Chapter 12: Section 4 The Civil War is Coming

The Election of 1860

• Around 1860, people were still thinking that the nation was going to avoid a civil war.

• When the year 1860 came around, the Democrats were still a national party.

The Democrats Divide

• The Democratic convention was scheduled to meet in Charleston, South Carolina.

• At this meeting, the southern delegates demanded support from the party for slavery in the territories.

• Douglas and other northerners rejected this idea.

• Many arguments followed and the north finally refused to adopt this policy. The delegates from the south left the convention.

The Democrats Divide

• The great Democratic party was falling apart. • The southern Democrats who had left this

convention met in Richmond, Virgina. • There, they named their own candidate,

Breckinridge, President of the United States.• He believed in protecting slavery• After this, the “national” political parties were

no longer national.

Constitutional-Unionists and Republicans

• The Constitutional-Union party was made up of conservatives who feared the breakup of the Union if the Republican candidate was elected.

• They wanted to avoid the slavery issue entirely.

• Some people who carried this idea were John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts.

Constitutional-Unionists and Republicans

• The main opposition to the Democratic party was the Republican party.

• The Republicans were still waiting for some national appeal. They named one man who was the most conservative in their party.

• Abraham Lincoln, nicknamed “The Rail-Splitter” was the man. He came from Illinois.

Honest Abe

• Abraham Lincoln and his family came from England to New England and then to Pennsylvania.

• His great-grandfather had lived in Virginia and had five sons.

• Abraham’s father was raised in Kentucky and in 1809, Lincoln was born.

• Lincoln was born in a log cabin. • Lincoln Movie!~

Honest Abe

• When he was only 7 years old, his family moved again to Indiana.

• When he was 21 they moved again to Illinois. • He built a flat-boat and navigated it down the Mississippi to

New Orleans. • He also worked as a surveyor, managed a mill, ran a

country store, and served as the village postmaster.

Honest Abe

• Lincoln educated himself and later became a lawyer. He was really successful in front of juries.

• He had one term in Congress, after serving in the Illinois legislature. He opposed the Mexican War while in Congress.

• Lincoln had magic in his speech. He often used words from the Bible.

Honest Abe

• Lincoln was firm on the slavery issue, but he was not an abolitionist.

• He married a Southerner and was from the South, so he did not hate the South.

• If Abraham Lincoln couldn’t put the Union back together, no one could.

Lincoln is electedThe election of November

1860• Lincoln was deprived of all

electorial from 10 southern states.

• In the electoral college,– Lincoln carried all 18 free states – Breckinridge carried eleven slave

states– Douglas got popular votes in the

North but carried only Missouri and a minority of new jerseys split electoral vote

– John bell carried 3 border slave states

• Lincoln undoubtedly won in the electoral college, but took 39% of the popular vote

• His opponents had almost a million more votes• However, the votes Lincoln did get were from just the right

states.• When southern states heard of Lincoln’s election, they

seceded from the Union.• Lincoln did not have a popular mandate, meaning 2 out of 3

people voted against him.• Popular mandate- you get more than 50% votes • South Carolina was the 1st state to secede from theUnion

Attempts to prevent war• President Buchanan (15th pres) believed withdrawing from

the Union would be illegal, but he also thought the government should not be able to force a state to stay in the Union.

• William Lloyd Garrison, a Northern opponent, was happy to see the South remove itself from the Union

• Horace Greeley a pacifist, would rather the states “go in peace” so as not start a war by demanding that they remain in the Union

• Desperate attempts were made at finding a compromise between sections.

• “Unamendable Amendments” were proposed by the senator of Kentucky which would push the dividing between slavery and free soil to California, to keep the federal government from interfering with slavery in the states.

• Republicans refused, Lincoln believed this would only lead to the attempt to seize more southern territory to make more slave states.

• They wanted the North to stand strong and not give in to the southerners demands so as to discourage secessionists.

• Because the United States were considered a foreign nation by the confederate states of America, they could not keep its arsenals and forts inside the borders of the seceded states

• U.S. troops mostly gave in, except for a few strong positions including Fort Sumter in the Charleston Harbor which was in serious need of food. Lincoln had a decision to make: either surrender Fort Sumter to the South, would mean no civil war and the end of the Union, or provide the supplies and put them at risk of a war to keep the states in “one great nation”

• Determined to stand firm, Lincoln decides to not give up Fort Sumter.

• After notifying South Carolina of his decision to send supplies over, Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard began bombing Fort Sumter from the Charleston shore batteries on April 12, 1861.

• The fort was surrendered by Major Robert Anderson the next afternoon. This was the beginning of a war.