http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1860
Voting for Lincoln and Liberty!
For Lincoln, the American System, and no expansion of slavery to new territories!
One suspects some Southern-state pols won’t like it, but, they’re all rational men and loyal Americans, I’m sure they won’t make too big a fuss.
We’re all familiar with Lincoln, so it might be fun to talk about some of the other candidates.
Stephen Douglas was a gifted politician with a talent both for winning elections and for cutting deals and passing legislation afterward. His failing was that he completely missed the moral dimensions of the slavery debate.
To Douglas, slavery was just one more disagreement to be compromised away, bargained over, and traded off. He wanted a northern route for a transcontinental railroad, so he opened the Kansas and Nebraska territories to slavery in order to get it. He thought he had gotten a good deal for Illinois. He found, to his surprise, that many of his constituents thought otherwise.
But, he almost redeemed himself afterward. He didn’t care about the morality of slavery, but he did care about rigged elections. Pierce and Buchanan ignored the pro-slavery rigging of territorial elections in Kansas, and Buchanan demanded the admission of Kansas as a slave state. Douglas told Buchanan to go to hell, loudly and at length, even though this cost him any chance of being elected President.
Bad Douglas reappeared in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Douglas sensed that there wasn’t much pro-slavery sentiment in Illinois, so he attacked Lincoln as pro-Negro instead. His racist oratory was sickening even by the standards of the time.
But again, he almost redeemed himself after the outbreak of the Civil War. Unlike many Democrats he strongly supported the war effort, and was helpful in rallying his Northern supporters to the cause. His death in June 1861 was a misfortune, as the leaderless Democratic Party became less supportive afterward.
John Breckenridge, Vice President under Buchanan, was a natural politician—tall and good-looking with a smooth, honey-toned voice. He had none of the belligerence of the stereotypical Southern fire-eaters. In fact, some Southerners opposed him because he was insufficiently fanatical in his devotion to slavery. But, even though Kentucky didn’t secede, Breckenridge threw in with the Confederacy in September 1861. It was a fatal mistake—he served unhappily and mostly unsuccessfully as a Confederate general and Secretary of War, then fled the country to avoid arrest, and ruined his health by bobbing around Florida and the Bahamas for a month in a small boat.
John Bell was a bland political functionary, but his running mate Edward Everett was a man of many accomplishments—scholar, university president, orator, Secretary of State. He is best remembered as the two-hour warmup act for Abe Lincoln at Gettysburg. Of course, it was a tribute to his career that he was invited to deliver such a prestigious oration.
He had been Speaker of the House, was the guy who authored the Indian Removal Act, then turned against Jackson and became the leader of Tennessee’s Whig party, became Secretary of War under William Henry Harrison then resigned in protest, then joined the Senate, where he was one of the leaders of the Opposition to the Mexican War, was one of the supporters of California statehood, which made him unpopular in Tennessee, turned down Secretary of the Navy, almost became the American Party nominee in 1856, almost challenged Robert Toombs to a duel after Toombs called him an abolitionist, ran in 1860 on a platform of keeping the United States together, then, after Fort Sumter, became a secessionist, gave a rabble rousing speech in favor of Tennessee secession, and then walked across the street and got into an argument with a bunch of Tennessee Unionists who were former friends of his, who spent like an hour yelling at him, and the entire incident ended with everybody at the meeting crying.
Bland political functionary…bah! 
The problem the Constitutional Union party faced was it gave the appearance of being the party of old men. Not just because of Bell and Everett (who were 64 and 66 when they ran). The party was made up of the people who wanted to turn back the clock to some time when slavery hadn’t been dividing the country.
But it was a completely unrealistic plan. Slavery wasn’t some faux issue the other candidates had made up for the election. It really was the issue that was dividing the country. The other candidates acknowledged this and were offering different answers. Which made the Constitutional Union people look hopeless as they tried to deny the issue was a problem.
The party’s official platform was “We don’t have a platform because platforms are divisive.”
