice presidential candidate is edward everett of massachusetts. everett is quite famous for later giving a two hour speech at gettysburg before lincoln's two minute speech that is probably one of the most famous speeches in american history.

but everett was a very famous orator, very long standing politician. he had been secretary of state, a senator, congressman, minister to britain. many people thought he should have been the nominee, but this was expected it to be actually a better ticket because bell was a southerner. so they're trying to balance north and south in all of these tickets as you can hear. thenou have the republicans. so the republicans meet in chicago in may. and this is a very feisty convention. so the republicans are a newer party. this is their second convention. they had first met in 1856 and nominated john c fremont. he did not do all that well. but, you know, this is a this is a move that is going to get more attention in 1860. and there are lots of potential candidates in 1860, many really well-regarded political candidates.

william seward and salmon chase, both of whom are going to end up in lincoln's cabinet. william seward from new york. salmon chase from ohio. you're also going to have edward bates from missouri, who was a conservative, someone who people thought might be a potential match for the constitutional union party. maybe we could bring those parties together. and then you have john mcclane, who was an associate justice on the supreme court, who was actually lincoln's choice in 1856 for the nomination. i'm quite old at this time. he's just going to die in in. march 1861. so lincoln sort of said, well, he's a little old at this point. and then you have lincoln, who had become quite famous at this point. some for his debates with lincoln in 18 are, excuse me, with douglass in 1858 and some from his cooper union speech in

february 1860. much more well known in the north by this point. and lincoln is not going to go to the convention. it's not normal for people who are presidential candidates to go to conventions, conventions are very serious affairs. and it was looked down upon in the 19th century for presidential candidates to actually run for president. other people ran for you. so lincoln sends his, you know, one of his closest friends to chicago to basically run his nomination for him. and this person is david davis. david davis was a judge on the eighth judicial circuit in illinois. pete davidson, lincoln had gone back many, many years. davis had been used. lincoln as a lawyer. lincoln had served on the eighth judicial circuit in das's

stead. several times. they had long worked together and laughed together. they were great friends. and so davis goes to chicago, and he works with several of lincoln's friends, both lawyers and politicians. and they set out to capture the nomination for lincoln and their very successful at the convention. there are only three ballots to get lincoln the nomination. and this is really impressive. it's not so easy to do this in the democratic convention. they have a very old rule that says, you have to capture two thirds of the of the delegates. this is not the case in the republican convention. and so lincoln is nominated and there is a lot of party unity and it's a really big deal. and they get hannibal hamlin to be his vice presidential candidate. different kind of balance on that ticket. lincoln had come from. one political party, from the early from the 1840s called the whig party, where hamlin had come from, the democratic party

previously. so they're trying to balance the ticket that way. so you have all of this political machination. none of it is preordained. all of it is sort of part of the political organizing and working through it. and a lot of contingency that gets these guys the nomination. well, the library of congress holds many artifacts regarding the election of 1860, one of them as a telegraph from may of that year, proposing abraham lincoln as the presidential nominee. what was his career up to that point? rachel sheldon. so lincoln had been very involved in politics in illinois. he'd had one term in the house of representatives where, you know, he didn't really distinguish himself that much. it was really hard to distinguish yourself as a one term congressman. but he had made plenty of friends in illinois and davis was one of them, but many others. lincoln had been had traveled around the state for a long time

as a lawyer. and if you were a lawyer in the state, you were also a politician. they were almost anonymous. so he had gone on many speaking tours right? 1858, though, he had really established himself in part through his lincoln-douglas debates and these are debates in preparation for the senate campaign in 1858. as you all know, the the senate campaigns were in order to get the state legislature to vote for you for the senate. right. because the senate is not popularly elected in this period. and so lincoln and douglas are traveling around the state in 1858 to make their case that they should go to the u.s. senate and this is a very important moma for lincoln because he is demonstrated that he can make leopold litical arguments on behalf of the

republican party for why it is important to restrict slavery in the territories and why the democrat arguments have been so problematic. arguments that douglass had been making about why it is really just fine for people to be able to take their what they called property, enslaved people to the territories, people like douglass, but also people like roger tawney, the chief justice of the supreme court, people like james buchanan, the president of the united states. at this time. and he and douglass really spar over this. and so in 1858, he really makes a name for himself in the state. and then it is covered regionally and then somewhat nationally. d then in 1860, in preparation for the nomination, for the republican nomination, he gives a very important speech at cooper union in new york in front of several people who are key players in the republican

