Retrospective US Presidential Election: 1860

Vote in the 1860 Retrospective US Presidential Election!


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I plan to run through every US presidential election, two per week. The 28 elections from 1789-1896 will be run simultaneously with the 28 elections from 1900-2008. Be sure to vote in each election!

For 1789-1800, I will include in the poll everyone who received at least 5% of the electoral vote. From 1804-2008, I will include everyone who received at least 0.05% of the popular vote. Results for each election will be posted on the dedicated Retrospective US Presidential Election Results Thread (here) and compared to the actual results. The thread for general project discussion is here.

Here are the links to the 1972 election and the 1792 EC vote.
 
Yeah, that's right, I broke from the pack and voted for Douglas. I'm the Rhode Island of AH.com
 
Stephen A. Douglas. The Republicans has damaged the Union, dragging us in a Civil War, all thanks to Fremont and his aggressive policies!
 
Herschel V. Johnson. So... I can see the irony there. Either way, if you vote Dem or Rep, the President will die, and a Johnson will become President...

Apparently the V. is for Vespasian. +1 coolness point!

(Now I'm imagining some sort of weird retrospective political cartoon with the other three candidates as Galba, Otho, and Vitellius...)
 
Douglas said:
I tell you that this Chicago doctrine of Lincoln’s—declaring that the negro and the white man are made equal by the Declaration of Independence and by Divine Providence—is a monstrous heresy. The signers of the Declaration of Independence never dreamed of the negro when they were writing that document. They referred to white men, to men of European birth and European descent, when they declared the equality of all men…. When that Declaration was put forth every one of the thirteen colonies were slaveholding colonies, and every man who signed that instrument represented a slaveholding constituency. Recollect, also, that no one of them emancipated his slaves, much less put them on an equality with himself, after he signed the Declaration. On the contrary, they all continued to hold their negroes as slaves during the revolutionary war…. When you say that the Declaration of Independence includes the negro, you charge the signers of it with hypocrisy.

I say to you, frankly, that in my opinion this government was made by our fathers on the white basis. It was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and was intended to be administered by white men in all time to come.…

What a classy guy.
 
What a classy guy.
Well, you have to consider the situation at the time. The South was this close to seceding and dragging America in years of blood, fire and anguish. He is the moderate according to the times, and the only man who can keep the South from seceding while placating the North.
 

Deleted member 40957

What a classy guy.

To be fair, he's probably technically correct about everything in that speech. Not that that makes it any less reprehensible.

Also, I can't help but notice the contrast between the one-sided numbers we've got here and the massive constitutional crisis brewing in this week's other thread.
 
Are you defending another pro-South ACW-era politician? If I didn't know better, I'd think you liked grits for breakfast.... :p
Buchanan did not support secession, and Herschel V. Johnson didn't at first. Being elected to the Vice Presidency would end any thoughts of secession from him.
 
I dislike jumping on bandwagons, but I cannot see any other way to vote than for Lincoln:

Breckenridge is a slavocrat (yeah, I know that I voted for Buchanan last time, but that was only because I found Fremont to be totally unfit for the Presidency), Douglas will die in the middle of 1861 and his VP served in the CS government in OTL. Bell is not very exciting and was a slave-owner, although he did at least vote against the Kansas-Nebraska act. He may not be a puppet of slave-power but he also won't act against it.

Yeah, Lincoln it is. It's gotta be. In earlier elections I said that it was too soon for radical politics (hence my voting against Birney and Smith and Fremont), but now the time is at hand.
 
Bell is not very exciting and was a slave-owner, although he did at least vote against the Kansas-Nebraska act. He may not be a puppet of slave-power but he also won't act against it.

This was the same conclusion I came to WRT Bell. In this, the 1960 election, Slavery is my top issue, as much as I don't want to see the country split. Lincoln it is.
 
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