A. James Fuller: The Election of 1860 | BRI Scholar Talks

0:00 [Music] hi this is tony williams a senior fellow with the bill of rights institute and i want to welcome all of you to another scholar talks today we are very honored to have distinguished historian a james fuller with us to discuss his essay

0:20 on the 1860 election from the new bri textbook life liberty and the pursuit of happiness by way of introduction dr james fuller is a professor of history at the university of indianapolis he is an expert in the civil war and reconstruction in midwestern history the old south

0:40 and 19th century united states history generally he is a past president of the indiana association of historians and he’s published several books including the election of the 1860 reconsidered he’s currently finishing a book entitled morton marshall mcnutt and mitch

1:01 great alliteration there four governors who shaped indiana in the midwest and is co-authoring a true crime volume entitled man devil in the midwest which is a study of a serial killer in the civil war area era which just sounds fascinating uh jim thanks for your contribution to the bri textbook and thank you very much

1:22 for joining me today thank you for having me great our pleasure so uh let’s dive right in shall we uh question one the the tumultuous events of the 1850s really revealed a profound sectionalism dividing north and south in the country

1:43 that really shaped the 1860 election can you provide us with a little historical background of the events leading up to that decisive election certainly uh the 1850s lead to the 1860 election and of course to the civil war the people at the time did not know that they were going to the civil war so we always call it the antebellum era the

2:04 before the war era right and we want to look at that but they didn’t understand that that’s what was coming but in that context of the 1850s you americans were really paranoid um they became uh increasingly divided along sectional lines north versus south but it was even more than that they were

2:24 beginning to distrust one another uh they began to uh in some ways it’s eerily similar to our own time where you no longer trust someone in the opposition someone in the other party someone on the other side and you doubt what they say and this night you don’t have common ground for truth uh and what what is right what is

2:46 wrong and so i think some of those conspiracy theories of that period helped to divide the country very deeply early in the decade you had uh the papal plot and part of the the nativist movement though known as the know nothings the american party that ran no-nothing candidates for office they were anti-immigrant but they were also anti-catholic they

3:07 were concerned and they believed in the conspiracy that the pope in rome was sending millions of catholic immigrants to take over america and to destroy the protestant faith and to destroy liberty and then you have by mid-decade you begin to have other conspiracy theories along the sectional lines

3:27 you had the abolitionist conspiracy in the south where southerners began to fear that the abolitionists were out to destroy america that they were in a plot to take over the government and that they had these this radical agenda to destroy true religion to destroy the family to destroy liberty as they understood it uh and that these radical

3:48 abolitionists were they said they were about freeing slaves but they were really about taking power and they were about instituting socialism and they were about taking over the country uh and so and then in the north you had the slave power conspiracy where northerners began to suspect that the southerners a pro-southern pro-slavery southern

4:09 politicians and leaders were running the entire country and that they controlled more often than not the presidency that they controlled the courts that they controlled the government and that they were out to do everything they could to not only protect slavery but to extend it that their ultimate agenda was to

4:29 enslave poor white people in the south as well as as black slaves in the in the and in the north as well as the uh slaves in the south so they had this this view that the other side is out to get them and that if they win we lose and we lose everything and so they began to think that the stakes were higher uh than perhaps that they really

4:50 were for many people uh but certainly uh they began to raise the bar on what what is at stake and then that leads to the real division over the issue of the territorial expansion of slavery and that issue uh is of course whether or not you will have slavery in new territories and in new

5:12 states in the west and that issue uh goes back to sort of the founding era now which you’re familiar with uh back to that early uh republic into the founding documents will the country live up to its ideals of equality and liberty is found in the declaration of independence or will it not and which version of

5:34 america will go westward will it be the southern view with slavery uh will it be the northern view with free labor will which one will go into the territories and then as that issue keeps coming up it divides the country politically even as they become more paranoid and distrustful of one another

