What Led Up To The Election Of 1860 Dbq

Do you wonder about the impact of one of our most important presidents being voted into office? Leading up to the election, there were several events that impacted the political parties in the Union. The issue of slavery also divided the union even more, with the topic being the main point of the election. Efforts at peace and keeping the union together were made after the election, although they were unsuccessful. To quite an extent, the Election of 1860 served as a catalyst for the Civil War and divided the North and South even more as shown by events leading up to the election, the issue of slavery during the election, and the events after the election. Leading up to the election, events in the union caused problems with political parties

On the other hand, Douglas, the candidate for the Democrats, was a firm supporter of Popular Sovereignty, which did not garner him many votes among the North and South, eventually leading to him only getting the support of one state during the electoral votes. The candidate's views on slavery divided the votes among the states, with the ideas that had Lincoln allowing him to collect the majority of the votes in the Northern states, while the efforts of Douglas, Bell, and Breckinrigde split the votes in the South. The division in the views on slavery culminated in the eventual election of Lincoln as our 16th president. “While historians remain divided over precisely when the Civil War became an ‘irrepressible conflict,’ the results of the election of 1860, as evidenced by the actions of seven slaveholding states, clearly shows that Lincoln's election only further aggravated existing sectional tensions. Even if the election did not directly push the nation into civil war, its results clearly hastened the South's journey toward disunion.” Once the results of the election became final, South Carolina, the first of many, announced its secession from the