Lincoln Douglas debate letter

[Steve]

In December, Christie's is auctioning off this 1858 letter while preparing to debate Stephen Douglas. Did the debates between Douglas and Lincoln help break apart the Democratic Party in 1860 as the description claims? I know, contrary to what it says, Lincoln would've won the Electoral College vote even if the Democrats hadn't split.

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/books...tails.aspx

[Wild Bill]

Roger asked me to answer the above post.

Simple answer to Steve's question is: Yes.

Even though Lincoln only won just under 40% of the popular vote, he still would have won because he took the electoral college with the correct majority. But he had won several states narrowly, and a united Democratic Party might have been able to knock off one of those with a concentrated effort.

Now, here is the history prof’s answer, full of the usual befogging BS. I refer y’all to my books, Sic Semper Tyrannus (2009), and The Historical Dictionary of the Civil War and Reconstruction (2nd ed., 2012).

Part of the problem for Douglas was that in the Cincinnati party convention of 1856, before the slavery problem became a real scorcher, the Democrats agreed to appease the Southern fire-eaters (those for slavery and its expansion into the American west) by holding the 1860 Convention in Charleston, SC. This was the most rabid of all Southern cities when it came to defending slavery in all of its aspects. It had poor accommodations, which limited the number of pro-Douglas delegates and on-lookers. So the pro-Slavery crowd though their cheers, demonstrations, and parades made the Southern views look more popular than they really were.

When the South agreed to the Compromise of 1850, they were especially demanding that the North enforce the Fugitive slave law. The South sent delegates to a special Southern Convention at Nashville and said they would hold back the fire-eaters and the secession movement if the North did this.

But the North refused and Abolitionists and Antislavery began to push Personal Liberty laws to block enforcement of the Fugitive Act with in their states. The result was the Supreme Court unanimous decision that such state laws were unconstitutional (Ableman v. Booth, 1859).

Stephen A. Douglas, who had got the Compromise of 1850 passed after Henry Clay had given up on it, advanced to fore in the Democratic Party. Douglas was pretty much ambivilous toward slavery. His main interest was to advance railroads into the west. He and others had promoted the Pony Express to demonstrate the Transcontinental railroad could cross the Great Plains in the winter out of Chicago to counter the Southern route out of New Orleans, that had led to the Gadsden Purchase in 1854.

To make the railroad profitable, Douglas next had to promote settlement to counter that already farther west in Texas. But to do this, he had to get the Democratic “establishment” to back him. The 4 key votes were held by Southern pro-slavery men. Their deal was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It set up two territories, Kansas (for the South and slavery) and Nebraska (for the North and free territory). As this territory was above the 1820 Missouri Compromise line of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed it.

The North went nuts. This technically opened all of the west to pro-slave settlement. To stop this the North organized settlers to get to Kansas first and block slavery. The South did the same but it proved harder to move a plantation west that to move independent families, so the North won out.

The South sent in organized gangs of pro-slave gunmen and the North forted up in several towns. The anti-slave settlers had their own gangs to counter the Southerners, one of which was led by John Brown. He went to a Yankee settlement of Ossawatomie and massacred several Southern families there—none of which owned slaves. The result was the Kansas-Missouri Border war—a preliminary to the Civil War that followed in 1861.

Meanwhile, the Election of 1856 was won by the Democrat James Buchanan. Immediately came the Dred Scott decision that declared Blacks not to be citizens and endorsed the Southern view on slavery’s spread into the territories and declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. Add to this John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, VA, and Douglas looked pretty good as a Democrat candidate in 1860 with Southern support.

Then came the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Everything went much as expected until Lincoln asked Douglas the Freeport Question at the Freeport, Ills, debate. He basically asked Douglas whether there was a way to stop the spread of slavery into the West in spite of the Dred Scott decision and the Kansas Missouri Acts repel of the Missouri Compromise. Douglas had to say “no” to win the Democratic Nomination in 1860. But he had to say “yes” if he wanted to win the Illinois US senate seat, as voters wanted a slave-free West. Douglas went one election at a time and said yes, there would be no slavery anywhere without a positive law passed to make it legal. Otherwise the slaves could walk away. That cooked his goose in 1860 with the South but won the Illinois US senate seat. It also guaranteed Lincoln the Republican nomination for president in 1860. But then the Yanks won the Kansas-Nebraska war and, over Buchanan’s opposition, Kansas became a free state in 1861.

The result was the South walked out of the Charleston Convention in 1860, re-met in Richmond and nominated a Southern candidate, John C Breckenridge. The Northern Democrats re-met at Baltimore and nominated Douglas. Lincoln won the Republican nomination (providentially held in Chicago (where the delegates and on-lookers were his), and the Border State South nominated John Bell (they feared that the war would be fought in their states).

[Steve]

Bill,
Thanks for the informative and helpful explanation on how the Lincoln-Douglas debates affected Douglas's chances of being elected and the opinion of him in the South following the senate election. And how that effected the 1860 Democratic ticket.

I still don't think it's likely a united Democratic Party would've defeated Lincoln in the 1860 election. Lincoln got 180 electoral votes with 152 needed to win. California and Oregon would definitely have switched to the Democrats and probably the 4 electoral votes of New Jersey that went to Lincoln for a total of 11 electoral votes switched to the Democrats. That's nowhere enough to get a majority of electoral votes even if the Democrats had won all of the Bell states. I don't know if there were enough votes to flip enough of the others states even in closer margin states like Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to secure a united Democratic ticket win.

But don't mind that minor nit-pick, your answer about Douglas is much appreciated.

[Wild Bill]

Steve,

I left out one of the more important things about the election of 1860; namely, the election of 1856. The Republicans in their first presidential race put forth John Charles Fremont. Buchanan won, but Fremont showed that a candidate could win betaking exclusively Northern states by taking Fremont's 1856 states plus Pennsylvania and Indiana or Illinois. Buchanan's opponents in Pennsylvania, led by Simon Cameron, saw their opportunity when Buchanan could not run, and went for Lincoln with a little reward promised by Lincoln's mangers, namely a cabinet position for Cameron. And we of course know who was from Illinois in 1860. Hence Lincoln won taking even more than he needed in the Electoral College.

I agree that the Dems probably could not have stopped the Republican juggernaut in 1860, but a united party certainly would have helped, especially in close states.