State and National Conventions
The Republican Party, as noted previously, was not a national party – it was strong in the north, nominally present in the upper south, and nonexistent in the lower south. By 1859 the party had won control of thirteen northern state legislatures, and by January 1860 Republican governors had taken office in thirteen northern states. In the 1860 election, 152 electoral votes were required to elect a president. The states where the Republican Party was strongest represented an aggregate of 118 electoral votes. The party was less strong in terms of state offices held in Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania – states that had voted Democratic in 1856. For the Republicans to win the presidency in 1860, therefore, they needed to win all the states where they were strongest plus Pennsylvania and either Illinois or Indiana.
The party’s success in the 1856 and 1858 congressional elections, its growing strength in the governments of the northern states, and the reduction of the American Party (the “Know Nothings”) to minor third-party status made the election of a Republican candidate as president of the United States in 1860 a distinct possibility.
In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the Democratic Party’s principal opponents were coalitions that included both the Republican Party and the American Party, although both maintained their independent identities in those states. The Republican National Committee, in framing its call for delegates to the 1860 party convention to be held in Chicago, Illinois, publicly reached out to the coalitions – not just the Republican factions in them – and invited them to participate in framing the Republican platform and selecting the Republican nominee.
Even as the Republican Party was taking steps to improve its appeal to northern voters, the legislatures in certain southern states took steps that emphasized their attachment to slavery. The Mississippi legislature passed a resolution stating that the election of a president by the votes of one section of the Union only, on the ground that there was “an irrepressible conflict” over slavery and with an avowed hostility to slavery, would justify the slaveholding states “in taking counsel together for their separate protection and safety.” Alabama also passed a resolution that called upon the governor, if a Republican were elected president, to call elections for delegates to a convention to consider what the state should do for its protection. The legislature charged the antislavery north and the Republican Party in particular for the events that now threatened the rupture of the Union.
Against this provocative backdrop, the 1860 political season opened with the state party conventions nominating candidates for state offices, selecting delegates to the national party conventions, and, in some instances, nominating or endorsing a candidate for president. Senator Douglas was the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, although his standing in the party and especially with southern Democrats remained severely damaged by his failure to support the Lecompton constitution – southerners blamed Senator Douglas for losing Kansas as a slave state. While popular sovereignty once had been acceptable to many southern politicians as a means of determining whether the territories would become free or slave states, in 1860 many of those same southern politicians demanded assurances that slaveholders could bring their slave property into the territories without impediment. Senator Douglas’ continued support for popular sovereignty gave southern Democrats an additional reason to reject him as their party’s nominee.
A number of northern Democratic state conventions nonetheless endorsed Senator Douglas. They denounced the raid on Harper’s Ferry and in some instances cited it as the direct result of Republican Party teachings. Pennsylvania Democrats did not endorse him – Pennsylvania was the home state of the incumbent President Buchanan, with whom Senator Douglas had broken – and southern Democratic state conventions denounced him, did not make endorsements, or were said to be proadministration, which meant they were anti-Douglas. The Alabama Democratic convention instructed its delegation to offer a plank to the party platform at the national convention that required the government to protect the right of citizens to bring their slave properties into the territories. The Alabama convention further instructed its delegation to withdraw from the convention if the plank was not adopted.
The Democratic National Convention met in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23. When the convention adopted a platform that endorsed the concept of popular sovereignty in the territories, the Alabama delegation walked out, as did most of the delegates from Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas. The convention pressed on with the business of nominating a candidate, but the chairman ruled that a candidate had to gather two-thirds of the votes of the convention, as originally constituted, in order to be nominated. Also as originally constituted, the convention could have cast a total of 303 votes, so 202 were required to nominate. On the first ballot, Senator Douglas received 145.5 votes, and seven other candidates received a total of 107 votes. On more than 50 additional ballots, Senator Douglas was not able to gain the nomination, and on May 3 the convention adjourned, agreeing to reconvene in Baltimore on June 18.
The Constitutional Union Party, newly formed and composed largely of former Whig and Know Nothing politicians, held its convention on May 10. It adopted a platform consisting solely of a pledge to protect and defend the Constitution and the Union, and it advocated compromise to avoid secession. The Union Party nominated John Bell, a former United States representative from Tennessee, as its candidate for president.
