In the presidential election of 1860, two of the four major candidates were Kentuckians by birth. Abraham Lincoln and John C. Breckinridge represented polar opposites of the political spectrum. Lincoln was the candidate of the antislavery Republican Party, while Breckinridge was the choice of the southern wing of the Democratic Party, which advocated states’ rights and non-interference with slavery. Ironically, the two non-Kentuckians more accurately reflected the state’s centrist political ideology. Tennessean John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party won Kentucky’s electoral votes by running on a platform that consisted only of wanting to preserve the Union and uphold the Constitution. Illinois’s Stephen A. Douglas represented the northern wing of the Democratic Party. Like Bell, Douglas was also devoted to maintaining the Union. However, the sectional split in the Democratic Party resulted in Douglas finishing a disappointing and distant third in Kentucky. Because of the perceived radicalism of the southern Democrats, Breckinridge denounced secession. He succeeded in distancing himself from the southern disunionists and won more than a third of the 145,860 votes cast, second behind Bell’s forty-five percent. Less than one percent of Kentucky voters supported Lincoln. Nationally, however, the race was much different. In the popular election, Lincoln won handily, despite winning only forty percent of the vote. Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell finished second, third and fourth, respectively. In the electoral college, Lincoln received 180 votes, while Breckinridge won 72. Bell and Douglas took third and fourth.

Lincoln’s victory in the presidential election prompted several southern states to consider secession. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina passed an ordinance of secession. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas all followed within weeks. By March 1861, when Lincoln was inaugurated, eight slave states remained in the Union. Following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln’s subsequent call for volunteers, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas all seceded, leaving only the four Border States still loyal to the Union.