The Election of 1860 and Secession

The election of 1860 split into two separate regional contests. In the North, Lincoln (Republican) ran mainly against Stephen Douglas (Northern Democrat). In the South, the Democratic Party had fractured over slavery in the territories, so John Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) and John Bell (Constitutional Union) split the southern vote. Lincoln did not appear on the ballot in ten southern states. That did not matter. The presidency is won through the Electoral College, and the free states alone held enough electoral votes to elect him if he won them outright. He did, taking about 39.8 percent of the popular vote nationwide but a comfortable majority of electoral votes.

To the Deep South, Lincoln's win itself was the threat, regardless of what he actually promised. South Carolina seceded first, in December 1860, convinced that a Republican White House meant slavery's eventual doom. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed by February 1861, and together they formed the Confederate States of America before Lincoln even took office in March. The four border slave states, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, stayed in the Union through this first wave. Their economies depended far less on cotton and large-scale plantation slavery than the Deep South's did, and many residents hoped a political compromise could still protect slavery without leaving the Union. Only after the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter in April 1861 and Lincoln called for troops did a second wave, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina, secede rather than help coerce fellow southern states, stretching secession's timeline into June 1861.