The Republican National Convention convened in Chicago on May 16. After adopting a platform, the convention turned to the business of nominating its candidate for president. Senator Seward, widely regarded as the leading contender for the nomination, held the lead in the first ballot with Mr. Lincoln a distant second (173.5 to 102) but well ahead of the other contenders, who included Salmon P. Chase, a former United States senator and governor from Ohio; Edward Bates, a former United States representative from Missouri; and Simon Cameron, a United States senator from Pennsylvania. The momentum shifted in the second ballot to Mr. Lincoln, who had drawn nearly even with Senator Seward (184.5 to 181). On the third ballot, Mr. Lincoln took the lead and came within one and-a-half votes of the number needed to be nominated. The convention selected him by acclamation.
The Democrats reconvened at Baltimore on June 18 with additional delegates to replace those who had walked out in Charleston. After more disruptions and walkouts, the Democrats nominated Senator Douglas. The delegates who walked out formed a rump convention and nominated as a fourth candidate for president John C. Breckinridge, the incumbent vice president, a former United States representative from Kentucky, and a former minister to Spain. The New York Times reported that “[William] Yancey [a noted fire-eater] and other extremists are delighted at the prospect. They say that they can either elect Breckinridge in the House” – which assumed that no candidate won a majority in the electoral college, so the choice of a president fell to the House of Representatives – “and thus perpetuate the control over the Government, or elect Lincoln, which will give them an opportunity to rally the South in favor of dissolution.”
As the campaign started the nation celebrated the eighty-fourth anniversary of Independence Day with cannon salutes at sunrise, midday and evening, church bells, parades, military drills, speeches, prayers, toasts, music and fireworks. In Richmond, Virginia the First Regiments, accompanied by Smith’s Band and Drum Corps, assembled at seven in the morning for a drill and parade and was dismissed at ten o’clock “thus avoiding all unnecessary exposure to the scorching rays of the noonday sun.” Fireworks and firearms caused at least 53 injuries in New York City.
Taos, in the New Mexico Territory, held its first major celebration of Independence Day. In the afternoon several hundred Indians from the Taos Pueblo “went through many of their quaint and fantastic dances in honor of our national jubilee.” The Fourth of July in Augusta, Georgia, involved a custom of unknown origin in which children in oversized clothing, referred to as the Fantastics, sang and played in the streets, asking for treats and playing tricks. In North Elba, New York, the Fourth was observed at John Brown’s grave by family members and others with readings of the Declaration of Independence and the Sermon on the Mount. In Boston the occasion featured an oration by Edward Everett.
In the featured race at the regatta in Providence, Rhode Island, the shell from Yale beat out the one from Brown. The Staunton Spectator of Staunton, Virginia, described the local Independence Day celebrations and observed that
In these days of disunion sentiment it is gratifying to witness a continued reverence for the day that gave birth to our great nation. It has often been asked, to which section would the glorious 4th of July belong, in the event of dissolution? We trust it may never become a practical question.
The election season proceeded in the traditional manner of the day with rallies, stump speeches, and articles in newspapers. Each of the parties had a songbook, or at least a song, on behalf of its candidate. One popular number at Republican rallies was “Ain’t You Glad You Joined the Republicans”, which was sung to the tune of “The Old Gray Mare”.
A number of young Republicans, many not old enough to vote, borrowed torches from local fire companies in Hartford, Connecticut, to provide an escort for a visiting speaker in late February 1860. Within a week a marching club called the Wide Awakes had been formed with 50 members. Within four weeks additional clubs had been formed in nearby towns with 2,000 members and within four months 400,000 members had been enrolled in clubs across the northern states. Processions of Wide Awakes, wearing oilcloth caps and capes and with many carrying torches, were features of many Republican rallies. Approximately 30,000 Wide Awakes were expected to participate in a rally in New York City in October in an event that included 12,000 men bearing torches. The other campaigns created similar organizations, but none of them became as prominent a feature of the 1860 election as the Wide Awakes.
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