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The Election of 1860 and the Onset of the Civil War

Julia Gillespie

AP United States History

Mr. Edwards P.3

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Throughout the first half of the 19th century, the debate over slavery and states’ rights

was the driving force behind the consuming regional split and the frequent confrontations the

nation would experience. While many incidents that caused turmoil had occured between the two

major sides of the issue, the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 had created an official and

direct breaking point for the South, finally causing the two regions of opposition to dissolve and

clash after decades of debate. Across the Southern states, Lincoln’s presidency represented an

overwhelming power of Republicanism in the federal government, and a possible future of

abolitionism and lack of state’s rights. The final split of the nation caused by Lincoln’s election

contained so much inflammatory agitation and violent emotion, that it became inevitable for the

two new governments to coexist without an outbreak of the Civil War.

While the tensions between the North and the South had rested primarily on regional

issues, the debate over slavery and states’ rights soon seeped into the nation’s political system,

creating a well known affiliation of Republicans as anti-slavery supporters and Southern

Democrats as pro-slavery believers. The new political tensions led the South to believe Lincoln’s

election would ultimately lead to overwhelming Republican power in the federal government,

and the only way to preserve their own economy, society, rights and laws was to withdraw from

the nation, if Lincoln was to win. Although the Republican platform of 1860 disavowed any

move that would interfere with slavery where the custom and law of a state upheld it, many

Southerners believed that a Republican victory would lead to an overwhelming amount of

contradictory power in the federal government. Thus, the South and its Democratic affiliations

believed they would lose their voice on domestic institutions and states’ rights. After Lincoln

reigned victorious in the elections by a landslide with 180 electoral votes, the South Carolina

General Assembly called his election as President a “hostile act” and declared their official
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dissolution from the nation in a published Ordinance of Secession (Resolution to Call the

Election of Abraham Lincoln as US President a Hostile Act). South Carolina was the first of

eleven Southern states to secede, justifying their secession in the Declaration of the Immediate

Causes and Justify the Secession of South Carolina. South Carolina wrote that the primary

reason for the call for dissolution from the Union was the “increasing hostility on the part of the

non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery” (Declaration of the Immediate Causes). In

order to solve the tearing apart of the Union, Senator John Crittenden attempted to diffuse the

explosive situation by offering six constitutional amendments and resolutions, known as the

Crittenden Compromise. His goal was to keep the South away from seceding by restoring the

36”30’ line from the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific Ocean, ensuring that slavery would

remain South. He also proposed that Congress had no right to abolish slavery where it was

already established. However, President Lincoln rejected the idea because of his desire to keep

slavery out of the territories. Because Lincoln rejected, the Southern states did as well, and only

a few days after Crittenden proposed his compromise, South Carolina began its march towards

war. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas joined South Carolina in its

political protest and seceded from the Union, creating the Confederate States of America. The

new Confederacy would focus on the political aspects of the government that the South felt as if

Lincoln would have stripped from their nation, including individual member states’ rights, the

right to slavery, and no laws that could strip people of their slaves. By the time of Lincoln’s

inauguration, he was faced with an entire new crisis of secession and the Confederacy, all of

which had stemmed of the political affiliation of his election.

Not only did Lincoln’s election cause havoc because of the potential power of the

Republican party in the government, but also because of the fear that Lincoln would not consider
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the wellbeing of the South, abolishing slavery and removing individual state’s rights. The

South’s “peculiar institution” was tied to the region’s economy and society. Many Southerners

believed that African Americans were incapable of caring for themselves and that an institution

was benefiting them with food, clothing, and religion. Furthermore, the South was a plantation

cotton culture that relied on slave labor in order to drive its agrarian system. John C. Calhoun, a

infamous anti-abolitionist and part of extreme opinion makers in South Carolina, stated that the

“relation” existing in the slaveholding states is “instead of an evil”, a “positive good”, which

represented a very popular idea found in the South (Calhoun). The Southern states were afraid

that a President from the modernizing North of industrial development and abolitionism reform

would not understand the importance of slaves and its institution to their society or economy.

The common majority of pro-slavery in the South was, therefore, struck with fear when a

potential abolitionist ran in the election. Although he had made a clear announcement that the

“Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States”, many

Southerners had believed this would lead to future abolition (Lincoln). Lincoln, at the time of the

election, had only campaigned his ideas of stopping the peculiar institution from spreading to

any other part of the nation. In the years leading up to the election, the South, although growing

in anger, had remained civil, as long as there was a balanced number of non-slave and slave

holding states. However, each new territory that applied for statehood threatened to upset this

balance, and Southerners consistently argued for states’ rights in response. After Lincoln’s

election as President, the South viewed the new Republican, anti-slavery platform as a complete

imbalance to the federal government and exercised their power to cancel their agreement of

living under the Union’s Constitution. South Carolinian, John C. Calhoun, stated that the

secession from the Union was necessary after the election of anti-slavery supporter Abraham
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Lincoln because the state reserved the right to “protect herself before the equilibrium of the two

sections was destroyed” (Calhoun). South Carolina’s speedy secession caused an immediate

turmoil over which property would become the US Government’s or the new Confederacy’s.

After South Carolina had cut off supplies to Commander Anderson, a loyal Union officer

holding down Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, Lincoln was forced to send supplies to

reinforce him. However, the new President of the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis, knew he

could not let Lincoln resupply his troops and ordered the militia to destroy the Union supply

boats. The shots fired at Fort Sumter marked the first official battle of the Civil War. Overall, it

is clear that Lincoln’s election had been the breaking point of the tensions during the 19th

century, setting off a chain reaction of secession that led to violent aggressions of two new

governments, and eventually, war.

When considering Lincoln’s election, it is clear that his victory as President of the United

States in the Election of 1860 was one of the most important causes of the Civil War. The fear of

overpowering Republicanism and the loss of domestic institutions and individual states’ rights

that he carried with his presidency had become the direct cause of the altering event of secession.

The election was truly the boiling point of decades of tension that ultimately led to a split in the

United States and a war between the two opposing sides. Similar to the era of the American

Revolution, the Civil War presented a period of freedom from laws and acts that did not satisfy

the needs and desires of all people under the government. The South was to the United States, as

colonies were to Great Britain. Although the South did not become victorious in establishing its

own Confederacy under its own government, like the colonies were able to establish apart from

Great Britain, both the colonies and the Southern seceded states fought to establish their own
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Constitutions and governments away from the grip of mother nations that they believed to be

violating their rights.