The Election of 1860

           The Election of 1860, the stage was set for a grueling political war waged by four candidates vying to become president. The two most opposed and popular candidates were Abraham Lincoln representing the Republican party and Stephen Douglas from the Democratic party. Lincoln, who was against slavery ended up winning the election. Some of the Southern states were none to happy about this and thus seceded from the union.Now, lets look at how the results of the election showed the divisions that slavery caused. Lincoln naturally collected all of the votes from the free states because his motive was to get rid of slavery. Douglas, on the other hand, obtained most of the votes from southern states who were strongly opposed to Lincoln's ideas and wanted to live their lives how they had been. The North and South were already so polarized because of the events leading up to this time which included the Dred Scott decision, John Brown's raid on Harper's ferry and other slavery-based events that we have described in our video below.