5:56 and it keeps coming up right compromise of 1850 and and kansas nebraska and believe in kansas and just dred scott just the issue won’t go away right it just won’t go away and that’s the that’s the that’s right it goes back so they tried to settle it with the missouri compromise in 1820 and they drew that line on the map and said anything north of this line will be

6:16 free and anything south of this line will be uh will be slay so the 3630 line that will resolve the issue but it just simply will not go away and after the u.s mexican war uh where you took the northern half of mexico geographically at least uh you took that all that new territory now what well

6:37 a lot of people weren’t worried because they thought oh it will take forever for us to get out there by that time we’ll resolve this issue once and for all maybe slavery will have died out or what have you well then comes the gold rush uh and all of a sudden california’s applying for statehood almost overnight it seems to the people in the east and then that question is raised again

6:57 what do we do when southern california would have been south of that 36 30 line and so do you divide california do you bring in two states or just one and they then they have to compromise and so that compromise of 1850 uh does bring california as a free stake but it sort of just raises that issue again

7:17 and then stephen douglas uh who has his eye on the white house already uh who helped actually get the compromise of 1850 done he’s the one who actually uh got it through and through congress he has the 1854 uh kansas-nebraska act which he says will resolve the issue once and for all

7:38 by answering it democratically we’ll let the people of that territory decide let democracy decide uh and of course it doesn’t uh and the big issue becomes kansas and then they begin to fight and uh so as you said bleeding kansas 1856 they’ve got open pitched warfare uh in kansas fighting the pro-slavery

7:58 forces versus the anti-slavery forces uh and they are going to war uh already over this to make kansas frieder make kansas slave and this these bloody events in kansas like the uh the sack of lawrence uh like uh john brown’s attack on a pro-slavery village these kinds of things only feed the

8:18 conspiracy theories feed the paranoia that so much is at stake and so then that paves the way then for the supreme court to try to weigh in in 1857 with its cedric scott case saying that slavery cannot be prohibited and that really then makes many many northerners convinced

8:39 the slave power is in control and so the division continues all right very good well let’s go ahead and take a deep dive on some of these candidates who ran because there were there were four candidates running and and john bell was a candidate for the constitutional union party who was also a slave holding southerner

9:01 from tennessee who interestingly supported the union and the constitution and he won a few states in the upper south but his message seemed to have a limited appeal it didn’t really resonate with most southerners uh is that fair to say and can you unpack that a little bit bell was um well he’s an older guy he

9:22 was he a lot of experience he’d been around forever he’d been in the cabinet he’d been in congress he’s been in the senate he’d been in government forever so he had lots of experience going for him um and he was a former wig and he was running on the old wig platform in many ways not necessarily the economic agenda which we’re so familiar with

9:42 with henry clay and then abraham lincoln and also adopting that of having the government build infrastructure internal improvements uh to have a protective tariff and so on a national bank but instead he was looking at the old wig principle and platform of compromise let’s step up put our self-interest

10:02 aside and save the country henry clay known as the great compromiser had done this numerous times 1820 with the missouri compromise again with the uh compromise of the nullification crisis in the 1830s so he was famous for compromising bell wants to do the same thing and he’s what he’s trying to do is tell everybody calm down just wait

10:24 let’s step back a minute let’s keep the union and the constitution as they are and let’s just let’s everybody take a step back let’s compromise let’s make a deal we don’t have to go to war he is most popular in that upper south and in the border states for obvious

10:45 reasons if there’s going to be a war between north and south it’s going to be fought in that territory uh and so it’s a it’s kind of obvious to me why those people would be wanting to vote i was like hey let’s everybody calm down um and so he gets support there he is unpopular in both the north and the south beyond

11:06 that border region because people are no longer ready to compromise and compromise had been the name of the game in american politics and many people i remember reading political science textbooks when i was in college talking about how compromise was this great thing in democracy and it is right we can we can all make a

11:26 deal we’ll come to some understanding we’ll set our differences aside and we’ll make a deal and get something done but compromise is a bad word and it’s a dangerous thing if you’re paranoid if you’re con and maybe somebody is really out to get you you can’t compromise with that other side

