Reviewed by: The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequences” by Michael F. Holt Matthew E. Stanley Michael F. Holt, The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequences.” Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017. 272 pp. $29.95. The drama and suspense of history stems from the unforeseen— from participants on the ground struggling for or against change but not knowing what is about to happen. It is this sense of contingency that makes Michael F. Holt’s new study, The Election of 1860: “A Campaign Fraught with Consequences,” a success in both form and analysis. Eschewing teleology, Holt “de-centers” Abraham Lincoln from his story and reminds us that the vast majority of American voters in 1860 regarded the Republican Party as a “hostile and dangerous force” (1). Illuminating the exigencies and turning points behind insurgent parties, platform fights, and convention walkouts, Holt provides an engaging account of party strategy, ideas, and procedure, and of the relationship between party process and the four candidates: the Republican Lincoln, Northern Democratic Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, and Constitutional Unionist John Bell of Tennessee. Proving that the much-studied topic of Lincoln’s election is by no means [End Page 199] exhausted, Holt posits several new and important arguments. First, he alleges that the crux of the election was not the fate or extension of slavery, but the fate of the Union. Proponents of Douglas and Bell, who hoped to undercut a Republican victory and throw the election to the House of Representatives, saw themselves as occupying the political center, and avowed that the election of either Lincoln or Breckinridge, whom they deemed “extremists,” threatened the very existence of the country. These “centrists” feared the obvious sectional character of the nascent Republicans, as well as their often brazenly anti-southern language. In fact, of the four candidates, only Breckinridge supporters— who fearmongered after John Brown’s raid, race-baited opponents as “Black Republicans,” and emphasized Republican scare phrases such as Lincoln’s allusion to slavery’s “ultimate extinction”— maintained that slavery’s extension was the key issue. To that end, Holt maintains that the Republican campaign focused far less on the issue of slavery in the territories than it did on corruption with-in James Buchanan’s Democratic Party. To reform-minded northerners, the Kansas– Nebraska Act, the Lecompton Constitution, the Charles Sumner caning, and the Dred Scott decision were all evidence of Democratic malfeasance. Denouncing the Democratic “dynasty,” Republicans, led by “Honest Abe,” pledged to curb bribery, cronyism, and other abuses of power and restore honesty to the federal government. Constitutional Unionists regularly endorsed this critique, and even John Bell publicly vouched for Lincoln’s integrity. Furthermore, Holt argues that the traditional depiction of the election as two races— Lincoln versus Douglas in the North and Bell versus Breckinridge in the South— distorts the campaigns and mischaracterizes voter preferences. For one, Breckinridge and Douglas spent far more time attacking each other than they did Republicans or Constitutional Unionists. Likewise, Lincoln would have been the likely second choice of many Bell supporters. To further complicate the sectional binary, Bell and Breckinridge held rallies and boasted pockets of support in the North. Douglas, meanwhile, made forays into the South, was in Alabama on election day, and polled strikingly well in the urban South. In warning against superimposing sectionalism where it did not yet predominate, Holt, to his credit, highlights regionalism. One of The Election of 1860’s novel contentions— and one that squares with the conclusions of other recent studies of the western free states during the Civil War era— is that Lincoln’s candidacy depended far more on his identity as a westerner [End Page 200] than any of his political positions. It was clear to party leaders after John C. Fremont’s 1856 defeat, in which he lost Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois, that Republicans would have to make gains among anti-Democratic voters in the Lower North, a region “averse to sectional extremism” (88). This meant winning over hundreds of thousands of “Know Nothings” who had backed American Party candidate Millard Fillmore in 1856. Although Ohio Republican Samuel Galloway and others agreed that the...
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Dec 5, 2023
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