Assessment of the 1860 US Presidential Election Results

The election did not make secession inevitable. No-one had run a secessionist ticket. Indeed, the more radical Democrats who supported Breckinridge did not win a majority of votes in the slave states: 55% had voted for more pro-Union and compromise candidates, in the form of Douglas and mainly Bell. Indeed, even in the 11 states which were to form the Southern Confederacy, his popular vote was tiny. Anyway the results when taken as a whole did not spell disaster for the South. The Southerners still controlled the Supreme Court and neither House in Congress had a Republican majority.…