Following the election of Frick to the Presidency, the southern states began to secede one by one, until ww states were gone from the Union, forming the 'Confederate States of America'. A bloody conflict ensued, testing the will of Frick and his 'Union' party in their struggle to defend its namesake. Frick also presided over the admission of three new states; Nevada, Kansas and Oregon.
By 1860, the war is on the way to being won, but President Frick, a weary political veteran, decided to pass up the opportunity for another term. In his place, the Union conventioned nominated General John A. Cathcon, a former Michigan Governor turned victorious Union General. Cathcon was known as being an advocate for the doctrine of 'free soil and free men'; but, in addition, he was a staunch supporter of business and tariff protection as well. The renomination of Zebulon Smith helped bring the left of the party together with its right-wing, represented by Cathcon.
Meanwhile, the Democratic convention was a mess. Former nominee Xavier, still the most popular Democrat in the country, was renominated, alongside Representative L. Acton Guy Jr of Wisconsin. However, their hopes for success were severely damaged by the apperence at the convention of former Presidential nominee and Secretary of State Cassius Cornwallis and his son, Representative Cassius Cornwallis Jr. Cornwallis the elder, now nearing death, delivered a rambling speech on the convention podium to a chair, pretending it was Cathcon, dubbing him a 'scurvy dog' (an insult that would later be adopted as a moniker by Cathcon's supporters, dubbing him the 'guard dawg of the Union'), before proceeding to fall off the stage on his way out. Cornwallis Jr meanwhile was able to insert a peace plank into the party platform, over the objections of Xavier, who wished to carry the war to a succesful end. Many would darkly mutter that Cornwallis had been bribed by British agents, in order to expedite the collapse of the Union war effort, a charge that would also be used to taint the Democratic nominee Xavier.
The campaign was embarassingly one sided, as most newspapers and politicians backed the Cathcon campaign, which wasted no time in pinning the Democratic party platform to Xavier, who spent most of the campaign actively attempting to disassociate himself from it. The Unionist cried 'defeat and dishonour with Xavier, victory and virtue with Cathcon'. In the end, the election proved to be a landslide for Cathcon, and a mandate to carry the reconquest of the Confederacy to its conclusion.
General John A. Cathcon (U-MI)/Vice-President Zebulon Smith (U-CA): 216 electoral votes, 57.2 percent of the popular voteSenator Malcolm Xavier (D-OH)/Representative L. Acton Guy Jr (D-WI): 17 electoral votes, 42.6 percent of the popular vote