11:47 if they’re going to destroy the republic if they’re going to destroy the country they’re going to destroy your way of life as you see it they’re out to get you then you don’t want to compromise so i think bell is sort of the wrong guy at the wrong time um i don’t know that any constitutional union candidate could have won in 1860 but he was this older guy with lots of

12:09 experience but he didn’t have a lot of charisma he didn’t have a lot of uh um uh well it’s the right word he didn’t have a lot of popularity really he was everybody knew who he was he was safe uh but they had had enough of that they had chosen candidates like that james buchanan who turned out to be a terrible president uh and but they had chosen him

12:31 he was safe he was the moderate he was the guy everybody had lots of experience they’re not ready for that they want somebody different they want somebody they think will defend their interests okay so we have a couple democrats so before we get to them individually uh the democrats are split between their northern and southern wings

12:52 and and how does this play out uh during the campaigns and and what effect does it have on the outcome of the election everybody’s favorite was stephen douglas he was expected to win he had come he had a shot in 1856 and had been stopped by a group of senators

13:12 uh who hated him personally but he had been building an organization he had been preparing for a campaign since 56 at least he had his eye on the white house for a while and everybody expected him to win the nomination for the democratic party and to win the election

13:33 in uh in in the in the general campaign the general election they expected him to win be president but the problem was that he had uh made southerners distrust him uh in the wake of the 1857 dred scott case and

13:53 what that did then is divides the party along the sectional lines and the democrats have been holding on tenuously avoiding this sectional crisis for some time and now it comes full-blown and he goes into the charleston convention in 1860 expecting to win

14:14 the southerners bolted the convention they just simply walked out and no one was nominated so they all agreed to meet again and when they did the party divided and the southern democrats nominated john c breckenridge and the northern democrats supported douglas and so you uh so they divided

14:35 along that sectional lines and it really came down to douglas being the favorite he’s the guy everybody expects to win the nomination and the presidency and he doesn’t get it because he had again fallen into this context of this deeply divided country where people are sus suspecting that the other side is out to get them

14:56 and douglas who in 1854 had been a hero of the south and they had loved him now they don’t trust him and will not vote for him okay great and so so let’s talk about each of those candidates in turn and and john breckenridge was the nation’s vice president at the time

15:16 and an aspiring young politician from kentucky whose star seemed to be on the rise and he did win most of the south and and so my question is does he really represent that southern slave interest and that’s a good question but historians continue to debate uh because when you break it down and i’ve seen some of these studies when i

15:38 was writing the book on the uh or editing the book and writing some of the chapters in the 1860 reconsidered book um it was there were these studies of county by county uh that the scholars had gone through and trying to figure out who voted for for which candidate and what you find is that some of the largest slave owners in the country

16:00 supported bell because they had so much at stake and they were afraid of what might happen uh i’m not but on the other hand you get a lot of the fire eaters as they were called the pro-slavery advocates who do support breckenridge and do so very publicly and actually campaign for him

16:20 at that time in american history it was not considered proper for a candidate to go out and and campaign uh if he was in a hotel or he was uh in town and uh they would come and serenade him a crowd would and they would ask him to speak and that was okay but he’s not allowed to go around and beg for votes uh so he

16:41 so he didn’t actually campaign breckenridge didn’t uh but he had these fire eaters like william yancy of alabama who were going around and asking for votes for him who were really trying to get the voters to support breckenridge’s campaign breckenridge was a star in the democratic party he was this very handsome man who had a long family history in kentucky

17:03 he was a rising star the buchanan administration had been smeared with all these charges and some of them correct charges for a corruption and they were seen as being this this sort of this dirty administration because of the scandals but breckenridge had managed to escape all of that and uh so he was seen as he was being as

17:24 not as being an honest guy uh he took the nomination i think in large part out of a sense of honor and that’s something that um i tried to explore in in my one of my chapters in in the book that i edited but also uh i think that was been ignored by historians just how much honor came into play for someone like breckenridge

