Episode 1 of 2

Douglas's Electoral Performance

When
1860
Where
United States
Part of
Lincoln elected 16th President in the four-way 1860 election

Douglas won the second-highest popular vote but only Missouri, securing electoral votes in both free and slave states.

Stephen A. Douglas won the second-highest popular vote total but only the state of Missouri. He was the only candidate in the 1860 election to win electoral votes in both free and slave states. His rejection of cooperation with Breckinridge influenced the regional split of the contest.

Sources

  1. 1860 United States presidential election Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-06
  2. Stephen A. Douglas Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-28

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.