A House Divided-An Alternate History of the 1860 Election

In 1860, sectional tensions in the United States were at an all-time high. The Democratic party split on two, the Southern Democrats nominating Vice-president John C Breckinridge and Oregon Governor Joseph Lane while the mainstream Democrats nominated Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas and Governor Herschel Vespasian Johnson of Georgia. The Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin and the Constitutional Union Party, led by John Bell and Edward Everett, also contested.

In the North, Douglas campaigned bitterly against Lincoln, especially in New York and Illinois,[1], despite the huge Republican advantage there. In the South, it was primarily a contest between Bell and Breckinridge, though Douglas managed to win Missouri.

President James Buchanan supported Breckinridge's campaign, which gave Breckinridge an advantage. Lincoln ran a front-porch campaign while his supporters boosted support for him.

Election results:
Abraham Lincoln 142 electoral votes 39.5% of the popular vote
Stephen Douglas 51 electoral votes 29.7% of the popular vote
John C Breckenridge 72 electoral votes 18.2% of the popular vote
John Bell 39 electoral votes 12.6% of the popular vote

No candidate had won the needed 152 electoral votes. Therefore, the election would go to the House. Only the top three candidates would participate, meaning the contest was between Douglas, Lincoln and Breckinridge.

The House deadlocked. All the Southern representatives voted for Breckinridge and President Buchanan worked to ensure Breckinridge would become President. However, neither candidate reached the two-thirds majority, though Lincoln attained a majority with 126 House votes. The South threatened secession if the House chose Lincoln.

After the fifteenth ballot, Douglas moved to make himself the compromise candidate.
Douglas won 55 House votes. However, Douglas was attacked as he promised not to accept election by House.

"And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a president whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President."

The Senate had to choose between the top-two running mates, Hamlin and Lane. On the first ballot, Lane and Hamlin both won 32 votes with 2 abstaining. Vice-President Breckinridge cast a vote for Lane, breaking the tie and giving Lane 33 votes. The Senate selected Joseph Lane as Vice-President of the United States.

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Joseph Lane


With the House of Representatives in a continued deadlock and tensions mounting on both sides, on 4 March, 1861, Joseph Lane was inaugurated President of the United States.

[1]In OTL, Douglas campaigned in the South more though he knew he couldn't win there. The PoD is Douglas does better in the North and that he wins New York.

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If the election did go to the House, it is decided not by member votes but by states. Each state has 1 vote, decided by the majority within its delegation. If a delegation splits evenly, the state has no vote. To win election requires a majority of the states, in this case 17 out of 33 states. Also, in January 1861 the sitting House will still be the one elected in 1858, plus any special elections since then. Therefore the question is, in Janaury 1861, how were the House delegations of the states allocated, not how individual members would vote. First candidate, if any, to 17 states wins, but if no candidate can win the vote of 17 delegations by March 4, then the presidency does fall to the vice-president elect, either elected through the Electoral College or by simple majority vote of the Senate, until a President is elected.
 
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A deadlock in the House (leading to Lane, as vice president chosen by the Senate, becoming president) is plausible, but the way the election is decided in the House is not a two-thirds majority of members but a majority of state *delegations*--each state, large or small, having one vote. The Republicans controlled fifteen delegations, all from the North. The Breckinridge Democrats controlled eleven slave states plus Oregon and California and were tied with Bell supporters in Kentucky, Maryland. and North Carolina. The Douglas Democrats controlled only the Illinois delegation. The Bell supporters controlled only Tennessee.

A deadlock does seem likely unless the southern Democrats can convince enough Bell men to vote for Breckinridge. (A Lincoln victory in the House seems unlikely; he is only two delegations short, but getting those two will be very difficult--though I have seen scenarios where they get one Douglasite in Illinois to defect and declare a close House race in Oregon to have gone in their favor...) Theoretically, the Republicans, seeing that Lincoln could not win in the House and that Lane would be sure to win in the Senate, might throw in the towel and vote for Bell--but I doubt if enough of them would be willing to vote for a slaveholder, even one who had voted against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution. Moreover, if the Republicans *did* support Bell, some of Bell's own supporters in the South might recoil at voting for someone backed by the "Black Republicans" and reluctantly vote for Breckinridge instead.

Anyway, the Republican during the 1860 campaign specifically anticipated and warned against the deadlocked-House-so-Lane-becomes-president scenario; one of their slogans was "Lincoln or Lane."
 
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