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Campaign Poster Activity

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The Results

The election really was two separate races. Lincoln and Douglas competed for Northern votes. Breckinridge and Bell vied for Southern votes. No camp really tried to make inroads elsewhere (and it would have been dangerous for Lincoln to travel to parts of the South).

Examine the following map that shows the results of the election. The numbers are the electoral votes the candidate won.

Source: 1860 Electoral Map

Map Questions: Answer with your notes.

1. What is the general pattern of the election results? Interactive popup. Assistance may be required.

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   Lincoln won all the states in the North and far West. Breckinridge won the South. Douglas only won Missouri and a couple of New Jersey's electoral votes. Bell won the border states.
2. If you were a Southerner, how might you feel about how fair the election was and to what extent you had real input in choosing the president? Interactive popup. Assistance may be required.

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   You might feel cheated and that your vote doesn't count. Lincoln did not win a single Southern state but won the election.
3. California and Texas are large states geographically that today have the first and second most electoral vote totals, respectively. Why do they have such few electoral votes in 1860? Interactive popup. Assistance may be required.

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   Electoral vote totals are determined by the members of Congress you have, which is the two Senators every state gets plus the number of House of Representatives, which is determined by a state's population. In 1860, Texas and California were still new states and did not have the population totals of places out east.

Lincoln Wins, But Barely

Lincoln, with 180 electoral votes, earned the Constitutional majority to be president. It showed just how many more people lived in the North that he did not earn a single Southern electoral vote, but became president anyway. Lincoln's 1.8 million popular votes were only about 40% of all the ballots cast, the lowest percentage of the popular vote for any successful presidential candidate in U.S. history.

It did not take long for people in South Carolina to convene and start the vote on secession. The South saw the political power that the North had amassed and combined with all of the other economic and social differences—plus the wild events of the 1850s—decided that in order to preserve its way of life (especially slavery) it needed to be its own country.