Abraham Lincoln's Presidential Proposals: Slave Holding States

Abraham Lincoln 's presidential proposals caused slave holding states to fear and completely loathe that thought of his potential election into office during his campaigns for the Election of 1860. The most important, as well as most exaggerated, proposal to the slave holding states was his proposal to not administer any more slave states. Every new state entering the union would be a free state where slavery would be illegal (Link 149). However, many slave states thought of this as a threat to the entire existence of slavery. Since the second constitute was written in 1799, which left out the part of the previous constitution that mandated that no law could be made to emancipate slaves, there had been no major threat to the massive practice of the South (Foner 4).With the …show more content…
Despite the tremendous controversy regarding his desire to not admit any more slave states, Lincoln win both the electoral and popular vote, with 180 votes and 1,865,593 votes respectively. His two closest opponents were Douglas in the popular vote and Breckinridge in electoral votes. However, Lincoln still won in by a landslide ("The Election of..."). Only weeks after the election, South Carolina unanimously seceded from the Union. Many Southern nationalist believed that secession was the South 's only option if they wanted slavery to remain existent (Ford 196). One speaker from South Carolina stated, "let us secede from the Union and abide our fate for better or for worse" (Hamer 14). The spiral of other Southern states following after the South Carolina did not take long. In January of 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana seceded from the Union. During the next month, a vote was held in Texas and the decision was also secession (“Secession."). Before even being inaugurated, Lincoln lost about half of what was formerly the United States of America at that