• While politicos every four years refer to the next presidential election as “the most consequential in American history,” none compares to 1860.
• Fundamental moral questions, shifting political winds, economic divides, political violence, distrust, histrionics in the press and charged political rhetoric haunted the decade leading to 1860.
• The divides in America today, while similar in many respects to 1860, occur within states, rather than between them. This suggests that the states themselves, rather than Washington, are better positioned to serve as mediators.
• While high-voltage rhetoric might win politicians votes and gain media outlets viewers, there are potentially dire consequences.

​Utah’s territorial entry into the U.S. came at the beginning of what almost turned out to be the end of the Union.

With the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the U.S. had both won a war and acquired most of the Southwest. At first glance, this seemed to be one of the nation’s greatest moments of triumph.

Instead, God’s “justice,” as Thomas Jefferson had foreseen, was about to awaken from its slumber. And the most consequential presidential election in history was the alarm clock.

The election of 1860 is almost always viewed in hindsight. It is seen as a contest over some admixture of slavery and states’ rights. To be sure, those were animating issues.

But for Americans of that time, it was an election charged with emotion and tribalism. It was the culmination of years of hyperbolic invective, accelerating sectionalism and growing divergence over fundamental moral issues.

There are disturbing parallels to our own time. Take the moral question of the era. Just as the anti-abortion and pro-abortion camps today hold divergent views on human rights, so too did the opposing sides of the debate over slavery.

There are also parallels in terms of economic disparity. Americans today have become increasingly divided economically during the past 60 years, and much of the wealth is concentrated in large metros. On the eve of the Civil War, tariffs had become a major issue because the Republicans wanted to protect northern manufacturers and raise money for public improvements to bolster industrialization – which was occurring primarily in the North. With the burden of these tariffs falling more heavily on the South and the benefits accruing northward, Southerners regarded the Republican-supported policy as “plunder.”

And, of course, the histrionic political invective of today has its parallels in 1860. As one scholar who has studied the history of national unity has argued, “We have never been more politically polarized than we are today,” with the exception the Civil War — “the moment when it came to bloodshed.”

But there’s a critical difference between 1860 and 2024: The dividing lines today fall within almost every state, rather than between them. Virtually every large core city in the U.S. is “blue,” while the territorial majority of almost every state is “red.” In this respect, the blue-red divide contrasts with the blue-grey divide of antebellum days. The fact that the big divides today occur within states, rather than between them, suggests that resolving them must occur at a state-by-state level, rather than at a national level.

However, at the national level, politicians and the press can take a lesson from 1860 and resist pushing deceptive propaganda that gins up political polarization and inspires violence.

A National Unraveling

The crisis of 1860 didn’t happen overnight. The Mexican War (1846-48) had upset the precarious political balance between North and South. Abolitionists portrayed the Mexican War as an evil enterprise fought to expand the territorial footprint of slavery. Meanwhile, it was becoming clear that the North was rapidly outstripping the South in economic and population growth, raising the stakes around the balance between slave and free states. Southerners saw states’ rights (and, ultimately, the ability to play the secession card) as their only safeguard against Northern domination. As Northern opposition to new slave states became more articulate and vehement, Southern justification became more defensive and ideological.

The emergence in 1854 of a new, pro-tariff regional party – the Republicans – gave the North a sectional protagonist and the South an antagonist. And in both sections, an increasing cohort of politicians could secure re-election by invoking hyperbolic rhetoric. Congress became ineffective at reaching compromise.

The temperature kept rising. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the Constitution in public, branding it “an agreement with Hell” for leaving slavery unaddressed. Garrison and others began calling for the breakup of the Union as a means of purifying the North from the irredeemable South. In 1856, Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner mocked a South Carolina senator and his “mistress … the harlot Slavery.” A Congressman from South Carolina responded by appearing on the floor of the Senate with his cane and beating Sumner to an unconscious, bloody pulp.

