Get Off the Track! (1860 presidential election)

The circumstances under which John Charles Frémont entered the presidency in the late winter of 1857 ensured that Congress would play the major part in the government of the country for the next four years. While controlling a plurality of state delegations, the Republicans were nonetheless a minority in the House, while in the Senate the opposition continued to set the agenda. For his own part, Frémont displayed no great aptitude for executive leadership: his military background and tenure as governor of occupied California left him ill-prepared for the presidency, while the death of his father-in-law, Thomas Hart Benton, in 1858 deprived him of his most astute advisor.

Nevertheless, Frémont's time in office saw not a few achievements. First among these was the annexation by the United States of Texas and Alta California, a recognition of the status quo post-1852. Congress followed up this expansion of the nation's territory with the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1858, which organized territorial governments in the remaining lands of the Louisiana Purchase, paving the way for a proposed Transcontinental Railroad. In a partial repudiation of Seward's policy, the Tariff of 1857 moderately lowered duties on foreign imports. Meanwhile, Congressional leadership of Reconstruction installed new governments in the former rebel states who created public schools, elected black state legislators and Congressmen, and dismantled the Black Codes passed to restrict the rights of freedmen. An uprising by the White Leagues and Knights of the Golden Circle in 1857-58 was suppressed by federal troops commanded by Ulysses S. Grant, whom Frémont appointed general of the Armies of the United States. Within the Reconstructed states, the Republicans emerged as the party of tenant farmers and most former slaves, while the Liberals were supported by the business interests and landowners, including black landholders like Dred Scott, who became the first former slave elected to the United States Senate. A third group, the so-called Redeemers, were the party of Confederate veterans and the former slaveocracy, and resisted with varying degrees of success the federal attempts at reconstruction, sometimes via bribery and fraud, sometimes by force. Arguments surrounding Reconstruction, however, were somewhat overshadowed by the Panic of 1859, which led to the collapse of several eastern banks and plunged the national economy into a brief depression. While historians disagree as to its causes, Liberals blamed the crisis on the alleged corruption of Frémont's administration.

The 1860 presidential election will be the first conducted under the terms of the Sixteenth Amendment, which replaced the electoral college with a direct popular vote for president. Assuming no candidate received a majority of votes nationally, a runoff between the top two finishers will be held the second week of December.

Republican: Frémont's lackluster performance invited a slew of challengers at the Republican National Convention, among whom former Secretary of State Salmon P. Chase and Senator Hannibal Hamlin emerged as the strongest candidates. After thirty-nine ballots failed to produce a majority for any candidate, the convention ultimately threw their support behind a dark horse nominee: Governor and former Speaker of the House Samuel Jones Tilden of New York. A disciple of former President Van Buren, Tilden comes from the wing of the party who favor a "new departure," viewing the work of Reconstruction as essentially done while pledging to support the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The Republican platform calls for a Free Labor policy of cheap land, low tariffs on most goods, nationalist economic improvements (including the Transcontinental Railroad), and hard money. Sympathetic to liberal nationalist revolutions around the world, Tilden's candidacy appeals to Irish and German immigrants in the Midwest and his home state of New York. In an important contrast to Frémont's scandal-ridden administration, Tilden has a reputation for honesty that Republicans hope will redeem the party's public reputation.

Liberal: Like the Republicans, the Liberal party enters the fall campaign having just emerged from a bitter and contentious civil war between the party's moderate, radical, and business wings. The result of that contest was the nomination of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, a leader of the radicals and the preferred candidate of former New York Representative Gerritt Smith. Sumner's platform is a callback to the Yankee republicanism of an earlier time: denouncing the Republicans as radical redistributionists and attempting to tie Tilden to the liberal and socialist revolutions in Europe, they call for an end to the culture of corruption that has pervaded Washington under Seward and now Frémont, labor reform, temperance, protectionism, and opposition to state involvement in private business ventures. As a member of the Senate, Sumner has consistently voted in favor of Reconstruction policies and in his acceptance letter wrote of the need to transform Southern society completely in order to uphold the promises of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Redeemer: Southern opponents of Reconstruction find themselves in a difficult position. The collapse of the American party following their dismal showing in 1856 and Samuel Houston's refusal to accept their nomination leaves the so-called Redeemers in the former Confederacy without a clear candidate. While some reluctantly took up the torch for Tilden as the lesser of two evils, for many the Republicans' commitment to enforcing the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments renders the ticket an unacceptable option. These elements have united behind the candidacy of Stephen Arnold Douglas, an Illinois attorney and former Jacksonian Democrat. In lieu of a platform, the so-called "National People's Convention" who nominated Douglas issued a statement promising to oppose the "miscegenation and amalgamation" policy of the Liberals and Republicans and to restore the natural order of the races. They denounce Sumner as an amalgamationist and abolitionist and Tilden as the friend of Catholics, Irishmen, and other obnoxious foreign elements.

Two days.

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