party, including horace greeley, an important newspaper editor. newspaper editors were often politicians in the 19th century, more than not, they were politicians, and horace greeley was one of them. and so lincoln gives this very important speech at cooper union, where he again gives a key political argument for why it is important to restrict slavery in the territories and why it is constitutionally possible to restrict slavery in the territories. why the republican party that has made it its mission to do this is allowed to and should, and why the constitution says that this is possible. and so lincoln has made a name for himself in making this argument clear and selling it to the people. and this is sort of how lincoln builds his reputation. well, lincoln historian and author harold holzer talks more about that cooper union speech

and its importance. this is from the c-span archives. part one is his research proof that 23 of the 39 founding fathers voted for federal authority over slavery? and he uses the phrase our fathers when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better than we do now. he repeats that phrase 15 times during his speech. he says the phrase our fathers, with all of its deep association and meanings, 30 times he mentions george washington eight times, jefferson twice the number 39, 20 times. he hits out over and over that he understands what the founders knew more than stephen douglass and the democrats. and then the second part of the argument, actually a second speech, a few words to the south, if they would listen, is i'm sure they wouldn't. he says this is a greek device

called poppea. lecturing to an absent opponent. he knows the south is not going to read this speech and that there were no southerners in the audience. there's actually one correspondent for the richmond whig who's probably a new yorker. don't ever say that. if you leave the union, it's our fault. we're for union. we're for peace. we're for freedom. ultimately, we're not for interfering with your institutions. you cannot use us as an excuse for breaking up this union. and then an abrupt switch. this is after about an hour for part three of the speech. the moral conclusion. never let anyone tell us that slavery is right, because as many times as you say, it's right, it's wrong. and the famous paraphrase right makes might and the room erupts into cheers. people wave hats. lincoln is touted in one of the

subsequent speeches as a candidate for the presidency. no, he doesn't just go home. i'll tell you this part very quickly. he must be complete, utterly and thoroughly exhausted after doing 2 hours with no microphone in the heat. he's then taken to dinner by his hosts, where he has to sort of perform as one would have do for another hour and a half by the time he's taken back to the streetcar. he's limping so badly, his hoses. are you lame, mr. lincoln? he says, no. i bought a new pair of boots for this trip, and they're pinching so desperately. and the man wrote and said, i still see him getting on the streetcar alone. a lonely figure who knows what destiny awaited him. blah, blah, blah. lincoln knew what destiny awaited him. the destiny was to go right to the offices of the new york tribune, where he had deposited his manuscript up and make sure that they typeset it word for word the way he wanted it to appear. i think they had a pool arrangement because the next morning for newspapers carried the speech.

one fortunately, with the audience reaction included. and lincoln supervises two rounds of galleys himself. that's how eager he is for this speech to be in circulation. the only bad part of this is that in the old newspaper days, when you finished with the original piece of paper and you're satisfied, you just drop it to the floor because you want to get it out of the way. it's done. and there is a man who comes around and sweeps up the floor every 10 minutes. so lincoln's cooper union manuscript, unless some brilliant savant picked it up, it's swept out forever. and we'll never see it. the next morning, three newspapers by afternoon for newspapers, 1500 heard him. a quarter of a million now can read the speech and the editorials pronouncing it one of the great speeches and the tribune saying no man ever made a greater impression on his first appearance in new york. this is what he wanted. the eastern press establishment, as he heads up to providence to

begin another speaking engagement, to go to another speaking engagement. the evening post comes out with its edition. the tribune goes into overdrive to publish a pamphlet version. lincoln goes on to speak in providence, concord and manchester, new hampshire, dover and exeter, new hampshire. hartford, new haven. meriden. woonsocket, norwich and bridgeport through march 10th. by the time he gets back to illinois pamphlet to have appeared of the cooper union address and in all these speeches, he reiterates the arguments of cooper union with a little local flavor, ending always with the peroration that's now become a stock phrase. let us have faith that right makes my. by the time he gets back to illinois, pamphlets in new york and washington, detroit, chicago and albany, a german pamphlet is underway and his hosts say, let's bring out a beautiful edition of your speech with footnotes. you did so much research.

