Lincoln Wins the Presidency Without a Single Southern Vote

What happened

Abraham Lincoln won the Republican nomination on May 16, 1860, beating better-known rivals in a party whose platform pledged to keep slavery out of the territories while leaving it alone where it already existed. The Democratic Party had split into Northern and Southern factions, and a fourth candidate ran for the Constitutional Union Party, splitting the anti-Lincoln vote four ways. On election day, Lincoln voted a straight Republican ticket in Springfield, Illinois, then waited at the telegraph office; by midnight he learned he had won the Electoral College decisively despite carrying not a single slave state and appearing on the ballot in none of them. Turnout was over 81 percent of eligible voters, among the highest in American history.

How we know

The National Park Service's Lincoln Home account and the Library of Congress's Lincoln exhibition both document the election-night sequence and the party platforms from contemporary letters and newspapers.

Sources

• Lincoln Home National Historic Site, National Park Service. Lincoln, Grant, and the 1864 Election · Reputable sourcenps.gov · The domain "nps.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
• Library of Congress, With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition. The Run for President · Primary source (author-declared)loc.gov · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)