A blog post by Jamie Malanowski in the New York Times’ “Disunion” series featured this political cartoon from House Divided’s image collection. In this entry Malanowski explores Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 election. Malanowski’s post is part of a new series that, as the New York Times explains, “revisits and reconsiders America’s most perilous period — using contemporary accounts, diaries, images and historical assessments to follow the Civil War as it unfolded.” Other entries include “Hearing the Returns with Mr. Lincoln,” “The Abolitionist’s Epiphany,” “Head-Stompers, Wrench-Swingers and Wide Awakes,” and “A Slave Ship in New York.”

When Democrats held a rally in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on October 6, 1860, the Carlisle (PA) American Volunteer reported that no one had been ready for the “overwhelming avalanche” of delegates from “every town and township in the county.” Over 8,000 people filled the streets before noon, according to some estimates. The American Volunteer backed Senator Stephen Douglas and supported this event as a means to rally Democratic voters before a critical election. In the months before the election, the American Volunteer tried to convince Cumberland County residents that the Republican party represented a serious threat. “The election of LINCOLN will be the death-knell to our Republic,” as the American Volunteer warned. As Republican “Wide Awake” groups held parades in northern cities, the American Volunteer reported that “each man carried a six-barreled revolver” in order to demonstrate that “LINCOLN and his party are determined to carry out their sectional doctrines at all hazards and at any sacrifice.” The American Volunteer saw Republicans as a “sectional Abolition party” which was determined to “humble the South [and] root out slavery.” If Republicans carried out their plan, the American Volunteer predicted that “every State in the Union will be bathed in blood.” Only a Democratic victory in November 1860 would ensure a future for the Union. If Lincoln won, the American Volunteer observed that it “will be regarded as a declaration of war.” Yet the American Volunteer’s arguments failed to convince a sufficient number of Cumberland County voters – Lincoln ended up with a 400 vote majority. “A long dreary winter is ahead,” the American Volunteer predicted.

After African American soldiers were not allowed to participate in the Union army’s Grand Review in Washington DC in May 1865, Harrisburg residents organized their own event on November 14, 1865 for those who served in the United States Colored Troops. While this earlier post provides an overview, several other newspaper articles offer interesting accounts about the event. “No day could have been chosen more propitious for the occasion,” as the correspondent for the Philadelphia (PA) Inquirer observed that November 14 was “one of the finest of this most pleasant Indian summer.” After Simon Cameron delivered a speech, letters from those who could not attend were read aloud. General Benjamin F. Butler explained that he had “witnessed…[African American soldiers’] bravery and good conduct on the battle-field, and, above all, their devotion and unswerving loyalty to the flag and government.” Even “when their offers of service in the beginning of the way were rejected with contumely,” George L. Stearns noted that they still “promptly volunteered at the call of their country when she needed them to help conquer a relentless foe.” Others used the event to argue for equal rights. “All constitutional privileges, all laws, all ordinances, all regulations of States, discriminating against colored men, must be made null and void,” as Senator Henry Wilson proclaimed. The event ended with “the John Brown Song,” which as the Philadelphia (PA) Inquirer correspondent described, “the assemblage sang…with great zeal.” You can also read more about the ceremony in an excerpt from Ceremonies at the Reception of Welcome to the Colored Soldiers of Pennsylvania (1865)

As the 150th anniversary of the 1860 election is next week, the House Divided project has just published seven interactive essays at Journal Divided that focus on different aspects of Abraham Lincoln’s campaign. These essays have been adapted with permission from the unedited manuscript of Michael Burlingame’s Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2008). One can read about the origins of the “rail-splitter” image and Lincoln’s efforts to gain support from the Know Nothings. In addition, one will find an overview of the Republican National Convention as well as a detailed look at how Lincoln won the nomination. While Lincoln instructed his allies at the convention to “make no contracts that will bind me,” Burlingame discusses the contradictory claims and evidence about the deals made to secure Lincoln’s nomination. In the final essay Burlingame examines the political conditions that produced a Republican victory in November 1860. As you read the essays, be sure to click through the sidenotes  on every page. These contain links to relevant records on House Divided, including those for documents, events, people, place, major topics, and sources. For example, the Gott resolution is mentioned on page 5 of the “Lincoln Know Nothing” essay. If you are unfamiliar with that topic, simply click on the “Events” sidenote to learn more. Each essay also has a video, which you can watch by clicking on the YouTube icon.

There is a video on the YouTube channel of the Georgia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) that offers a classic teaching moment. The video, entitled “Sesquicentennial Celebration,” urges those about to honor the 150th anniversary of the “War for Southern Independence” to remember what the SCV claims the war was really about. From their perspective, brave southerners fought to defend “their homes and families” against “an aggressive northern invasion.” The narrator proceeds to touch upon almost all of the elements of the “Lost Cause” or Neo-Confederate argument –the “insurmountable odds” of the fight, the battle over home and hearth (not slavery), the heroic leadership of figures such as Robert E. Lee, and the tyrannical tendencies of Lincoln and the northern government. My thanks to Matt Karlsen who first notified me about Kevin Levin’s post on this video at his well-regarded Civil War Memory blog.

