Why was Lincoln absent from the ballot in ten slave states?

Lincoln not on the ballot in Southern states sounds like a mistake, yet it is one of the best-known facts about the 1860 presidential election. When Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th president on November 6, 1860, voters in ten Southern slave states had no ballot with his name on it. The reason is often told as a story of removal or censorship, but the records point to something more ordinary and more revealing: a voting system with no single official ballot, and a new political party that barely existed in the South. This article explains why Lincoln was absent from the ballot in ten slave states, where he did appear, and how he won the presidency anyway.

Was Lincoln really absent from the ballot in ten slave states?

Yes. In ten Southern slave states, ballots carrying Lincoln’s name were not available to voters: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Ten of the eleven states that later formed the Confederacy are on that list. The eleventh, Virginia, is the exception, and it is covered below.

Sources: Wikipedia: 1860 United States presidential election; Penn Today: Trump, Lincoln ballot comparison meme “doesn’t hold water,” experts say.

Why was Lincoln not on the ballot in the South?

There was no single official ballot in 1860. Instead, political parties printed their own tickets, or slips of paper listing their candidates, and handed them out to supporters, who dropped them into the box. A party that did not distribute tickets in a state simply had nothing for voters there to cast. The Republican Party, founded only a few years earlier, had little or no organization in the South, so no one printed or handed out Republican tickets. Anyone who wanted to vote for Lincoln in those states would have had to write his name in by hand.

Sources: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library: Was Lincoln “removed” from Southern presidential ballots?; Upworthy: No, Abraham Lincoln was not “barred from the ballot” in Southern states in 1860.

Watch on YouTube

Was Lincoln barred or removed from the ballot?

No. Historians and fact-checkers agree that Lincoln was not barred, disqualified or removed from the ballot in the South. Nobody struck his name from a list, because there was no official list to strike it from. His absence came from how ballots were produced and from the fact that his party had no presence in those states, not from a ruling by officials or courts. The distinction matters, because the 1860 story is sometimes retold as if a candidate had been legally blocked.

Sources: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library; Check Your Fact: Did Democrats remove Abraham Lincoln from the ballot in 1860?.

Where did Lincoln appear on Southern ballots?

Lincoln did appear in some slave states. Republican electors ran in five of them: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and Virginia. In Virginia, the one state of the eleven that later seceded where his ticket was offered, he received only about 1 percent of the vote, and John Bell carried the state. The result shows how thin his support was across the South, even where his name could be found.

Sources: Ballot Access News; Wikipedia: 1860 United States presidential election.

How did Lincoln win without the South?

Lincoln won because the electoral college rewards carrying states, and the Northern states held enough electoral votes. He took 180 of the 303 electoral votes while winning just under 40 percent of the national popular vote, in a race with four candidates. His victory made him the first Republican president, and the election result that followed helped set the stage for the secession crisis.

Sources: National Park Service: Election of 1860; Wikipedia: 1860 United States presidential election.

If you enjoy stories like this, browse more in our History section and subscribe to Mr Global Rankss on YouTube for more of the world’s stories.