The sectional disdain built to a crescendo of loathing in the fall of 1859. John Brown, a violent fanatic, sought to lead a slave revolt by seizing the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. Brown had openly called for the killing of Southerners and argued that slaves had a “natural duty” to kill. And, of course, Brown had himself carried out such executions in Kansas.

John Brown’s escapades were subsidized by wealthy Northeastern abolitionists. His arrest and execution made him a martyr among many in the North – which Southerners took as an endorsement of his methods. In effect, they perceived that Northerners wished them to be murdered in their beds. In reality, abolitionists were in the minority and the populations in New Jersey, New York City and other areas remained largely sympathetic to the South. But by this point such distinctions were hard to find in Southern newspapers and political banter. The “dissolution of the Union” was now openly discussed in the South.

An Emotional Election

Abraham Lincoln’s voters primarily saw the election of 1860 as a means of advancing a program of tariffs, public infrastructure and expanded federal power, as well as a check on slave states’ territorial expansion. Abolitionists preferred him as the closest candidate to their position, though Lincoln at the time professed opposition only to the expansion of slavery, not a desire for its immediate abolition. Still, most Southerners viewed the election as a choice between self-determination and the economic and political hegemony of the North over their states.

When the election of 1860 came, what mattered most was the emotional reaction the candidates inspired. For instance, it made little difference that Lincoln repeatedly sought to console Southern states, even endorsing a Constitutional amendment that would protect slavery in existing slave states until such time as they chose to extinguish it voluntarily.

The Democratic Party split along sectional lines, with Stephen Douglas as the candidate for one wing and John C. Breckenridge as the Southern choice. A fourth party emerged in response to the chaos, with the Constitutional Unionist party forming around John Bell. The South’s refusal to accept Douglas – a candidate who in a more temperate moment would have been seen as an ally – assured victory for the first Republican president. The North appeared blind to the fact that Lincoln’s election would lead to disunion. Lincoln himself refused to believe it.

Lincoln won with less than 40% of the popular vote – but a majority of the Electoral College from a unified Northern bloc. In the minds of many Southerners, this meant a choice between Northern mastery and secession. Some resisted secession. But even those opponents, like Robert E. Lee, “went with his state” once the choice was made. Lincoln refused to accept secession and sent troops southward into war.

Aftermath

Lincoln was not universally beloved in the North – even four years into the war. The Democratic party platform of 1864 called the war a “failure” and demanded “immediate efforts” toward “cessation of hostilities.” While their candidate, the Union Gen. George McClellan, rejected this peace plank, he did believe that Lincoln had become a puppet of the radical wing of the party. He believed that Lincoln’s re-election would usher in an era of heightened brutality toward the South. And the Democratic Party raised concerns about a litany of civil liberties violations against Americans across the Union, as well as election interference in the border states.

Despite the Union’s “total war” policy, in which women and children across the South were turned out of their homes and their cities and towns burned to the ground, Lincoln himself spoke of peace. “Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery,” he wrote in 1864, “will be received and considered by the executive government of the United States, and will be met by liberal terms on other substantial and collateral points….” It has been argued that a Lincoln-led peace would have been a glorious time in American history.

Not long after Lincoln took the oath for a second term and pledged to “bind up the nation’s wounds,” Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse. More than 600,000 soldiers had died – more Americans than in both World Wars combined. The end of the war and the final abolition of slavery were nigh.

But Lincoln’s magnanimity toward the post-war South was never put to the test. A few days after Appomattox, a celebrated actor from Maryland – who was convinced that Lincoln was a “disgrace” to the presidency and a “tyrant” (epithets commonly used in the Democratic press) – assassinated him. The San Francisco Chronicle blamed opposition politicians and the press, stating that they had “virtually recommended” the assassination.

By failing in its attempt at secession, the Southern states would incur a far greater Northern/Republican economic and political hegemony than any that Lincoln could have dreamt up in 1860. And the upstart Republican Party would continue what became a prolonged hold on the White House, interrupted by only two Democrats in the seven decades between 1860 and 1932.

This article is the third in a series on past presidential elections.