50 Fun Facts About Election of 1860

What did 11-year-old Grace Bedell urge Abraham Lincoln to do in a letter sent weeks before the 1860 election?

Grow a beard, she wrote, promising to win over her brothers' votes; Lincoln became the first bearded president and met her on his train trip to Washington.

Which frontier nickname, recalling Abraham Lincoln's youth of manual labor, became his 1860 campaign image?

The Rail Splitter image took off when a young politician paraded old fence rails into the Illinois state convention, a week before the national one.

Which state, whose legislature still chose its electors, was first to secede after Abraham Lincoln's 1860 win?

South Carolina voted to leave on December 20, 1860, about six weeks after the election; its electors, picked without any popular vote, had gone to Breckinridge.

Which federal outpost did Confederate guns shell in April 1861, opening the Civil War weeks into Lincoln's term?

Fort Sumter's 85 defenders gave up after 34 hours of shelling that killed no one on either side; Lincoln's call for troops then pushed four more states to secede.

Which Mississippi senator, who drew votes at the 1860 Democratic convention, became the Confederacy's president?

Jefferson Davis was elected on February 9, 1861, by delegates of the seceded states, nearly a month before Lincoln took the oath in Washington.

Which outgoing president kept a one-term pledge in 1860 and backed John C. Breckinridge against Stephen Douglas?

James Buchanan put his administration behind Breckinridge, his own vice president, which made Breckinridge the main Democratic choice in Pennsylvania.

Who was the next sitting vice president nominated for president after John C. Breckinridge, exactly a century later?

Richard Nixon ended the hundred-year gap in 1960 and, like Breckinridge, lost the general election.

Which Illinois city, Abraham Lincoln's home in 1860, lies in the county he narrowly lost to Stephen Douglas?

Springfield is the seat of Sangamon County, which Douglas carried by just 42 votes even as Lincoln won Illinois and the presidency.

Which Great Lakes city hosted the 1860 Republican convention, where a friendly crowd cheered on Abraham Lincoln?

Chicago put the convention on Lincoln's home ground, and his managers printed counterfeit tickets to pack the hall with his supporters.

Why did Abraham Lincoln receive no recorded votes at all in ten Southern states in the 1860 election?

No Republican ballots were distributed there because parties, not states, printed ballots in 1860, and the party had no organization in those states.

Which Maine senator, a New Englander picked to balance the ticket, was Abraham Lincoln's running mate in 1860?

Hannibal Hamlin said he was astonished by a nomination he had neither expected nor wanted; in 1864 the party replaced him with Andrew Johnson.

Which New York senator led the first ballot at the 1860 Republican convention but lost to Abraham Lincoln?

William H. Seward led Lincoln 173½ to 102 on the first ballot, but his talk of inevitable conflict over slavery spooked moderates; he later negotiated the Alaska purchase.

Which doctrine did Stephen Douglas champion in 1860, leaving each territory's settlers to decide on slavery themselves?

Popular sovereignty was not Douglas's coinage: Lewis Cass first applied the term to slavery in 1847, and by 1860 it had turned pro-slavery Southern Democrats against Douglas.

Which running mate of John Bell in 1860 later spoke for two hours just before Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address?

Edward Everett, then rated the finest orator in the country, wrote to Lincoln afterward that the president had come nearer the point in two minutes than he had in two hours.

Which town's federal armory did John Brown raid in October 1859, a shock that hung over the 1860 election?

Harpers Ferry haunted the campaign: Southern Democrats blamed Republicans for the raid, and Lincoln answered that John Brown was no Republican.

Which enslaved man's 1857 Supreme Court case, attacked by Abraham Lincoln, denied citizenship to Black Americans?

Dred Scott lost 7–2, and the justices added that Congress could not ban slavery in the territories, the very policy at the heart of the 1860 Republican platform.

Abraham Lincoln's 1860 states mostly lay north of the Ohio River and above which colonial-era boundary?

The Mason–Dixon line was surveyed in the 1760s to settle a border conflict involving Pennsylvania and Maryland; it came to stand for the divide between free and slave states, and Lincoln carried no slave state.

Which Cabinet post did Abraham Lincoln give the New York senator he had beaten for the 1860 Republican nomination?

Secretary of State was the senior Cabinet seat, and Lincoln filled three more departments with men who had sought the same nomination.

Which Texas governor, the victor of San Jacinto, lost the 1860 Constitutional Union nomination to John Bell?

Sam Houston fought secession to the end: in 1861 he refused an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy and was forced out of the governor's office.

Which nickname did the 5-foot-4 Stephen Douglas carry into the 1860 campaign as a forceful Illinois senator?

The Little Giant finished second in the popular vote but last of the four candidates in electoral votes, with just 12.

Which state, home to John C. Breckinridge and birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, voted for neither man in 1860?

Kentucky went to John Bell, so Breckinridge lost his own home state, while native son Lincoln finished fourth of four there.

Before 1860, Abraham Lincoln's only elected federal office had been a single 1840s term in which body?

The House of Representatives seated Lincoln for one term in the 1840s; his 1858 Senate race against Douglas ended in defeat, yet their debates made him nationally known.

Which huge building project did the 1860 Republican platform promise, tying the Mississippi valley to the West Coast?

A Pacific railroad sat in the platform beside free Western homesteads and a protective tariff, giving the party an economic pitch beyond the slavery question.

Which 2005 history of Abraham Lincoln's 1860 nomination and presidency inspired Steven Spielberg's 2012 film Lincoln?

Team of Rivals, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, tells how Lincoln beat better-known men for the nomination and then handed them the top seats in his government.

The 1860 election began six straight Republican presidential wins; which Democrat finally ended the run in 1884?

