Dude, Where’s My Candidate?: Lincoln, the Ballot, and the Election of 1860
Growing up in Colorado, I became accustomed to my home state being largely irrelevant to the national news cycle. This pattern has begun to change in recent years, however, as the Centennial State has asserted itself as a critical player in national politics. On Tuesday, December 19, 2023, Colorado’s Supreme Court affirmed its willingness to make political waves with a ruling declaring that Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, is disqualified from holding federal office because he engaged in “insurrection” against the United States in the lead up to the events of January 6, 2021. As a result, as of this writing, Trump will not be eligible to appear on the ballot for Colorado’s Republican Primary in March.
Astute students of the history of the American Civil War likely woke up this morning eager to remind their friends and family that this is not the first time a presidential candidate has been excluded from the ballot: Abraham Lincoln, after all, did not appear on the ballot in 10 Southern states during the election of 1860. But the comparison is deeply flawed — and a reminder of the pitfalls of drawing easy links between the past and the present. Here’s why:
Until the turn of the twentieth century, there were no secret ballots in the United States — in fact, there were not really ballots at all. Rather, voters would submit a “party ticket” at their local polling place, under the watchful eyes of election officials. These party tickets listed the candidates for a single political party — for federal, state, and local offices — and voters would simply deposit the ticket for the party they wished to support in their local ballot box. This is where we get the phrase “voting a straight ticket” or a straight party vote. The opposing candidates were not listed on the same ticket and there was no version of a ballot that allowed voters to split their votes among multiple political parties.
As historian Michael Holt notes in his excellent The Election of 1860 (The University Press of Kansas, 2017), presidential candidates in the nineteenth century “were utterly dependent on their party organizations to have any chance of election.” “Parties had the obligation of printing their own ballots and then distributing them to thousands of polling places so that voters could hand them to election judges for deposit in ballot boxes.”
So, when we say Lincoln was not “on the ballot” in ten Southern states, what we are really saying is that the Republican Party did not distribute ballots to voters in those states — because the Republican Party did not believe they would receive a significant number of votes in places such as Alabama, South Carolina, or Mississippi. It was a waste of time and resources to send thousands of Lincoln ballots to the South, just to have them sit in unopened boxes on election day.
What is more, Republicans in 1860 knew that they did not need any Southern states to achieve victory in the electoral college, so long as their ticket could garner enough votes in the North and West — staving off three challengers in the form of Stephen Douglas, John Bell, and John C. Breckinridge. There were 303 electoral college votes up for grabs and 61 belonged to the 10 states where Lincoln did not send tickets — only 20% of the overall total of available votes. There was simply no need to send tickets to states that were not going to return Republican electors. Lincoln won 180 electoral college votes — 28 more than the 152 that he needed to carry him to the White House, with the majority coming from populous states such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
And therein lies the danger in drawing parallels between past and present. Unlike Colorado’s prohibition in the case of former president Trump, no southern states in 1860 ruled that Lincoln could not appear on the ballot. The Republican Party simply decided not to run their railsplitter in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.
How brave of you to even mention he who should not be named on this forum. Excellent piece!
Trump’s going to be your next President, and just like Biden you won’t be able to stop saying his name ?
You must be smoking something. Republican voters make up only 34% of the registered voters Even in Republican Iowa, we will see if MAGA thminority can get a majority elsewhere.
As SCOTUS Justice Robert Jackson(Nuremberg Trial jurist ) said in 1949. The U S Constitution is not a suicide pact. Keeping Trump, the insurrectionist, off ballots when he refuses not to overthrow the Constitution, as he just recently did when refused, in Illinois, to sign his candidacy form, that stipulated that he would agree not to be an insurrectionist in the future. This is just one more nail in his coffin as an autocrat.
Lance! Then why are the democrats so blatantly trying to take him off of the ballots? If he isn’t going to win then what’s all of this bs unconstitutional no nonsense your tyrants are trying to pull? If he isn’t going to win by a landslide like the polls say then why are they trying everything to stop him?
Wake up homie! Your party is trying to overthrow our constitution and you are just a sheep filled with hate because cnn told you to do so.
Trump’s going to be your next President, and just like Biden you won’t be able to stop saying his name ?
Harder to beat an incumbent POTUS than you think. He hasn’t won the popular vote yet, and he’s not moving like he did in 2016 at all. Just watch and learn.
Thank you for this article.
Interesting!
Had Lincoln been on the ballot in some of those states he may have actually received a good number of votes, particularly up in the hill counties. This might have acted as a cautionary break to the second wave of secession.
I don’t think many are saying that the cases are similar. What is far more relevant is that the EFFECTS of the action may be similar. Especially if other states do the same thing.
Thank you. Excellent truth. A Party decision to ignore the balloting process in states with little support for them is a far cry from a State judiciary refusing to allow a candidate to run, citing unresolved allegations as the basis for their decision. Interesting times.
Interesting in that R ticket you show, the names of the electors appear as well as the nominated candidates. I would like to know more about the history of election mechanics — the scheduling of many elections on the same day seems designed to promote the “ticket” concept; I know even with the Australian ballot some states have mandated provisions for voting a “straight ticket”.
In 1864 Lincoln and Johnson were nominated at a National Union Party convention. The minutes are available on line and a major issue was the credentials/seating of delegates from “seceding” states. If this Colo decision is not stayed, I could see a similar thing in 2024 as the Colo “primary” is really about binding R delegates to their national convention and that convention is subject to the RNC “call to convention” and subsequent adoption of convention rules at the convention.
Interesting… and in the Election of 1856 there were NO Ballots cast for the Republican candidate (Fremont) in the Southern States, either.
True, but the Know Nothing candidate carried Maryland, and found some strength in the South, pulling votes that might have otherwise gone to the then new Republican party.
Tom
There is one easy link between the two — as Lincoln didn’t need Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina to win election in 1860, Trump doesn’t need Colorado to win election in 2024.
Not germane to this discussion, but nevertheless interesting, Trump is often referred to as a dictator by Democrats just as Abraham Lincoln was.
What an article! Technicalities clearly devised to disseminate democrat hatred for President-to-be Abraham Lincoln and its parallel to their hatred for President Trump today. The results of their bombastic tactics are the same.
Lincoln won in spite of democrat hateful divisive tactics and so will Trump.
While the southern Democrats disapproved of Lincoln enough to secede, at least they didn’t make up an insane story about stolen votes. Say what you want about Stephen Douglas, at least he wasn’t a crybaby.
No they just had him assassinated the Democratic party is a criminal organization period
Democrats trying to law war their way to remain in power makes them look more like Nazis.
Just because it different the intent is the same. The democrats wanted to keep a certain group of people under their thumb. In the case of Colorado they were in violation of the US Constitution. Trump was removed without due process. Here again liberals only want to use the Constitution when it’s convenient.