17:46 and he felt in fact he told uh one person he said that he was leading a forlorn hope and the forlorn hope was the charge made into a suicide situation in battle where you charged in the first regiment into the into the enemy defenses knowing that you were going to take very high casualties he didn’t really expect to win but he

18:07 thought that somebody has to stand for this prince of these principles of pro-slavery and for the constitution as he understood it which the dred scott case had said was correct uh and to stand for honor that it was better to die than be dishonored right to death before dishonor and and i think in a certain sense that’s what he’s

18:27 doing that they felt like that they were being dishonored by the north uh and they feared what was going to happen or what they thought was going to happen if lincoln won uh and so this was a matter of honor for him right yeah thank you for that that complexity right uh you know there there’s you know sometimes in history not easy answers and it’s great

18:48 to bring that out for students uh i think in terms of you know who is he really representing who’s supporting them it doesn’t seem all that clear but yeah that’s great and that’s what and that’s that’s the problem with it it’s always messy all right we would like to say it’s very simple everybody who opposed slavery or they voted for lincoln and everybody

19:08 who supported slavery they they voted for breckenridge and it doesn’t really come down that clearly uh and in fact it’s a lot of times it has to do with things like with with bell support people just afraid that there’s going to be a civil war on there in their backyard and they don’t want it here uh or uh in the in the case of uh of breckenridge where they’re sort of feeling well

19:29 maybe it’s that we need to stand up to those yankees who they think are coming at them they’re afraid of the abolitionist conspiracy they’re paranoid they don’t trust the other side and so he’s the man who will defend our honor against that onslaught they as they see it coming even if it’s not real i think that’s something we always need to remember it in politics it’s it’s much more about

19:51 what people think and what they they imagine uh rather than what might actually be happening a symbolism over substance kind of thing right it’s what and so often we see that in politics where a catchy slogan means more than somebody’s actual policy policies right if you just have the right bumper sticker

20:12 you have the right phrase uh or if you look good if you can see if you have polish and i mean we’ve seen recent candidates like that and i mean i point back to barack obama when he ran in 2008 he had such a great hope and change who can be against hope and change right it was perfect and he was a very

20:32 great speaker an orator had this this polish and charisma i remember people weeping because they were they when he was speaking it was like such power and so even people who might not have necessarily agreed with all of his policies are open to voting for him because of that in this case they’re not looking at that but they’re looking at things like well

20:53 what’s best going to defend me against somebody who i think is out to get me well speaking of another guy who would have a great bumper sticker slogan and was also a great orator stephen douglas was a national figure running for this divided democratic party and he supported this this doctrine of popular sovereignty

21:14 uh this bumper sticker slogan uh since probably even before the kansas-nebraska act so can you explain what popular sovereignty is and and why he didn’t gain much traction in in either north or south well douglas did have this idea that democracy was the answer to america’s problems

21:35 let the people decide and this is the old jacksonian democrat position democracy’s the answer let the people decide they have the power popular sovereignty is that power to the people let them decide and the way it would work in this with the issue of the territorial expansion of slavery is that you would let the people of a territory decide when they applied for statehood

21:56 they would vote whether to apply as a free state or a slave state they would make that that decision themselves and so it was tried in the 1854 kansas nebraska act which then further divides the country douglas was hoping that that kansas nebraska act would resolve the issue of the territorial expansion of slavery once and for all

22:17 so it saved the union save the country secondly he hoped that it would save the democratic party and could make it survive uh the divisive uh context of the time and then thirdly he hoped it would make him president and it just doesn’t do any of that it actually further divides the nation it divides the democratic party

22:39 and he ends up losing uh his race for the nomination oh and then uh when he gets the northern democratic support loses the general election in 1860. i think we often underestimate just how much support he did get uh now in some i mean lincoln won by a fairly sizable margin in most of the northern states uh

