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1. The background is a more successful Buchanan presidency (it could hardly have been worse!). Without going into too many laborious details as to the POD Kansas still bleeds but only after the Leecompton constitution is accepted as legitimate by the supreme court and moderate public opinion. Douglas and Buchanan are not alienated. the Democrats are not hamstrung at the 1858 midterms.

2. Buchanan manages to pull off a few foreign policy successes, including backing Walkers Central America Filibuster (and possibly Quitman's Cuba Filibuster as well) which are popular in the south and to some extent in the Midwest but Polarizing as hell in the North. He also manages to purchase the Mexican debt.

3. Public opinion regarding questions of slavery and the related issues of southern expansion is still radicalized and polarized ITTL. But differently. Southern democrats have the illusion of power and success in spite of continuing relative demographic decline and are not enstranged to the same extent from Northern Democrats. Republicans feel increasingly opressed by the "slaverocracy". The supreme court is especially viewed as an illegitimate slaveocratic institute in the wake of accepting the leecompton constitution combined with Dread and Scott. Northern democrats and the various middle-of-the-road pro-expansion but neutral on slavery crowd feel that it is the Republicans who are the killjoy extremists upsetting the apple cart.

4. The Democratic convention ends up electing Stephan A.Douglas as presidential candidate, with the fire breathing southern Breckinridgeto balance the ticker as VP. The Republican convention is filled with more extreme representatives who end up electing Seward rather than Lincoln.

5. In the run up to the 1860 election the Wide-Awakes duke it out with Democratic Minute men in the streets of Ohio and the Midwest. Many accusations, some of them true, of Ballot rigging and

6. When Election day comes around The Democratic ticket takes pretty much all of the votes in the South, including Kansas (where the ballot is IS rigged). and the Border states. They also take the West Coast and New Jersey. The Republicans take New England, Pensylvania, New York, Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa.

7. Ohio, Indiana and Illonois are the swing states and a battleground of rallies and counter rallies. It is also the focus for various dirty tricks used by incumbent, mostly Democratic governors and county officials countered by mob violence and intimidmidation by wide awakes and radical abolitionists including a certain John Brown who never leads a raid on Harpers ferry TTL.
When the dust clears the Republicans are declared the victors in Ohio, the Democrats in Douglas's home state of Illinois. Victory is razor thin in both cases with many calls on each side for a recount- which forces the exhausted Supreme court forced to repeatedly rule on Partisan issues, usually in a way which favors the Democrats and with scathing minority opinions. It makes no difference in Ohio and Illinois, Democrats still carry the first and Republicans the second, leaving the Republicans with 145 Electoral votes, and the Democrats with 147 and with Indiana still up in the air. Only a few hundred votes separate each side in Indiana from victory in the national election and accusation, court ruling, recount and even county by county re-voting follow.
As the Democrats loudly proclaim, the fact is that this is not a split election. While electoral votes might be split evenly, they have won over 60% of the popular vote and have a slight, though declining lead in congress and a larger one in the Senate.

8. How much this influences the supreme court's ultimate decision is unknown. But their ultimate decision is the final nail in the coffin, as far of their legitimacy in the eyes of the North goes. They decide to demand a state wide re-election in Indiana and then, following violence and ballot rigging declare Indian's vote null and void- in spite of indications of Republican victory.

9. That would be bad enough. But then the other shoe drops. Before his inauguration Douglas's health, strained by the long legal battle, gives out. Shortly after his funeral Breckinridge becomes the 16th president of the united states. But the house floor is half empty as he makes his address. In disgust, many of the Republican delegates from the North-East are boycotting the address.

10. Some, indeend, are meeting in Philadelphia (which unlike the rest of the state is solidly pro-republican). They are holding a constitutional convention.

Plausible so far? How likely is a arguably illegitimate Breckenbridge presidency and a supreme court viewed as a Slaveocratic insturment likely to push the North, rather than the south to secede, or to declare the republican candidate as the legitimate victor of the 1860 elections?
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