Honest Abe all the way!
“. . . and if we ignore division it will go away.”
As with FDR in 1932, Lincoln was the only one who could have saved the nation during that crisis. We were damn lucky they came along at the right time both times.
No abolitionists on your ballot Huangdi. That’s a shame. It being 2014 and everyone is so against slavery and all. They are stil willing to vote for someone who would go on to support the Corwin amendment.
An interesting what-if is what might have happened if Southerners had realized how ill Douglas was. Suppose they realized they could rally behind a united Democratic party, elect Douglas, and get a Johnson administration? Of course, in 1860, even a southerner like Herschel Johnson might not have been considered pro-slavery enough for the real fire-eaters.
So which of the candidates went on to oppose the Corwin amendment, again?
[shrug] Well, you know, art of the possible, the perfect is the enemy of the good, etc. Them crazy barn-burning abolitionists are too few on their own to form a viable party.
This reads as threadshitting, WillFarnaby. Don’t do it again.
It might be interesting to note how your choice in this election would have varied, depending on where you lived.
(Of course, unless you were a white adult male living in one of the 33 states of the Union, or a nonwhite adult male living in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, or Massachusetts, or in New York and owning property worth at least $200, none of the following would apply.)
If you lived in South Carolina, you had no choice at all. Your legislature chose your electors for you.
If you lived in one of the nine other non-border slave states, you could not vote for Lincoln. No Republican Party existed in those states to nominate electors or to circulate tickets with the electors’ names on them.
If you lived in New York, your choices were Lincoln or a “fusion slate” consisting of 18 Douglas electors, 10 Breckinridge electors, and 7 Bell electors.
Likewise in New Jersey, it was Lincoln versus a 3-2-2 fusion slate. But renegade Douglas Democrats circulated their own tickets with their own three electors plus four other Douglasites. This created the risk of a split electoral outcome, which is exactly what happened.
In Pennsylvania the state Democratic Party supported Breckinridge, because Buchanan supported Breckinridge. (Buchanan hated Douglas because Douglas had opposed him on making Kansas a slave state.) But the party knew that Breckinridge had little support in Pennsylvania. So they nominated a generic slate of Democratic electors, pledged to support whichever Democrat needed the electoral votes more. This pleased nobody, so renegade Douglasites again nominated their own ticket, splitting the Democratic vote and ensuring that Lincoln would carry the state. (He probably would have carried it anyway.)
Definitely the Railsplitter. He served honorably in the Illinois legislature and in Congress, more than held his own in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and his Cooper Union speech was right on the mark. He’s a moderate on slavery, a man of the people, honest and humble; a smart and capable lawyer, and a statesman firmly committed to preserving the Union.
And here’s Ronnie Gilbert, formerly of the Weavers, to really tell it like it is: Lincoln and Liberty - 1860 Campaign Song - YouTube
I made a point about how there are no abolitionists among the choices. Then I made a point about Lincoln supporting the Corwin amendment. Reread.
Captain Amazing
Gerritt Smith, according to Wikipedia was an abolitionist candidate. He wasn’t listed on the poll. One would assume he was against the Corwin Amendment. It makes no difference because in all of these retrospective polls, the abolitionist candidates received basically no votes.
In any case is anyone willing to defend Lincoln’s support of the Corwin amendent? How would Lincoln’s legacy fare if he were successful in helping to get that passed?
I’m going to advise you - once - against trying to be a smartass with the mods.
Then he would be remembered as the president who saved the Union (which was his first priority) without war (which was his first preference). Some later POTUS, or movement, or whatever, would get the credit for freeing the slaves.
I had actually forgotten about Gerrit Smith. To be fair, though, so did most of the electorate. I think he only got on the ballot in one or two states, and really didn’t get any votes. And you’re probably right that he was against the Corwin Amendment
And I’d defend Lincoln’s support of the Corwin Amendment, but I get the impression you really don’t care to listen to my argument.