23:01 but but douglas was up there around 46 47 in a lot of the states and so he actually did have a lot of support and he finished second in the popular vote he just didn’t win enough states to get the in the winner-take-all system to get the electoral college votes um he was a great speaker he called the

23:22 little giant and he was known for his oratorical ability and so on uh he did go on a tour uh supposedly to visit his ailing mother and when he did this then he would stop all on the way and make these speeches and so uh the other candidates just at him for this uh and they criticized him for

23:42 campaigning and saying that he was running for office and begging for votes uh but to his credit once he realized he was going to lose in that that fall in october of 1860 indiana and pennsylvania had state level elections and they voted for other state houses and governors and so on and the republicans won

24:03 clear majorities in those races when he saw that he knew that the handwriting was on the wall and he said i have lost lincoln is elect going to be elected and then to his credit he went south on a tour of the southern states and kept telling them over and over again don’t do anything stupid don’t secede

24:23 don’t break up the union this is the way democracy works come back and win the next election don’t go to violence they didn’t listen uh but uh he had lost his his credibility i think with the south when the dred scott case uh the rule that you could not prohibit slavery in the new territories because it was protected by the constitution

24:45 in 1858 douglas ran for re-election and had the famous lincoln douglas debates with his opponent abraham lincoln and in those debates lincoln pinned douglas down on the question can you prohibit slavery in the territories or not and douglas kept trying to wiggle out of

25:05 that and finally he had to answer and he said yes with popular sovereignty you can the people can decide in 1854 southerners love that in 1858 illinois people the legislature in illinois love that he is reelected but in 1860

25:27 the southern voters did not like that answer because they wanted him to say dred scott they wanted him to say no you cannot prohibit slavery and so he lost their support for the most part in the south well uh we haven’t talked much about lincoln yet uh and his star was definitely on the rise in the 1850s and

25:48 he’s really roused to action he stated uh because of douglas’s kansas nebraska act and uh can you explain lincoln’s main ideas how they might have concurred with the new republican party uh and how did that shape uh you know his his campaign and his presidency lincoln was the former wick uh and he

26:10 had an economic agenda which is very clear and he said it time and time again um but he had been a one-term representative in the 1840s opposed the mexican war u.s mexican war he opposed the war uh and then was defeated uh and sort of went back to practicing law but 1854 as you said uh brought him back into politics mostly behind the scenes

26:32 uh speaking on behalf of other candidates helping them get elected and in 1860 he was a dark horse candidate no one expected him to be uh the nominee for the for the republican party there were a lot of other leading candidates in fact one of the new york papers uh published a front page with other pictures of all of

26:52 the leading republican candidates number eight and the last one on the list was lincoln they didn’t expect him to get it his he was very shrewd uh and he worked with his political uh operatives uh and they had a plan and their plan was to get all of the other candidates delegates to agree for lincoln to be their second

27:12 choice if your man can’t win you agree to vote for aid and so when it hap when that happened in the uh in the convention and and by the way in those days that’s where they made the decision was in the convention and the delegates began to realize that their preferred candidate was not going to be able to get enough votes so all

27:34 the leading candidates began canceling each other out but the lincoln campaign had gotten so many others to agree that well if we can’t win our second choice will be and lincoln gets the nomination so it was a very shrewd move on his part as a candidate he really he was non-committal uh he didn’t

27:54 say a lot he was he at one point he did answer a letter that was written to him and said that if he could save the union with with by freeing all the slaves he would if he could save the union by freeing no slaves he would if he could free the union by freeing some and not freeing others he would he would for him was all about the union and so the perpetual union he’s a

28:14 nationalist he believes in the nation and he believes in the union and he wants to preserve that at all costs if he can and so he’s very concerned about that and knowing that whatever he said about slavery is going to upset somebody he really didn’t say a whole lot uh and he let everybody else do all the talking and instead his campaign instead of

28:35 playing up as him being the candidate for freedom that’s what we would do and there were some of his campaign activities did mention freedom and ending slavery and that kind of thing but it was not the main main push by the camp by the candidate or by uh his campaign instead it was all about honest abe the rail splitter

