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| Elections in South Carolina |
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The 1860 United States presidential election in South Carolina took place on November 6, 1860, as part of this 1860 United States presidential election. The state legislature chose eight representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. By 1860, South Carolina was the only state using this procedure in a presidential election and would be the last time the state would do so.
Secessionist under the leadership of Robert Barnwell Rhett and unionists under the leadership of James Lawrence Orr fought for control over the South Carolina Democratic Party during the 1850s. James H. Hammond, who was more aligned with Orr, defeated Rhett in the 1857 U.S. Senate election. [1]
The Democratic Party's state convention was held on April 16, and was controlled by Orr's faction. The convention advocated for party unity, maintaining the union, and rejected the Alabama platform's plan to have the southern delegations walk out of the national convention. [2] Orr served as president of the convention, which endorsed him for the presidential nomination. [3] Muscoe R. H. Garnett communicated with South Carolinian leaders, such as William Porcher Miles, and advocated supporting Robert M. T. Hunter, Benjamin Fitzpatrick, James Guthrie, John C. Breckinridge, or Orr for the presidential nomination. [4] An uninstructed sixteen member delegation was sent to the national convention. [2]
South Carolina delegation to the Democratic National Convention in Charleston included Arthur Simkins, James Simons, Thomas Young Simons, Samuel McGowan, Benjamin H. Wilson, Franklin Gaillard, and Benjamin Franklin Perry. The delegation supported Hunter during the presidential balloting. On April 30, 1860, all except for three members of the delegation (Simkins, Perry, and Lemuel Boozer) joined other southern states in bolting the convention. [5]
A new state convention, pushed by Rhett and his supporters against the opposition of Perry and Orr, was held on May 30. Only 52 of the 161 delegates to the first convention were reelected to attend this one. Rhett, his brother Edmund Rhett, and his son R. Barnwell Rhett Jr. were among the delegates elected. John Hugh Means, who previously supported secession in 1851, was selected as permanent chairman of the convention. [6] [7]
The state's four at-large delegates were selected by a vote of the whole convention rather than by a committee based on the congressional districts. This system benefited the more radical and pro-secessionist delegates. Rhett was elected as a delegate to the national convention in Baltimore and was the leader of the delegation. [8] This delegation supported the presidential ticket of Breckinridge and Joseph Lane. [9]
The elections held for the state legislature on October 8 resulted in a pro-secessionist legislature. Governor William Henry Gist convened the legislature on October 12, and [10] South Carolina cast eight electoral votes for Breckinridge. These electors were chosen by the state legislature rather than by popular vote. [11]
| 1860 United States presidential election in South Carolina [11] | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Party | Candidate | Running mate | Popular vote | Electoral vote | ||||
| Count | % | Count | % | |||||
| Southern Democratic | John Cabell Breckinridge of Kentucky | Joseph Lane of Oregon | – | – | 8 | 100.00% | ||
The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin won a national popular plurality, a popular majority in the North where states already had abolished slavery, and a national electoral majority comprising only Northern electoral votes. Lincoln's election thus served as the main catalyst of the states that would become the Confederacy seceding from the Union. This marked the first time that a Republican was elected president. It was also the first presidential election in which both major party candidates were registered in the same home state; the others have been in 1904, 1920, 1940, 1944, and 2016.
Robert Woodward Barnwell was an American slave owner, planter, lawyer, and educator from South Carolina who served as a Senator in both the United States Senate and that of the Confederate States of America. Barnwell was a public defender of slavery and secession; he personally owned at least 128 enslaved persons.
The Constitutional Union Party was a United States political party active during the 1860 elections. It consisted of conservative former Whigs, largely from the Southern United States, who wanted to avoid secession over the slavery issue and refused to join either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. The Constitutional Union Party campaigned on a simple platform "to recognize no political principle other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the Enforcement of the Laws".
The 1860 Democratic National Conventions were a series of presidential nominating conventions held to nominate the Democratic Party's candidates for president and vice president in the 1860 election.
William Lowndes Yancey was an American politician in the Antebellum South. As an influential "Fire-Eater", he defended slavery and urged Southerners to secede from the Union in response to Northern antislavery agitation.
The 36th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, consisting of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C. from March 4, 1859, to March 4, 1861, during the third and fourth years of James Buchanan's presidency. The apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives was based on the 1850 United States census. The Senate had a Democratic majority, and the House had a Republican plurality.
