Back in Politics Again

When Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act opening slavery in previously free territories, Lincoln was back in politics.  Speaking for westerners he said, "We want the territories for home of free white people.  This they can not be to any considerable extent if slavery shall be planted within them."  In 1856, Lincoln left the Whig Party and joined the new Republican Party, campaigning for its candidate, John C. Fremont.

In 1858 Lincoln received the Illinois Republican nomination to oppose Stephen Douglas, the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, for a seat in the U.S. Senate.  It was in his acceptance speech that he said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free."

Douglas accepted Lincoln's challenge to debate seven times in Illinois.  Douglas was five feet tall to Lincoln's six feet four inches.  Although Douglas won the Senate seat, Lincoln gained a national following.  He became a much-sought-after speaker and won the Republican presidential nomination in 1860.

Lincoln got less that 40% of the popular vote in 1860, but he won 17 states and his total electoral vote of 180 was more than all the other candidates:  Douglas and John Breckinridge for the Democrats, and John Bell for the Constitutional Union Party.  Secessionists had warned that the election of a "Black Republican" would destroy the Union, and before Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded to the form the Confederacy.

His was not to be an easy job to do...

Next time:  President Abraham Lincoln
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On October 19, 1869,  On this day in 1869, the famous Prussian-born mining engineer, Adolph Sutro, begins work on one of the most ambitious western engineering projects of the day: a four-mile-long tunnel through the solid rock of the Comstock Lode mining district, one of the richest silver deposits in the world.