can we have your footnotes? lincoln is on to the next thing. he didn't save any footnotes. so they have to take three weeks in the library and in the historical society to reassess able the footnotes and call on historians. and they prove every one of his cases with documentation and they put out a footnoted version. a month and a half, two and a half months later. lincoln is nominated. he doesn't get any votes from new york. so his conquest of new york is in the press and in its reach. he gets not a single delegate vote on three ballots from new york. he does break loose some new england delegates on the second and third ballots. and of course, in the campaign itself, he only gets 30 something percent of the vote in new york city. so the idea that lincoln conquered new york city, of course, is not true. but he knew what new york could do for national candidate in terms of publicity. and this is the american history tv series historic presidential elections. we're looking at the election of

1860. our guest, rachel sheldon of penn state university. professor sheldon, so at some point in 1860, we have abraham lincoln, we have steph uglas, we have john breckinridge, and we have john bell. all nominated by their parties. at what point in the year did we have these finalist and how did the campaign shape up after that? so all of these all of these folks are nominated by june, by the end of june, and we have them as candidate. mostly they are not campaigning. stephen douglass actually ends up campaigning. it's very unusual. this is sort of out of the norm that he goes to the south to campaign. and and some folks look down on him because as part of sort of the standard of american respectability politics, you do not campaign for yourself. but douglass, just a little bit

of this and mostly what happens is that other peop cpaign for you. and one of the places this happens is through newspapers. as i mentioned, newspapers were a newspaper editors and newspaper writers were politicians in this period, and newspapers were political. they were openly political. they were expected to be political. our norms today about what is sort of fair or biased or whatever is sort of the standard for what journalism should look like. it's just not something that existed in the 19th century. people didn't expect newspapers to work that way. newspapers had a very particular way of operating where they would be connected. nine times out of ten to a particular candidate. so there were lincoln papers. there were douglass papers. there were breckinridge papers. and there were bell papers. and many of these papers, especially in small towns around the country, were creatdid for this campaign.

and they would run all kinds of articles promoting their candidate, trying to get ready for the campaign. they would be really important when it came to the actual election itself, because they would also print the tickets that people would bring to the voting booth. but in the meantime, they are going to get ready, buy promoting their candidates, printing large portions of the campaign literature that is going to be produced during this period. you're also going to have lots of rallies, public rallies. lincoln had a large group of supporters known as the wide awakes, which was sort of a pseudo military group of supporters who would get together at sort of torchlight parade and walk around supporting lincoln. and there were huge gatherings of these pseudo military groups in big cities around the country, philadelphia and new york and boston and cleveland

really supporting lincoln. you had these sort of public displays. women would get involved in these displays. women were very involved in politics in this period. you also had women newspaper editors who would produce this kind of campaign literature. you would have balls and other parties to sort of promote the candidate. and so people are very involved in the campaign. american politics was a very, very intensive process in this period, not just voting, but also just conversely, ation and constant inundation of politics, because people believe these elections were a matter of life and death for the future of the nation. yeah. tocqueville had been in the country, what, 20 years earlier, and he said that during the presidential elections, americans take this very seriously. and then move on.

yes, that's exactly right. you know, one of the things that i think is kind of dangerous about comparing this election and today to, the 1860 election is that the 1860 election actually was in all things considered, a very peaceful election, and people accepted the results immediately. nobody really disputed that lincoln had won the election. and that's that's really true. they they voted they weren't very happy about the results. but everyone sort of said, okay, well, lincoln won the election. so in this case, tocqueville was quite right. they're very intense. it's a very intense campaign. people are very concerned about it. they're very involved in the campaign. there are all of efforts all the way up through october as i mentioned, to try to change out the democratic candidate and unite the democratic party. but once the election happens, everyone accepts where most

people accept the result, they're always, of course, people who are talking about corruption or whatever. this is a this is a common thing. in the 19th century. but in general, this is a very well accepted outcome. rachel sheldon, you mentioned that stephen douglas hit the campaign trail from time to time when it came to abe lincoln, john breckinridge and john bell. what were they doing? was a lincoln back in springfield monitor during the campaign, directing the campaign. it was important for candidates not to get involved because they not not at least publicly, publicly because, it was considered inappropriate. so they were not able to sort of get up and give massive stump speeches in the way that you would imagine today, the way that the candidates do on the campaign trail. so you let your surrogates do it for you. you let newspapers do it for you. and this was considered the appropriate way to handle presidential campaigns. well, also from the library of

