1860 Election in Alabama

 I went back this past week and looked over the 1860 national election....in my home-state (Alabama).  It's an interesting 'twist'.

So fact 1:  Lincoln didn't get on the voting roll.  What you did get was Constitutional Union Party (the remains of the Whig Party), who ran a campaign for John Bell.  Oddly enough....in five counties (in the far south of the state....Bell won over the other two competitors (Breckinridge from the Southern Democrat Party and Douglas from the Democratic Party).

Fact 2: Douglas (Democratic Party) mostly wins in 4 counties in the far north of the state (including my county of Lauderdale).

Fact 3: Breckinridge takes 54-percent of the total state vote (entire state vote for the 3 candidates....just over 90,000).

Fact 4: Oddly enough, Greene County (deep into the cotton belt on the western part of the state, and with a low population of whites (to slaves)....votes primarily for the Constitutional Union Party (John Bell).  I doubt if anyone has ever sat down to analyze the voting in this one county and how odd it is to have a right-of-center party carry the county.

Fact 5: If you review the entire state for votes....the Constitutional Union guy took 31-percent of the votes.  Almost one out of three....didn't vote for the Democrat or the Southern Democratic Party candidate.  

It would be eight years after this point before Alabama would have a 'vote' in the Presidential election.  

Candidates for 1868 in Alabama?  Grant for the Republican Party (getting 51-percent of the vote) against Seymour of the Democratic Party.  I should note....50,000 more Alabama citizens voted in 1868, than in 1860.  Grant's votes?  Oddly, they came from the center of the state where the major slave plantations existed before 1860.  Seymour took the bulk of county votes south and north of the center 'ring'.  

Oddly enough out of this Grant vote trend....Winston County in the north (by itself) took a 70-percent Grant win.  How this happened?  There's a fair amount of new immigrants into the region after the war, and I suspect that Grant gained via that method (probably figure into the extra 50,000 new voters).