Robert Barnwell Rhett was an American politician who served as a deputy from South Carolina to the Provisional Confederate States Congress from 1861 to 1862, a member of the US House of Representatives from South Carolina from 1837 to 1849, and US Senator from South Carolina from 1850 to 1852. As a staunch supporter of slavery and an early advocate of secession, he was a "Fire-Eater", nicknamed the "father of secession".
William Porcher Miles was an American politician who was among the ardent states' rights advocates, supporters of slavery, and Southern secessionists who came to be known as the "Fire-Eaters." He is notable for having designed the most popular variant of the Confederate flag, originally rejected as the national flag in 1861 but adopted as a battle flag by the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee before it was reincorporated.
Francis Wilkinson Pickens was a politician who served as governor of South Carolina when that state became the first to secede from the United States. A cousin of Senator John C. Calhoun, he was born into the Southern planter class. A member of the Democratic Party, Pickens became an ardent supporter of nullification of federal tariffs when he served in the South Carolina House of Representatives before he was elected to the United States Senate.
Colonel Thomas Patterson Brockman was an American merchant and planter in the Greenville District and also owned land in the Spartanburg District. He was born in the Greenville District, South Carolina, the son of Susannah Patterson and Henry Brockman. According to the 1850 slave schedules, he possessed thirty slaves in Greenville. He was also a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and the South Carolina Senate.
The 1856 Democratic National Convention was a presidential nominating convention that met from June 2 to June 6 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was held to nominate the Democratic Party's candidates for president and vice president in the 1856 election. The convention selected former Secretary of State James Buchanan of Pennsylvania for president and former Representative John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for vice president.
The South Carolina Declaration of Secession, formally known as the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, was a proclamation issued on December 24, 1860, by the government of South Carolina to explain its reasons for seceding from the United States. It followed the brief Ordinance of Secession that had been issued on December 20. The declaration is a product of a convention organized by the state's government in the month following the election of Abraham Lincoln as U.S. president, where it was drafted in a committee headed by Christopher Memminger.
William Gay Brown Sr. was a nineteenth-century politician and lawyer from Virginia, who was twice elected to the Virginia General Assembly and thrice to the U.S. House of Representatives. He also served at the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850 and later opposed secession at the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861. A leading Unionist during the American Civil War, he became one of the founders of West Virginia.
The Confederate government of Kentucky was a shadow government established for the Commonwealth of Kentucky by a self-constituted group of Confederate sympathizers and delegates sent by Kentucky counties, during the American Civil War. The shadow government never replaced the elected government in Frankfort, in which the state legislature had strong Union sympathies while the governor was pro-Confederate. Neither was it able to gain the whole support of Kentucky's citizens; its jurisdiction extended only as far as Confederate battle lines in the Commonwealth, which at its greatest extent in 1861 and early 1862 encompassed over half the state. Nevertheless, the provisional government was recognized by the Confederate States of America, and Kentucky was admitted to the Confederacy on December 10, 1861. Kentucky, the final state admitted to the Confederacy, was represented by the 13th (central) star on the Confederate battle flag.
The Robert Barnwell Rhett House is a historic house at 6 Thomas Street in Charleston, South Carolina. A National Historic Landmark, it is significant as the home of Robert Barnwell Rhett, a leading secessionist politician. He opposed John C. Calhoun to lead the Bluffton Movement for separate state action on the Tariff of 1842. Rhett was one of the leading fire-eaters at the Nashville Convention of 1850, which failed to endorse his aim of secession.
The East Tennessee Convention was an assembly of Southern Unionist delegates primarily from East Tennessee that met on three occasions during the Civil War. The convention most notably declared the secessionist actions taken by the Tennessee state government on the eve of the war unconstitutional, and requested that East Tennessee, where Union support remained strong, be allowed to form a separate state that would remain part of the United States split from the rest of Confederate Tennessee. The state legislature denied this request, and the Confederate Army occupied the region in late 1861.
The 1860 United States House of Representatives election in Florida was held on Monday, October 1, 1860 to elect the single United States Representative from the state of Florida, one from the state's single at-large congressional district, to represent Florida in the 37th Congress. The election coincided with the elections of other offices, including the presidential election, gubernatorial election, and various state and local elections.
The 1860 United States presidential election in Virginia took place on November 6, 1860, as part of the 1860 United States presidential election. Voters chose 15 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
The 1860 United States presidential election in Texas was held on November 6, 1860. State voters chose four electors to represent the state in the Electoral College, which chose the president and vice president.
The Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 was called in the state capital of Richmond to determine whether Virginia would secede from the United States, govern the state during a state of emergency, and write a new Constitution for Virginia, which was subsequently voted down in a referendum under the Confederate Government.
