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Deadlocked 1860 US Presidential election

OwenM

The patronising flippancy of youth
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I saw a discussion of this on AH.com a long time ago, but I'm curious as to people's thoughts (and I feel that ended up obsessing too much over arithmetic).
Let's assume Douglas wins New York. The election now goes to the House between Lincoln, Breckenridge, and Douglas, and the Senate between Lane and Hamlin.
There isn't really a route to the House electing a President without shenanigans, but on paper the Senate should elect Lane VP, assuming he goes for it.
Which is a big question - would the Breckenridge team, basically already running on secession even try, and could they get enough Northern Democrats on board if they did? Or would we just see the slaveholders pull out but with an even more paralysed US government to face?
 
The short of it for right now is Its Acting President Lane until December of 1863 when the next Congress gets sworn in.

Breckinridge was running less on Secession is coming then "The Anti-Lincoln side needs to win OR ELSE". It had turned into a Democratic attempt to try and do what the Whigs had tried in 1836. Dissent will be high, but the party will probably, as Breckinridge hoped close ranks around Lane. Things would get very bad.

I can offer more, later but I'm running out of the house now.
 
I seem to recall Douglas saying he wouldn’t countenance anyone voting for him in a contingent election, and while obviously people could, that probably opens up deadlocks or a Breckinridge victory.
 
I seem to recall Douglas saying he wouldn’t countenance anyone voting for him in a contingent election, and while obviously people could, that probably opens up deadlocks or a Breckinridge victory.
Douglas wouldn't even qualify for the Contingent Election. That doesn't change the fact that Breckinridge couldn't just walk into the top job.
 
I saw a discussion of this on AH.com a long time ago, but I'm curious as to people's thoughts (and I feel that ended up obsessing too much over arithmetic).
Let's assume Douglas wins New York. The election now goes to the House between Lincoln, Breckenridge, and Douglas, and the Senate between Lane and Hamlin.
There isn't really a route to the House electing a President without shenanigans, but on paper the Senate should elect Lane VP, assuming he goes for it.
Which is a big question - would the Breckenridge team, basically already running on secession even try, and could they get enough Northern Democrats on board if they did? Or would we just see the slaveholders pull out but with an even more paralysed US government to face?
Last month, someone briefly explored this scenario on the other place in a one-off post in the wikiboxes thread. The initial conceit is that Seward rather than Lincoln is nominated and goes on to lose Illinois and (somehow) New York. Lane is eventually made acting President thanks to shenanigans, the South stays in the Union long enough for the Supreme Court to rule in Lemmon v. New York that slavery must be legal everywhere, and Vermont secedes in 1863. The scenario stops there but the implication is that the rest of the North will follow suit.
 
Last month, someone briefly explored this scenario on the other place in a one-off post in the wikiboxes thread. The initial conceit is that Seward rather than Lincoln is nominated and goes on to lose Illinois and (somehow) New York. Lane is eventually made acting President thanks to shenanigans, the South stays in the Union long enough for the Supreme Court to rule in Lemmon v. New York that slavery must be legal everywhere, and Vermont secedes in 1863. The scenario stops there but the implication is that the rest of the North will follow suit.

Northern Secession wasn't going to happen. And thats a really drastic misinterpretation as to what was going on in the Lemmon case.
 
It wasn't a residency case it was, effectively, an interstate commerce case, as gross as that is to say.
To be fair, Dred Scott wasn’t about the Declaration of Independence until Roger Taney decided it was, and although forcibly legalizing slavery in every state might have been a stroke too far even for Taney, I wouldn’t put it past him to wildly expand the scope of a case to serve his political ends.
 
To be fair, Dred Scott wasn’t about the Declaration of Independence until Roger Taney decided it was, and although forcibly legalizing slavery in every state might have been a stroke too far even for Taney, I wouldn’t put it past him to wildly expand the scope of a case to serve his political ends.
If you want to write that, go for it. Dred Scott for all of its radical impact was based on a Southern reading of the law. An attempt to legalize Slavery Universally would be a break with the general Southern legal scholarship going back to 1798.
 
No matter what happens, the increasing popularity of anti-slavery politics is not going to stop. Anti-slavery's continued political ascendancy will prompt the slaveholders into desperate action probably in 1865 rather than 1861, but I imagine a civil war still plays out.
 
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