back then, they had campaign trinkets just as we do today. here's a look at an ohio campaign ticket supporting democrat stephen douglas and herschel johnson. professor sheldon, what were these campaign tickets and what was their import, if any? so this is actually a ticket that you would bring to the voting booth to vote. so today we vote using a standard ballot that is printed by states that you will get in a secret ballot. you would take it. you would get it at the polling station. it would be given to you and printed for you, and you would select who you want. this is not how voting worked in the 19th century. there was no such thing as an australian ballot at this time. australian ballot is the name for the kinds of ballots that we use today. instead, voting was much more haphazard. you would have to bring a ticket

that was printed already from somewhere else to the voting booth, or else able to properly spell whoever it was that you wanted to vote for. so voting was a very different kind of process. you would go to the polls and you would either bring with you something written down with the names of, the people that you wanted to vote for or somebody who was represented. tip of the campaign would hand you a piece of campaign ticket or literature that would allow you to vote for those person, for those people that were part of that party. and so that's really important. the ticket that you've got there is from a newspaper that is supporting douglas and herschel johnson, and you would have cut that out of a newspaper and brought with you to the polling place to turn in at the voting booth. this is a very strange way in our modern context to think about voting. but it's really important

because it shows you exactly the role that newspapers play played in this period. newspapers not only gave you this kind of publicity and support, they also played the role of printing the tickets that people brought to the polling station. this is also where the name party ticket comes from, that people would vote the party ticket that they cut out of the newspaper and brought to the polling place. so what does this mean? it's really important for thinking about how ballots work, because if you are a candidate that has support in a place like illinois, then you are going to have newspapers that print ballots like this, party tickets like this to bring to the polling station. but if you're a candidate that doesn't have local support, there aren't going to be any party tickets for you. somebody has to go to the trouble to write them out.

somebody has to go to the trouble to print out something. with your name on it. and so they're sort of an old chestnut bit. lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in the south in 1860, but that's sort of misunderstood since the entire process of voting, because there just weren't a lot of places that had newspaper bers that were in favor of lincoln in 1860. and so there weren't a lot of places that printed tickets with lincoln on it in 1860 where people could go to the polls and vote for lincoln. the process of voting was so tied to newspapers and campaign literature. if you didn't want it to print this out of a newspaper, then if you went to the polls, another way to do it was to receive a ticket from one of the people who might be monitoring the polls, the party. but this also be a little dangerous. you would have party representatives come in sort of who are you with?

maybe a coin here, a little bit of alcohol there. there were shoulder hitters who would come and try to knock you out of line if they thought that maybe you were going to vote for the wrong guy. we think sometimes that there might be a little bit of, you know, voter fraud. today. there's really no voter today. there was a lot of voter fraud or voter corruption in the 19th century. in every election because it was much harder to maintain regularity. when you have these kinds of sort of ad hoc process for voting. so in terms of the actual vote, you're going always have a little bit of irregularity. professor sheldon was money handled. campaign money in 1860? yeah. so this is a little bit harder to track, right? because we think of, again, campaigns as being centralized

or organized from the top down. but in the 19th century, parties did not work that way. parties were really grassroots, organized. so almost all the parties we think of as the republican party, the democratic party, or any other party that exists are really coalitions of state and local parties that have their own organizations. and those organizations come together every four years to nominate a president, but they're often so different. and so remove from one another that they are not actually in tune with each other's policies. there is very little centralized nation of parties the way we imagine today. and as a result, the money is much more grassroots. it's much more individual people supporting newspapers, funding newspapers. and then local production of

things. people who are able to support campaign literature are again, wealthy benefactors or just sort of grass roots movements. so one thing that happens, of course, is that women who want to be really involved in campaigns don't need a lot of money to sort of knit campaign tokens or for others to sort of like get together in a in a rally that doesn't require a lot of money. so when we think about money in politics, there's just not the same kind of correlation to the 19th century. 31 million people in the us, 4 million of them were slaves. in 1860. how many people voted and who could vote? yeah, this is a very good question. so only about 7 million people voted in the election.

