An Affair of States: A Breckenridge Timeline (Reboot)

Despite the weak POD, this may be interesting. It's very difficult to have Breckenridge win the 1860 elections. By this point in time the North had become entirely fed up with the perceived dominance of the Slave Power. Sure, not everyone in the North was an abolitionist but a large majority did support the idea of Free Soil and Free Labor in the territories.

Also, very few Northern Democrats would have gone over to the Southern Democrats had the whole Democratic party died. If they had done so they would have lost reelection very quickly. Most Northern Democrats were supported by urban populations, new immigrants and wealthy old party insiders. These were not in any way abolitionists, but they were strongly for protective tariffs and free soil territories. Most likely the vast majority of Northern Democrats would have joined the fusion Coalition Party while the die hard abolitionists would have split off again to reform the Liberty Party. An election or two down the road as Breckenridge made Southern policies national policies the North will have moved even further towards opposing the Slave Power. Remember, Lincoln was seen as a moderate in 1860. The North was shocked when the South seceded. After 4 years of Breckenridge the North won't care what the South thinks and will be in no mood for moderation. The Coalition Party will put up a radical and win (the demographics are just to strong in the North's favor). By 1864 the South will be in some real trouble.

Benjamin
 
Despite the weak POD, this may be interesting. It's very difficult to have Breckenridge win the 1860 elections. By this point in time the North had become entirely fed up with the perceived dominance of the Slave Power. Sure, not everyone in the North was an abolitionist but a large majority did support the idea of Free Soil and Free Labor in the territories.

Also, very few Northern Democrats would have gone over to the Southern Democrats had the whole Democratic party died. If they had done so they would have lost reelection very quickly. Most Northern Democrats were supported by urban populations, new immigrants and wealthy old party insiders. These were not in any way abolitionists, but they were strongly for protective tariffs and free soil territories. Most likely the vast majority of Northern Democrats would have joined the fusion Coalition Party while the die hard abolitionists would have split off again to reform the Liberty Party. An election or two down the road as Breckenridge made Southern policies national policies the North will have moved even further towards opposing the Slave Power. Remember, Lincoln was seen as a moderate in 1860. The North was shocked when the South seceded. After 4 years of Breckenridge the North won't care what the South thinks and will be in no mood for moderation. The Coalition Party will put up a radical and win (the demographics are just to strong in the North's favor). By 1864 the South will be in some real trouble.

Benjamin
Correct. I had no intention for him to be re-elected, as any president this bad would end up with this big a crisis.
 
Meant to post this earlier.

The west coast would not be cut off in any way from the East even with all the fighting. First of all the Army would go out of its way to quickly create a protected route from St. Louis to Sacramento by way of a series of manned forts and armed stage coaches. The telegraph lines would parallel this route. This system worked (OTL) from 1848 till 1867 when the transcontinental railroad was completed and kept settlers relatively safe from attacks by Indians and black-hats.

Secondly, most cargo and many settlers traveled to California pre-1867 via steamship. So unless the Jayhawks have suddenly taken control of the trans-Nicarauguan and trans-Panamania land routes or have raised a pirate navy, they will have no effect on the majority of the most important East to West transportation.

Benjamin
 
Sorry to keep harping on about the POD, but I've found out something very interesting which gives an incredibly easy way that Lincoln could lose one more state, causing the election to be thrown to the House, without the popular vote even changing at all in that state.

If you check out the votes in New Jersey for the 1860 election, you'll notice an anomaly: Douglas won the popular vote in the state, yet the state's seven electoral votes are split with four for Lincoln and three for Douglas. Why is this? Well, I found out why.

Background info: in New Jersey at the time, people didn't vote for the candidate -- they voted for the specific electors who supported a candidate. Now, at first the Democratic Party in New Jersey decided to put forth a ballot where people would vote for seven electors who would all vote for Douglas. But then they changed their minds, and banded together with the Breckenridge and Bell campaigns to create a "fusion" ticket in order to stop Lincoln. So the fusion ticket had a ballot wherein people would vote for three electors who supported Douglas, two who supported Breckenridge, and two who supported Bell. And should the fusion ticket win, the state's electoral votes would be divided accordingly.

Except, in one district the guy who was in charge of distributing ballots thought "fuck that" and distributed the Douglas-only ballots instead. Which meant that when people voted Democratic in that district, they were voting for the three Douglas-supporting electors on the fusion ticket plus four other Douglas-supporting electors. Meaning that the votes from that district put the three Douglas-supporting electors over the line, but split the anti-Lincoln vote on the other four elector slots and allowed Lincoln to take them with a plurality.

If the fusion ticket is distributed statewide, then Lincoln doesn't win any electoral votes in New Jersey. If he's also lost Ohio, then that brings his count down to 153 -- just short of a majority, meaning the election has to be thrown to the House of Representatives.

(Politics is fun!)
 
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@ColeMercury - Not a bad write up there. I like the idea, but getting Breckenridge to win is a difficult POD. I think if the election went to the House the moderate states would compromise and we'd see Douglas win. Sure Douglas had made a lot of enemies on both sides but the Republicans were not really and option for any Southern state and the Constitutional Union Party did not have the support base to pull out a win. With it being "one state, one vote" in the House the majority of the North West, West and Border Slave states would come together with perhaps support from New Jersey and PA and give Douglas the victory.

Of course one could change that by having the already sickly Douglas expire a bit early. Then it would be Lincoln vs. Breckenridge. In any sensible universe Lincoln would win, but this is AH so it could be possible that Breckenridge pulls it out.

Benjamin
 
@ColeMercury - Not a bad write up there. I like the idea, but getting Breckenridge to win is a difficult POD. I think if the election went to the House the moderate states would compromise and we'd see Douglas win. Sure Douglas had made a lot of enemies on both sides but the Republicans were not really and option for any Southern state and the Constitutional Union Party did not have the support base to pull out a win. With it being "one state, one vote" in the House the majority of the North West, West and Border Slave states would come together with perhaps support from New Jersey and PA and give Douglas the victory.

Of course one could change that by having the already sickly Douglas expire a bit early. Then it would be Lincoln vs. Breckenridge. In any sensible universe Lincoln would win, but this is AH so it could be possible that Breckenridge pulls it out.

Benjamin
I talked about this in another post on the previous page. Most of the Democrat-dominated congressional delegations were in the South, in slave states that voted for Breckenridge, while Douglas would've only had four states to his name. The reason why the Democrats would unite behind Breckenridge rather than Douglas is because he beats Douglas in the popular vote in TTL -- with more votes and more states, he's the stronger candidate. In OTL you'd be right and the Democrats would've almost certainly united behind Douglas (especially as more border states voted for Bell IOTL), but I think TTL can swing it for Breckenridge.

Re. Douglas being sickly -- Douglas died in June 1861 of typhoid fever, which means he wouldn't have got sick until well after the election was over (the incubation period of typhoid is usually between one and two weeks, about a month at the absolute longest, and the sickness itself happens over the course of about a month.) If Douglas had won the election he probably would have lived.
 
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