Election of 1860

1860 is probably the most controversial election in the history of the United States. Democrats were divided between North and South, Stephen Douglass and John Breckenridge, and this division cost them the election, splitting the votes of the Democratic Party and leaving the Republican collection of Free-Soilers, Northern Anti-Slavery Whigs, and Know-Nothings to put their candidate in office, Abraham Lincoln. He received zero votes in nine states, but still won both the popular vote and the electoral college because of populous northern states like New York and Pennsylvania. Shortly after his election and before the March inauguration, seven Southern states finally seceded the Union, protesting the government they thought was going to abolish slavery, although Lincoln repeatedly offered to preserve slavery in its existing states provided it was illegal in any new ones.