Question

Why did Abraham Lincoln win the presidency?

A. Most Americans were abolitionists.

B.The proslavery vote split between several
candidates.

C.He had the most experience of all the candidates.

D. The population in the South exceeded that of the North.

Answer 1

I believe the answer is D. Don't hold me to that though, I may be wrong.

Answer 2

Before the Dread Scott decision, Congress could declare territories free or slave. The Missouri Compromise drew a line from the southern border of Missouri west. North of the line was free, south of it was slave. But the Dread Scott decision said congress and the territorial legislatures could not restrict slavery. Well the first new territory was Kansas, which was next to Missouri a slave state. Thousands of settlers swarmed into the territory to swing the vote to slave or free. Angry words were spoken, bushwhacker slave supporters burned out free staters. Jay hawker anti slave supporters burned out slave supporters. Kansas was called Bleeding Kansas. While no one but the Republicans seemed able to do anyth

Answer 3

The least wrong answer here is B. The Democratic National Convention in 1860 was unable to agree on a candidate, and eventually two were nominated, Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois by the "main" convention,a nd Vice President John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky by the southern "rump" portion of the convention. The problem was that Douglas was a "moderate" on slavery, supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the idea of popular sovereignty, and rejecting the logic of Dred Scott v. Sanford. That made him sufficiently unpopular with the Southern Democrats that they could not stomach nominating him for President.

In the actual election Breckenridge won almost all of the Southern states plus Maryland (69 electoral votes), and Lincoln won almost all of the Northern states (180 ev). Douglas carried only Missouri, ironically, for a total of 12 ev. A minor "moderate" candidate, John Bell from Tennessee, won several of the border states (e.g. Kentucky and Virginia) and came up with 39 ev.

However, as you can see, even if the Democrats had rallied around one anti-Lincoln candidate, and he had done as well as Breckenridge, Bell and Douglas put together, Lincoln would still have won the election, simply because the northern states he won had many more electoral votes. (For example, New York state had 35 ev, Pennsylvania 27, Ohio 23, Massachusetts 12. The biggest southern state was Virginia, with only 15 electoral votes, and the biggest Deep South states were North Carolina and Georgia, with only 10 ev each.)

So for B to be strictly true, you'd have to assume that if the Democrats had rallied around one candidate, he would have done better than all the other candidates they did nominate put together. That isn't impossible, but it doesn't seem very likely.

The best possible answer -- which, alas, you are not allowed to pick -- is that Lincoln won the election because the population in the northern states was much bigger than in the south, and the north was generally anti-slavery, although not abolitionist.

Answer 4

B is the correct answer!