United States presidential election,
1860
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1864 ›
United States presidential election, 1860
November 6, 1860
Nominee
Abraham Lincoln
John C.
Breckinridge
Party
Republican
Southern
Democratic
Home state
Illinois
Kentucky
Running mate Hannibal Hamlin
Joseph Lane
Electoral vote 180
72
States carried 18
11
Popular vote
1,865,908
848,019
Percentage
39.8%
18.1%
Nominee
John Bell
Stephen A. Douglas
Party
Constitutional Union
Northern
Democratic
Home state
Tennessee
Illinois
Running mate Edward Everett
Herschel V
Johnson
Electoral vote 39
12
States carried 3
1
Popular vote
590,901
1,380,201
Percentage
12.6%
29.5%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by L
Hamlin, spring green denotes those won by Breckinridge/Lan
denotes those won by Bell/Everett, and blue denotes those wo
Douglas/Johnson. Numbers indicate the number of electoral vo
allotted to each state.
Incumbent President
James Buchanan
Democratic
President-elect
Abraham Lincoln
Republican
The United States presidential election of
1860 set the stage for the American Civil
War. The nation had been divided throughout
most of the 1850s on questions of states’
rights and slavery in the territories. In 1860
this issue finally came to a head, fracturing
the formerly dominant Democratic Party into
Southern and Northern factions and bringing
Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party to
power without the support of a single South-
ern state.
Hardly more than a month following Lin-
coln’s victory came declarations of secession
by South Carolina and other states, which
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
United States presidential election, 1860
1
were rejected as illegal by the then-current
President, James Buchanan and President-
elect Abraham Lincoln.
Background
Further information: Origins of the American
Civil War
The origins of the American Civil War lay in
the complex issues of slavery, competing un-
derstandings of federalism, party politics, ex-
pansionism, sectionalism, tariffs, economics,
and modernization in the Antebellum Period.
After