ABSTRACT
The Presidential year of 1860 was crucial to the preservation of the United States as a federal union. Southern extremists fancied themselves different from the people in the rest of the Union. They believed that they needed to protect their particular kind of civilization from the threat of disintegration by Northern radicals. In the midst of such crosscurrents of antagonism, the political parties of the country held their national conventions to adopt platforms and nominate Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates for the November elections. On April 23rd, the Democratic Party convened its national convention at Charleston, South Carolina. But critical division manifested itself almost immediately in Democratic ranks on the question of platform. Republican delegates approached their task with boisterous enthusiasm. There were other Republican candidates in the field besides Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. Lincoln followed up that eventful canvass for the Illinois Senatorship with speeches in the East and in states adjoining his own.