Grover Cleveland was the first Democrat elected president in 28 years, and no other Democrat won the office until Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

Which defunct party, once home to both Abraham Lincoln and John Bell, fed the new Constitutional Union ticket?

The Whigs had dissolved by 1860, and their Northern voters mostly followed Lincoln into the Republican fold, leaving Bell scant support in the free states.

How did Stephen Douglas break with precedent for presidential candidates during the 1860 campaign?

He gave speeches around the country, carrying his case from the Northeast into the South, while Lincoln stayed home in Illinois and made none at all.

At which New York institution did Abraham Lincoln give the February 1860 speech that made him a real contender?

Cooper Union heard Lincoln argue that the Founding Fathers would have opposed slavery's spread, and newspapers and pamphlets carried the speech to tens of thousands of voters.

Which Republican marching clubs of young men paraded by torchlight in black capes for Abraham Lincoln in 1860?

The Wide Awakes began in Hartford, Connecticut, where the capes were first worn to keep dripping torch oil off the marchers' clothes.

Which border slave state was the only state Stephen Douglas carried outright in the 1860 election?

Missouri gave Douglas nine of his 12 electoral votes; the other three came from a split in one free state, making him the only candidate to win electors in both sections.

Which 1854 law drafted by Stephen Douglas let settlers vote on slavery in two new Western territories?

The Kansas–Nebraska Act effectively repealed an 1820 ban on slavery in that region, and the armed clashes that followed became known as Bleeding Kansas.

What was the nickname of the temporary wooden hall where Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln in May 1860?

The Wigwam went up in just over a month to win the convention for its city, held over ten thousand people, and burned down in 1869.

In which Southern port did the 1860 Democratic convention deadlock after 57 ballots and a Deep South walkout?

Charleston's convention required a two-thirds vote to nominate, a bar Douglas could not clear even though he led on every ballot, so the party adjourned and tried again in June.

Which city hosted three 1860 conventions, nominating John Bell, Stephen Douglas and John C. Breckinridge in turn?

Baltimore saw Bell chosen in May and then, in June, two competing Democratic gatherings in separate halls pick Douglas and Breckinridge.

Which explorer had been the first Republican presidential nominee, four years before Abraham Lincoln's 1860 run?

John C. Frémont lost in 1856, and Lincoln's strategy four years later was to build on the states Frémont had carried.

Which Chief Justice, born into a slave-owning Maryland family, swore in Abraham Lincoln as president in March 1861?

Roger B. Taney had led the Supreme Court since 1836; he sympathized with the seceding states and blamed Lincoln for the war, yet never resigned.

Which home state of John Bell, carried by him in 1860, was the last state to secede the following year?

Tennessee left only after Lincoln called for troops, and Bell, who had run to hold the country together, ended up backing his state's secession.

What name was given to the radical pro-secession Southern Democrats who led walkouts from the 1860 conventions?

Fire-Eaters got the label from their critics, and several of them later became outspoken critics of the very Confederate government they had demanded.

In which future Confederate state alone did Abraham Lincoln receive any 1860 votes, fewer than two thousand in all?

Virginia gave Lincoln 1,929 votes, nearly all of them from northwestern counties that would break away during the war to form a new state.

Which free state split its 1860 electoral votes, giving four to Abraham Lincoln and three to Stephen Douglas?

New Jersey's anti-Lincoln parties had pooled their support behind a joint slate of electors, and three of its Douglas men were elected alongside four of Lincoln's.

Which New York newspaper editor turned on the Republican front-runner in 1860 and pushed Edward Bates instead?

Horace Greeley of the New-York Tribune got into the convention as a stand-in for an absent Western delegate and worked the floor against his former ally.

Which Ohio governor, beaten by Abraham Lincoln at the 1860 convention, later became Chief Justice?

Salmon P. Chase won 49 votes on the first ballot but had scant support outside his own state; Lincoln then put him in charge of the Treasury.

Which disease killed Stephen Douglas in June 1861, three months after Abraham Lincoln took office?

Typhoid fever struck Douglas after he had toured in support of the Union, declaring that there could be no neutrals, only patriots and traitors.

Which senator's December 1860 compromise plan to stop secession did president-elect Abraham Lincoln oppose?

John J. Crittenden wanted slavery barred north of 36°30′ and guaranteed south of it; Lincoln would accept no deal that let slavery expand, and Congress rejected the plan.

Which proposed constitutional change, passed by Congress in March 1861, would have shielded slavery from federal power?

The Corwin Amendment was never ratified, but because it carries no deadline, the state legislatures could in theory still adopt it.

Stephen Douglas's 1860 running mate, Herschel V. Johnson, had served as governor of which Deep South state?

Georgia's Herschel Johnson got the slot only after the convention's first pick, Benjamin Fitzpatrick, turned it down; he later sat in the Confederate Senate.

Which Alabama orator led the Deep South walkout from the 1860 Democratic convention over the slavery platform?

William L. Yancey could hold an audience for hours and was called the Orator of Secession; his Alabama delegation was the first out of the hall.

Which Illinois town names the 1858 doctrine that cost Stephen Douglas Southern support at the 1860 convention?

Freeport hosted the second Lincoln–Douglas debate, where Douglas said settlers could still keep slavery out of a territory; Southern Democrats called it heresy.

Which future novelist wrote an 1860 campaign biography of Abraham Lincoln and was rewarded with a consulship in Venice?

William Dean Howells went on to edit The Atlantic Monthly and write The Rise of Silas Lapham, earning the nickname the Dean of American Letters.

In which Alabama city did delegates from the seceding states meet in February 1861 to form the Confederacy?

Montgomery served as the Confederate capital for only about three months before the government moved to Richmond.