that's fewer than 45% of the voting age. so even though turnout is 81.2%, that's an enormous number. it's just not same amount because there are all these restrictions on, the kinds of people that can vote because african-americans can't vote, women can't vote. we always have to keep ts in mind right. there's huge turnout in terms of the eligible voters, but there's not that many eligible voters because of all these restriction on who can vote. we only get 39% for link, 39, more than 39% for lincoln. and then we get all of this distribution. but lincoln overwhelmingly wins the electoral college. this is a really big for him. sometimes. again, people assume that if the democrats had come together,

maybe they could have won. really, the math does not support that. there's there's really no possible party for the democrats to win. maybe they could have gotten california and oregon and had they come together. but even they probably would not have been able to capture enough electoral votes if they hadn't captured belle's votes, plus calif warrant. calif in oregon and come together that really only gets them to a 130. still not enough to capture the electoral college. lincoln wins decisively in way he gets 18 states. they're all from the north. but these are enough people to win the election. and here are the final results. abraham lincoln, 39.9% of the vote, 180 electoral votes. stephen douglas, 29.5% of the vote. electoral votes. now, john breckinridge, the

southern democratic candidate, got 18.1% of the vote, but received 72 electoral votes. and john bell, the constitutional union candidate, 12.6%. 39 electoral votes. here's the map as well of the breakdown of states. any surprises when you look at that map of which state voted for which candidate? i think the biggest surprise probably to people at the time was the shift from california. california had voted for buchanan in 1856 and then moved to lincoln in 1860. but it's a very it's a very tight election. lincoln only wins california by a little more than 700 votes. and california is going to continue to be a little bit of an issue for him because it is a very divided state. lincoln also only wins illinois

by about 12,000 votes. he loses his home, his home county. he's he's a little nervous about illinois. so there are there are sort of shifts in the electorate that are a little bit nervous for him. one thing to also know about the way that politics works in this period is that you have to remember that people are moving all the time. there's a lot of movement in the country in this period, particularly in the north. and so the electorate is always changing from city to city, space to space. and so there are always going to be some jostling of numbers. california, i think, is a is a real surprise to a lot of people. but the fact that it's so tight indicates some of what's going on there. the first tuesday after the first monday in november was election day. and is election day. but in 1860, was that the only day that you could show up to the polls?

and how long did it take to get results? it was not very long to get results in this period. they counted it relatively quickly. this it was not really in doubt. so, lincoln, they knew lincoln had won almost immediate early and and people as i said, really accepted the results right away. they didn't like it. and almost immediately, people in south carolina particularly started saying, okay, we're getting ready to secede. but it was it was well known and people were ready to accept the result almost immediately. rachel sheldon is our guest talking about the election of 1860. i want to just go over this brief timeline. professor sheldon lincoln is elected on november 6th of 1867. states begin succeeding from the union. december 20th, 1860.

abraham lincoln takes office in march of 1861. the civil war begins april 12th, 1861. what was a transition period like for the incoming president? yeah, this this period is actually full of all kinds of twists turns. it's an unbelievable few months where you can't really predict what is going to happen. so you do you do have a very quick turn to secession by, south carolina. then starting in january, some of the other deep south states. so you have the secession of seven deep south states over the next month and a half, six weeks. during that period. there are questions about whether some of the upper south states are going to secede. so you have tennessee, you have virginia, you have kentucky, you

have maryland, you have arkansas, you have missouri. all of these are sort of question marks. north carolina, all these are question marks. are these states going to secede? and and people don't know. and there are secession conventions called. and several of these states reject secession. and this is really important because of the four upper south states that do end up seceding. north carolina, tennessee, virginia and arkansas, for these states contain, about half of the white population, that is going to be in the confederacy. and the fact that they reject secession in this period suggests there may be another way that things might turn out differently. and so there is there are of these twists and turns. lincoln, you know, even though he is sort of begged to say

something to parties separate in the conversations about the union together is very quiet initially in this period. he does not respond to anything. he is he is getting letters all the time saying, please, please do something to try to keep these southerners in the union, these white southerners in the union and lincoln says, you know, they know how i think they know what i think about this situation. i don't anything i say is just going to be used against me. and so he doesn't say anything for some time. and and so this is sort of a a period that historians disagree about whether lincoln could have done anything differently. and, of course, we'll never know what what would have happened if he had the electoral count happens in february, february 13th, 1861. john breckinridge, the vice president, actually oversees the electoral count, even though he is eventually going to go into the confederacy.