28:56 he’s a common man he’s just like you uh he he grew up in a poor and he became he’s a self-made man he’s a he’s a great a true american uh he’s somebody who knows how uh to get things done and he’s honest all that honesty we and we still remember it i mean still in commercials today honest aid he probably was pretty honest for a politician and a lawyer

29:17 uh but it was that was the the in a in a period where everybody’s paranoid everybody says you can’t trust anyone saying your honest abe is a way to try to appeal to the voters and so i think in that way it was a very shrewd move by uh lincoln and his campaign he’s a master politician in getting elected as well as once he

29:38 becomes president uh and so he is he gets that nomination by being the fallback candidate that’s everybody’s second choice and then in the period of the lame duck period waiting for buchanan to leave office he’s still very non-committal uh and doesn’t say a whole lot trying to keep the country together he they never give him a chance south carolina before he ever takes office you’ve got

29:59 the deep south states led by south carolina they leave and form the confederacy and he sees it as rebellion and says this is not constitutional you can’t do this uh and so i have sworn an oath as president to preserve the union and to preserve the constitution and you are in rebellion and he will lead a war then to put down

30:20 that rebellion that’s the official name still today the war of the rebellion all right uh great stuff so so final question uh what’s the not not to give anything but what’s the outcome of the election and uh you know what are some of the short-term and long-term consequences of the 1860 election well of course lincoln wins uh the

30:41 election uh very handily in the electoral college uh and then uh in the electoral college breckenridge is second uh and then bell is third and douglas is last but douglas finished second in the uh in the popular vote uh lincoln comes into office and is faced with the immediate crisis of the fort sumter crisis where you have

31:04 uh federal troops uh in a standoff against rebels who are uh try are threatening the fort and uh so you have that and the confederacy uh has left the union uh lincoln responds to the firing on fort sumter with uh a call for volunteers and the upper south states then withdraw and join the confederacy and

31:27 the war is on um and so the civil war is the big result but it’s also the so the the impact in the result of the of the 1860 election is that and then all of the things that result from that civil war the nation being preserved emancipation in the end of slavery uh those issues

31:48 are huge and revolutionary and in many ways continue we’re still feeling the impact of that election today as we still work out what that civil war was all about and what it means for us as a society on the other hand i think there are some things that are very clear at that point the united states decides

32:09 that secession is not part of the equation and there were many who had asserted in the early republic even many northerners had said that states were sovereign the civil war resolves that and says no that the nation is sovereign not the not the state so the national government has this supreme power and that seems to

32:30 resolve it on another important matter here is that the civil war makes us begin emphasized begin to live up to the ideals found in the in the founding in the constitution but especially in the in the declaration of independence

32:50 and the bill of rights to start living up to those ideals of liberty and equality and to to make that real and then i but i think there are other legacies we could talk about and as i mentioned earlier the the paranoia and the division and the fact that we don’t trust one another uh in our own time it’s not new and it’s

33:11 somewhat scary uh because we look back and we see this as a in the past and it led to uh such a catastrophic event uh with so many people dying uh and and it’s something that uh is is disturbing and it worries us but you can see these parallels uh that do uh that do stretch to the to

33:32 the to the moment where politics are high stakes politics matter elections matter uh and people today think that as well i i don’t know it seems i i heard this a lot this recently of course right and probably you did too the most important election in our lifetimes it seems like i’ve heard that every four years but some elections do really matter and

33:55 i think the 1860 election to date was the most important election in american history great on that note uh dr jim fuller i want to thank you very much for joining us if you like this video please be sure to subscribe to our youtube channel and comment in the uh section below

34:16 we put out new videos every tuesday and thursday exploring u.s history and civics including regular primary source close reads scholar talk interviews with distinguished scholars from across the country and homework health videos for students to find jim fuller’s compelling essay and many others teachers can access our new digital

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35:04 you