AHC: South Stays Put After the Election of 1860

Wolfpaw

Banned
With a POD no earlier than 1859, your challenge is to have the South not secede from the Union until (at least) the election of 1864. Anything that's not ASB goes, folks.

Aaaand......

Go!
 
Last edited:
You are aware, of course, the challenge as worded allows that Lincoln could lose the election, thus removing the spark that started the fire...

You want to make it really challenging, put in a condition that Republicans have to win the White House* in 1860 ;)

*and the Senate (and keep the House)
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
You are aware, of course, the challenge as worded allows that Lincoln could lose the election, thus removing the spark that started the fire...
I know, but having Lincoln lose is no mean feat, especially given the Dems' implosion and Bell siphoning off votes.

Hell, a challenge in and of itself would be having the Dems managing a single ticket to run against Lincoln.
 
This may be marginally ASB but here goes:
Lincoln dies of typhoid fever 2 weeks after being nominated. As Vice-Presidential Nominee Hannibal Hamlin claims the Presidential nomination but as a regional poitical figure with no independent stature his calim is disputed. The National Republican leadership, under the prodding of William Seward, accepts Hamlin's claim but names Seward to the ticket as VP. This energizes midwestern and western devotees of John Fremont to start a splinter ticket, with Oliver Morton of Indiana as his VP, thus breaking the Republican Party into essentially A New England/New York branch and a Midwestern/West branch. In the confusion, John Bell drops his campaign and endorses Douglas. The Bell Douglas fusion and the Hamlin - Fremont split enables Douglas to carry the border states, NJ, PA, Ohio, IL CA and Oregon with 127 EV. Hamilin holds New England and NY with 78 EV, Breckendrige keeps the deep South with 61, and Fremont ends with Indiana, MI, IA, WI and MN for 30. This eliminates Fremont and sends the election to the House.
The House (1858 election), lacking a true majority, is hopelessly deadlocked. The Senate (1858), with a Democratic majority, sees that majority reunite to elect Douglas's VP, Herschel V. Johnson of GA, as Vice President. This is accepted by both wings of the Democratic party so the Deadlock in Presidential voting is alowed to continue and on March 4, 1861, Herschel V. Johnson is sworn in as Vice President and then as President of the United States. Under these circumstances, South Carolina does not secede in December 1860 nor do any other Southern States. However, Hamlin and Fremont Republicans alike view the entire scenario as electoral theft, worse than the Adams/Clay corrupt bargain. Needless to say the Johnson administration is a worse fiasco than Buchanan's and the two sides are spoiling for a return engagement in 1864, this time with no compromises.
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
Bumping this.

Also, I'd like to say that Douglas would probably be able to swing Southern support should the election go to Congress. He made it very clear that he wasn't going to do a thing to slavery in the South and while he did support popular sovereignty, he also supported filibustering, which was a
cause célèbre in the Antebellum South.
 
The problem is that if Douglas wasn't able to swing Southern support to keep the Democrats from splintering, how is he going to swing things in Congress?
 
Last edited:
Which requires the South to accept Lincoln being elected in the first place, which for reasons that range from paranoid to psychotic they didn't.

Why would that change with something Lincoln can't do until after he's in office?
 
Why would that change with something Lincoln can't do until after he's in office?

Quite; the Deep South was out of the Union before Lincoln was even inaugurated.

A better bet would be to try for something like a successful Crittenden Compromise, but for that to work you'd need to fix the climate of suspicion and distrust between North and South. OTL, neither side trusted the other to negotiate in good faith by 1860, and that's not the sort of thing that's easily fixed.
 
Top