1860 US presidential election (Just a Few More Years)

The 1860 United States presidential was the 16th quadrennial election that was held on November 6th 1860. The slavery debate of the 1850's finally came to fruition in this election. The 1850's led to seperate factions, coming to power, the Republicans and the Constitutional Union. It also led to the divide of the Democratic party, the the basic Democrats in the north and the Southern Democrats, both having their own views on the slavery debate. The results of the election led the Southern Democratic party coming to power, being headed by John C. Breckinridge alongside his running mate Josef Lane.

Overview
The main debate of the election was slavery, which was losing support in the north, but due to social difference and not wanting to risk rebbelion in the south, the democrats held onto slavery. It was not until the Southern Democrats split from the the North did they begin smoothing their stance on slavery.

The two parties that did not support slavery, the Republicans and the Constitutional Unionists, gained large support in the northern states with Lincoln coming second in the election due to his sway over the northern anti-slave states. The Constitutional Union also gained support in the slave state of Virginia due to all the anti-slave voters in the state.

Campaigns
The winner of the election, John C. Breckinridge, used major papers in state capitals to spread his ideas. Unlike other candidates he used his economic and foreign policies in the northern states to gain support, and used his slavery ideas to gain support in the Southern States. His hold on to the Northern states however were not kept as well as he hoped, and he had to hold them through winning major debates, esspecially against the Republican leader Abraham Lincoln. His most popular speech was at Washington DC, October 30th. There he said that slavery was in a slow decline and it would be phased out in just a few more years. By the time of the election (6th November) many polls and newspapers said Lincoln was ahead 34% to all other candidates. When to votes were counted it seemed that it was opposite,Breckinridge won the election with 13.7 % of the popular vote and 156 of the electoral votes.

Outcome
During Breckinridge's presidency, major fears abour a war over slavery subsided for the time, and the country went through a period of non-stop economic growth due to his policies. Even though he was widley popular in the US, on a world stage he was constantly harrased for maintaning slavery and attempting to make it legal in more northern states, despite his claims otherwise. He also began sponsoring rebbelions in Cuba in an attempt to capture or buy it from the Spanish, and eventually create another southern slave state. Despite all this, the slavery debate would carry on until the 1868 presidential election.