Election Of 1869

2 Pages 491 Words

The political system's participatory pageantry reached its peak with the campaign of 1860. Close electoral competition obliged the parties to rely upon high voter turnout to secure elections. The Republicans were united behind Lincoln, while the opposition was divided by regions. Most of the campaign was implemented by the party organizations, with the candidates taking a very small active part. The campaign of 1860 proved to be the most spectacular of the century. The deepening sectional crisis dominated public debate. Four candidates brought their diverse appeals to the voting public, yet none managed to forge a broad coalition from a badly fractured electorate.
William Seward was the front runner when the Republicans met in Chicago in May of 1860, but Lincoln quickly pulled ahead and won the nomination on the third ballot. The Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings, and each faction chose its own presidential candidate, Stephen A. Douglas for the northerners and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for the southerners, who called themselves National Democrats. A third party candidate, John Bell, emerged to represent conservatives, mostly former Whigs, who were dissatisfied with the other parties.
Lincoln focused his campaign on the northern and western states, and rightly considered himself persona non grata in the slaveholding South. The Republican platform opposed slavery in the territories but upheld the right of slavery in the South. It also opposed the Dredd-Scott decision. Breckinridge similarly built upon a strong base in the southern states, but was widely reviled in the North. Bell spoke for his core constituency of aging Whigs and other conservatives who believed the sectional crisis would go away if they merely ignored it. Douglas took the unprecedented step of delivering campaign addresses on his own behalf. In this era candidates themselves maintained a dignified silence while party stump s...