Election of 1860 – “Illinois Sure for Douglas”

In late October 1860 the (Montpelier) Vermont Patriot confidently predicted that Senator Stephen Douglas would win Illinois’ electoral votes. “Illinois has never yet voted against the Democratic party for President,” as the Vermont Patriot noted. Democratic papers like the Vermont Patriot argued that voters had to support Douglas in order to remain “high above the surges of fanaticism.” This election, as the Springfield (IL) State Register explained, would result in either “harmony between the States or discord and civil war.” Yet on election day in 1860 Illinois went for the Republican ticket, Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin. The Vermont Patriot would later describe the 1860 contest as “a Presidential election without a parallel.” You can learn more about Stephen Douglas and the 1860 election in Robert Walter Johannsen’s Stephen A. Douglas (1973) and James L. Huston’s Stephen A. Douglas and the Dilemmas of Democratic Equality (2007).