It cannot be said that nothing happened during his campaign though. One very important thing happened between he and his biggest political rival, Stephen A. Douglas, shortly before his campaign started. The issue between them was slavery. Douglas believed in "popular sovereignty." He believed that the population of the new territories should vote on whether or not there should be slavery in their area, and he also believed that the territories were by nature unsuited to the slave economy, and that no legislative action was needed to keep slavery out. Lincoln disagreed with this belief. Lincoln insisted that "the territories must be kept free," he further said, because "new free states" were "places for poor people to go and better their condition." The Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 were a series of debates in several places around the country, in which they both raced for a position in Congress. Although Lincoln failed to get the position, he gained suff

In the election of 1860, there were several parties that had nominees. First and foremost was the Republican Party. The Republican Party traditionally stands for limited government and low taxes. The convention that formally launched the party was held in July 1854 at Jackson, Michigan, when a group of former Whigs, Democrats, and Free-Soilers adopted the name Republican. Members place the national interest above sectional interest and states' rights, and members were firmly linked in opposition to slavery. They believed that Congress had the power to abolish slavery, and should do so. The party quickly displaced the Whigs in the North, and became the main opposition to the Democrats, and in 1856, their first Presidential nominee, John C. Fremont, lost the race. In 1860, their second candidate, Abraham Lincoln, won the election.

In the election of 1861, there were several important ideas that Abraham Lincoln had. He was the first President elected by the Republican Party. Probably the biggest idea he had, and probably the biggest issue in the election was that of slavery. Ever since he heard about slavery when he was young, he was against it, and thought it immoral. When he was first elected to Congress in 1834, he proposed a law that said that the government should buy7 all of the slaves in the District of Columbia and set them free. Even though it did not pass, it clearly showed how Lincoln felt about slavery, and people's rights.

In the election of 1860, there were several people running against Lincoln. Among the more prominent ones was Senator William H. Seward of New York. He was in the Whig, and then in the Republican parties, and he also was an antislavery activist. After the Whig party collapsed, he joined the Republican Party, but twice failed to be nominated for President. He was appointed the Secretary of State by Lincoln once he took office.

Senator John Bell was a member of the Constitutional Union Party, and was at first against secession, but later encouraged it. He owned slaves, but discouraged the spread of slavery.

For the Democratic Party, the nominee was Senator Douglas, the nation's leading Democratic. He was also an antislavery activist, and his beliefs angered the proslavery wing of the Democrats, so therefore the Democratic Party split into two factions, which helped Lincoln a lot.

Fremont served unsuccessfully as a Union officer in the American Civil War, and he resigned from the army in 1862, a second time. Still popular, he was considered for the presidential nomination again in 1864, but withdrew to avoid dividing the party.

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Approximate Word count = 3524
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page double spaced)