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What would the political ramifications be? Are the Southern secessions averted entirely or merely delayed? Is there an American Civil War at all? I'm actually really curious about what people think about this.

Incidentally, one thing I do know: if Douglas did become President it's likely his early death would be butterflied away. He died of typhoid fever, which is contracted from eating contaminated food and takes effect within a matter of weeks, meaning his illness was post-POD. So if elected he'd probably serve out his full term.

A note on the POD: Douglas doesn't need to win an electoral vote majority in the 1860 election in order to becomes President. All that needs to happen are two things:
1. No one wins the necessary 152-vote electoral majority, throwing the election to Congress
2. Douglas gets enough electoral votes to be counted in the top three, so his name is on the House ballot for President.
So Lincoln needs to win at least 29 fewer electoral votes than OTL, which can be done if he loses his five closest states: California and Oregon (very easy), Illinois and Indiana (less easy but doable), and Ohio (hard, but possible). If all of these go to the second-place winner then Douglas wins all of them but Oregon, which goes to Breckinridge -- Douglas therefore gets 41 extra electoral votes for a total of 63, meaning he comes in third place and is on the House ballot.
On the House ballot itself, nobody has a majority of state delegations supporting them in the first round of voting (Lincoln has the most with 16; Breckinridge has 12 including Oregon; Douglas has only three; the remaining three states consist of one which would support Bell if he was on the ballot, and two which are divided evenly between supporters of Breckinridge and Bell.) But I really do think that on subsequent rounds of voting, Douglas would be the compromise candidate to unite the Breckinridge and Bell supporters against Lincoln -- thus Douglas would ultimately win with 18 states voting for him to Lincoln's 16. In the case of the Southern Democrats, it also helps that their vice-presidential candidate Joseph Lane would easily be confirmed as Vice-President by the Senate as only the top two electoral vote winners are considered on that ballot rather than the top three like in the House. So the final result would be Stephen Douglas (Northern Democratic) as President and Joseph Lane (Southern Democratic) as Vice-President.


So, that's the POD dealt with. Now, what does everyone think about President Douglas?
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