However, the conventional focus on the campaign between Republican Lincoln and Democrat Stephen Douglas ignores complexities in the story that reveal much about a young nation struggling with its identity, says A. James Fuller, professor of history at the University of Indianapolis.
Fuller has brought a richer version of the tale to life as editor of The Election of 1860 Reconsidered, published this spring by Kent State University Press.
“My conception of it was, let’s rethink this election and test the traditional interpretation of it,” says Fuller, who joined the university in 1999.
The book grew from the work of an informal Civil War Study Group formed by Indiana historians in 2008. Since then, the group has expanded to a regional association that conducts an annual conference each fall, with members presenting papers for constructive criticism. Fuller organized the group’s 2010 meeting at UIndy, and several of the papers became chapters in the book.
The three chapters written by Fuller include a look at politics in Indiana, where a split among Democrats was more pronounced than previously thought, with tensions driven as much by personal and political ambition as by high-minded ideology.
“You take these national issues and apply them to Indiana, and it takes a much different shape,” says Fuller, who is finishing a biography of Indiana’s Civil War governor, Oliver P. Morton.
His other chapters cover the election’s two other major candidates: Vice President John C. Breckinridge, who represented the breakaway Southern Democrats and later became a Confederate general; and Constitutional Union nominee John Bell, a moderate who favored compromise. Each earned more electoral votes than Douglas, the Northern Democrat originally favored to win.
“There were these other guys out there who took very principled stands” but have been largely ignored in many accounts, Fuller says.
Another misconception the book dispels is that Lincoln – who collected only 40 percent of the popular vote – was a passive candidate who left the strategy to his handlers.
“Lincoln was a lot more active, and he was a political operator,” Fuller says, much like the character in the recent Steven Spielberg film.
Illustrated with historic political cartoons and pictures of the major players, the book also includes a chapter by Professor Lawrence Sondhaus, chair of UIndy’s Department of History & Political Science. A specialist in European history, he explores opinions held at the time in England, France, Germany, and Austria, where few anticipated the election’s sweeping consequences.
Though aimed largely at fellow scholars, the book also contains interesting material for casual history buffs, Fuller says.
“It’s got a lot for historians; it’s got a lot for political scientists,” he says. “And there’s a lot for anyone who’s interested in how that important election played out.”
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