The presidential election of 1860 is perhaps the most defining of our country's history at a time when half the nation was considering whether to start a new country or keep the current one intact.
As we know, it didn't work as well as we'd hoped and in April 1861, the civil rebellion began.
Prior to that, Illinois lawyer Abe Lincoln, campaigning as a pro-Union Whig (Republican) teamed up with Maine congressman Hannibal Hamlin to defeat Kentucky Democrat John Breckinridge and Illinois' Stephen Douglas in the presidential vote that leaned heavily on the slavery issue.
The North and the Lincoln Republicans favored abolition but only to the point where it preserved the union. Southern Democrats, called Copperheads, supported states' rights and, by extension, the right to own slaves. The South believed the 1842 ruling of Dred Scott preserved their right to own other people.
The war broke out and everything changed after that. That history has been written. This drawing appeared in the Brookville American, a pro-Union paper, on Oct. 19, 1860. With little background to call on, Franklin County was generally Democratic though not necessarily pro-South. Douglas got more votes than Lincoln did in Franklin County.
Lincoln succeeded James Buchanan, whose inconsistent position on the advent of the Civil War was considered quite damaging to the Union's strength. He did not strongly oppose slavery, nor did he support efforts to abolish it.
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