By 1860, the divisions in the country had reached a breaking point. Southerners were outraged over a plot by abolitionist John Brown to start a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, an event that garnered headlines in newspapers and magazines across the nation. The November 19, 1859, issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, for instance, led with the story The Harper’s Ferry Insurrection and an image of John Brown. Northern Republicans were equally angered by the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of Dred Scott v. Sanford, declaring free soil unconstitutional. Northern Democrats, meanwhile, struggled to convince Americans that their policy of popular sovereignty still made sense.
The Harper's Ferry Insurrection [John Brown, Now Under Sentence of Death for Treason and Murder, at Charleston, VA.]
The presidential Election of 1860 brought these conflicts to a head with dramatic consequences. The Democratic Party split into three groups along regional lines, each vying for control of the party and each holding different ideas about how to deal with slavery in the West. These three camps lined up against Abraham Lincoln, the nominee of the Republican Party, who advocated that the West be free of slavery entirely. Because Lincoln’s opponents were so deeply divided, he won with less than forty percent of the popular vote (but with fifty-nine percent of the Electoral College) and without taking a single slave state. Although Lincoln’s election was fair, it nonetheless pushed the Deep South toward secession.
