Answer:
The election of 1860 was an accelerant in starting the Civil War in all of the following ways except that it did not contribute to the desire of secession by many of the northern states.
Explanation:
The presidential elections of 1860 took place in the build-up to the Civil War. Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln faced two candidates from the divided Democratic Party and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell.
The Republican Party, which promised measures against slavery in its platform, nominated Abraham Lincoln with Hannibal Hamlin as his running mate.
The Democratic Party held its party convention in Charleston in April 1860, where after more than 50 rounds of voting it was still unable to agree on a candidate. The party's north wing was anti-slavery, but the southern delegates were strong supporters of it and had more power in the party than the "free" Democrats. The party decided to suspend the convention. Two months later, the party gathered again, this time in Baltimore, where many of the southern delegates left the convention in protest of the failure to adopt a resolution supporting the expansion of slavery in the new territories in the west of the country.
The remaining delegates then nominated Stephen Arnold Douglas as a candidate for president with Herschel Vespasian Johnson as a vice presidential candidate. The Democratic South Wing nominated John C. Breckinridge and Joseph Lane as his partner.
The Constitutional Union Party, a coalition of former Whigs and Know Nothing supporters, nominated John Bell and Edward Everett as candidates for the election.
Douglas called for the preservation of the Union, while the Southern Democrats were more interested in preserving slavery, even at the expense of national unity. The Republicans campaigned against slavery, and Democrats warned of a civil war if Lincoln was elected. However, the Republican candidate had a significant lead in the polls in the northern states, and Lincoln won election thanks to that support.
In response to Lincoln's victory, South Carolina declared to secede from the Union on December 20, 1860. Several southern states soon followed and the Civil War became an accomplished fact. On April 12, 1861, the first shot in the war was fired by South Carolina militias who shot and captured Fort Sumter. Lincoln then called on volunteers to maintain the Union.
