Hey everyone, thanks for downloading episode 23 of our Civil War Podcast.

My name is Rich.

And I'm Tracy. Hello y'all. Welcome to the podcast.

Last week we discussed the presidential election of 1860 and Abraham Lincoln's victory

on Tuesday, November 6th. As we mentioned last time, Lincoln received only 40% of the popular

vote, but he secured 180 electoral votes. At that time, 123 electoral votes were needed

to win the presidency. So with the majority of the electoral count, that means even if the

entire Democratic vote had gone to any of the other three candidates, Lincoln still

would have captured the White House. So Abraham Lincoln might have been a minority president,

but he was a legitimate one. No one questioned the legality or constitutionality of the election.

And that's an important point considering what happened immediately after the election.

So we really want to stress that no one questioned the legality or constitutionality of the election.

Abraham Lincoln was fairly elected as the 16th president of the United States of America.

And yet within 23 days of Lincoln's election, five southern states, South Carolina, Alabama,

Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida had all authorized the calling of state conventions to

debate pulling out of the union. And Louisiana's legislature was in special session in order

to call such a convention. In Texas, only the determined resistance of Governor

CM Houston kept the legislature from calling a succession convention, and not even Houston

would be able to check secession fever in Texas forever.

Not surprisingly, secession fever ran hottest in South Carolina. Long time listener to the

podcast will remember that the Palmetto states calls for disunion ran all the way back

to the nullification crisis of 1832. During the months leading up to election day 1860,

...