and it happens mostly without a hitch, although people are a little worried about some sort of conspiracy to take down the government. lincoln then travels to washington, d.c., and again, people are worried that lincoln is going to be assassinated. added, he does make several speeches on the way, i think 12 speeches on the way to washington. and then as he gets to washington, there is a peace conference happening in washington with the hope that secession and civil war can be avoided. there are all these twists and turns. on april 12th, the firing on fort sumter, you could say that's the start of the civil war. certainly you could also say april 15, that's when lincoln decides to meet the crisis starts by calling up 75,000 troops. and as a result, you end up with all of these upper south states who decide. then these four upper south states who decide to join the confederacy. see, these are all sort of

moments where people are trying to figure out, what are we doing next? all of these are sort of critical moments and it is it is a very fraught period in which people don't know what is going to happen. and there are many people trying to save the union and save the union. of course, lincoln is very clear that he will let the confederacy go. he will try to keep the union together and will not break the republican party's pledge on making sure certain things happen. although there are various attempts to save the union by making slavery permanent where it exists, including an original 13th amendment. so there's lot of maneuvering in this election to try to prevent long term damage and it's you know, it's a it's a very fraught moment for the united states that ends up producing four

years of bloody, bloody, bloody battle. 750,000 dead and the freedom of million enslaved people. well, you mentioned that vice president john breckinridge oversaw the electoral count on february 13th, 1861. when you look at the results, he was the runner up when it came to electoral votes, even though he only got 18% of the vote. stephen douglass got a third of the vote, but only 12 electoral votes. was that of any surprise to anyone? but he oversaw it. i think i think. no, i mean, the results that john breckinridge got, 72 electoral votes. stephen douglass, the democratic candidate, got 12 electoral votes. no, i think this is not a surprise to anyone. i mean, we have to remember that there there were very. this was not the first time in american history that there had been more than two candidates. there were many, many elections

where there had been more than two candidates. many elections where there had been pluralities. buchanan had won a plurality just the previous election. james polk had won a plurality. you know, john quincy adams in 1824, who was elected from the house of representatives, had actually won a few fewer in the popular vote. and and also was not really mandated in the same way people in the united states had accepted the fact that there was going to be a lot more instability in their political process in this way than we appreciate today. it was a very different kind of political party system than we have now, where there were parties that were growing and dying and competing with one another all the time. every party that people in this period had ever known had died

before. there had never been the same two parties or same three parties or four parties ever to exist in american history. the federalist party, the party of the very first president of the united states, george washington, did did not exist. the whig party, which lincoln, lincoln's first love, his first party did not exist in 1860. so people understood that this was sort of the instability of the political system was going to produce these kinds of results. rachel seldin even though we're talking about the election of 1860, let's look at the electoral map of 1864, very did did the electoral map in 1864. what did reflect? well, it reflected a big change in the way that parties looked again in 1864. you have actually a new party.

lincoln leaves the republican party. he is a member of that party anymore because there is a new party that he forms called the national union party. the national union party is made up of people who had been in the republican party and also people who had been in the democratic party and the constitutional union party and people who had not been in either of those parties. this is a group of people who is very much in favor of the union during the union and the united states during the civil war. and these people are thinking long term. they're thinking about the future of the united states, not just during the civil war, but after the civil war. so already you have a major shift during the war in what the parties look like. they're facing off against the democrats. these are one portion of the democrats often known as the copperheads or the peace democrats. and there were real differences in the way that people operated as a result of this shift in

parties. lincoln was quite lucky to have had a very important military victory by william tecumseh sherman just before the election, which helped secure a victory. but it was not for deigned that lincoln was going to win. he was also the beneficiary of mail in voting, where lots of soldiers had the ability to vote by mail in order to get his reelection in place. so lots had changed by this period just in four years. and lincoln wins reelection in part because of the instability of the political system. and when i say instability, i don't mean this necessarily as a negative or as a positive, just as a reflection of the difference in the way that people understood good party politics. what do you want your students to learn and take away about the election of 1860? i think the most important thing is to recognize that it was a

very regular election, that it was an election followed many of the elections that had existed previously. but the result of the election was that a large group of white southerners rejected democracy, rejected the existence of democratic process, and said, we do not want majority rule. we do not believe that the nation should exist in this way. and so a regular election can produce this kind of fragile democracy breaking up and that we really need to remember that, that our democracy is fragile. these people really understood that. but we don't always. rachel sheldon, penn state university history professor, thank you for helping us to understand a bit about the election of 1860.