The election of 1860 attracted enormous attention across the nation. All four presidential candidates were men of good intentions but with very different solutions for the crisis America faced. The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln. A relatively new political organization, the Republican Party, first organized in 1854, arose from the outrage over the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) which, through the concept of popular sovereignty, permitted slavery in those newly created territories. By 1860 the Republicans had devised two effective strategies. What they did not recognize was how far they brought the nation to the verge of civil war.

The first Republican strategy was to energize the North against an enemy the party called the "Aggressive Slavocracy." Many Northerners were apathetic toward enslaved African Americans, but they did not want slavery spreading to the West. Furthermore, many Northerners were appalled at the influx of immigrants, particularly...