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).

On July 30, 1864 Confederate cavalry under General John McCausland’s command entered Chambersburg, Pennsylvania and demanded that residents pay $500,000 in greenbacks or $100,000 in gold. Confederates planned to use the money to compensate Virginia residents whose homes in the Shenandoah Valley were burned by Union General David Hunter’s troops. After Chambersburg residents refused to pay, General McCausland followed General Jubal Early’s orders and burned the town. (this map shows which sections of the town were burned). General McCausland’s forces left the following day with Union cavalry in pursuit. Philadelphia resident Sidney George Fisher heard about the attack on August 1st. Confederates, as Fisher noted, had “set fire to the place without giving the people time to carry anything away.” Fisher believed that the Confederate actions were the results of the “prolonged” conflict. “The barbarous act shows what a bitter spirit is animating the contest,” as Fisher explained. The Bangor (ME) Whig and Courier, a Republican paper, also expressed “[sympathy for] the suffers at Chambersburg.” Yet “if the atrocious outrage shall awake Pennsylvania to the performance of duties she has long and shamefully neglected in her own defense,” the editor argued that this incident “will in the end prove to be one of the greatest blessings which has been vouchsafed us since the war began.” You can learn more about this attack in Benjamin Schneck’s The Burning of Chambersburg (1864) and Everard H. Smith’s “Chambersburg: Anatomy of a Confederate Reprisal,” American Historical Review (1991).

On Thanksgiving day in November 1863 two children whose fathers were killed during the Civil War went to the executive mansion in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and asked for food. Apparently this experience inspired Governor Andrew Curtin to ask the Pennsylvania legislature to establish an organization to care for orphans of Union soldiers. While legislators did not appropriate the necessary funds, they accepted a private donation to set up an institution whose mission was “the education and maintenance of destitute orphan children of deceased soldiers and sailors.” Children remained in the system until age sixteen – for example, see this list of “Sixteeners” who left in 1877. Schools were set up in communities across the state, including the White Hall School in Camp Hill. Professor David Denlinger opened the school in May 1866, but he quickly ran into trouble. As “the building was…unsuitable for a school of this kind,” James Laughery Paul explains that that “typhoid fever prevailed to an alarming extent in the fall of 1867 and quite a number of deaths occurred.” While the school closed in 1890, alumni returned to Camp Hill in 1926 and dedicated a monument in Willow Park (located at intersection of 24th & Walnut Streets). You can learn more about the organization in James Laughery Paul’s Pennsylvania’s Soldiers’ Orphan Schools (1876), the 1877 and 1909 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Soldiers’ Orphans, and William Henry Egle’s Andrew Gregg Curtin: His Life And Services (1895).

When European newspapers discussed Abraham Lincoln’s victory in the Election of 1860, their reporters did not always provide the correct details. In January 1861 the (Montpelier) Vermont Patriot highlighted a mistake in an editorial from the Drogheda (Ireland) Argus, which discussed the implications of “a black Man’s” victory for the United States. “No Presidential election has excited so much party feelings as has the election of Abraham Lincoln, a black gentleman,” as the Argus noted. The paper also claimed that Lincoln had been “unknown out of [Illinois]” before the 1860 election. While he might have been “unknown as a public man in Europe,” Lincoln had emerged as a national political figure during the Lincoln Douglas debates in 1858. After returning home to New York in July 1858, Charles H. Ray described how those outside Illinois were interested in Lincoln and the campaign:

“In my journey here from Chicago, and even here [in Norwich, New York]– one of the most out-of-the-way, rural districts in the State, among a slow-going and conservative people, who are further from railroads than any man can be in Illinois — I have found hundreds of anxious enquirers burning to know all about the newly raised-up opponent of Douglas… In fact, you have sprung at once from the position of a “capital fellow” and a “leading lawyer” in Illinois, to the enjoyment of a national reputation. Your speeches are read with great avidity by all political men…”

You can read more about Lincoln and his political career in Edwin Erie Sparks’ The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (1908), David Donald’s Lincoln (1995), and Allen C. Guelzo’s Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America (2008).

The Ulysses S. Grant Association at Mississippi State University has digitized all 31 volumes included in the Papers of Ulysses S. Grant. This project also offers a chronology and a nice collection of images. In August 1860 Grant observed that “the Democratic party want a little purifying and nothing will do it so effectually as a defeat.” However, Grant did not want Abraham Lincoln to win in November 1860. “The only thing is dont like to see a Republican beat the [Democratic] party,” as Grant explained. After Lincoln won the election, Grant could not believe that southern Democrats would accept secession. “It is hard to realize that a State or States should commit so suicidal an act as to secede from the Union,” as Grant noted. You can learn more about Grant’s career in William S. McFeely’s Grant: A Biography (1981) and Jean Edward Smith’s Grant (2001). Brooks Simpson focuses on Grant’s role during the Civil War and Reconstruction in Let Us Have Peace: Ulysses S. Grant and the Politics of War and Reconstruction, 1861-1868 (1991).