The 1860 Election In Tennessee

 Part of a series I'm doing....looking back at a history that we rarely discuss.

For the record, Tennessee was one of those states that didn't allow Lincoln on the ballot.

So there were three candidates: Breckenridge (Southern Democratic Party, the break-a-way group from the Democratic Party, Douglas (Democratic Party), and Bell (former Whig-Party-evolved into the Constitutional Union Party).  

Winner of the 1860 Tennessee vote?  John Bell won with 47-percent of the vote.  2nd place went to Breckinridge with 45-percent of the vote.  Douglas  took a dismal 7-percent.

There's only ONE single county in the state (far western region) where Douglass won the county vote.  

It's mostly a 50-50 situation on remaining counties between Bell and Breckinridge.  The strongest areas for Bell?  Along the North Carolina border.  

146,000 men showed up and voted in this election.

What happened in 1864?  Tennessee was not part of the Confederacy and was allowed to vote in the 1864 election. Candidates?  Lincoln and McClellan (the former general, who ran as a Democrat).  

Here's the odd part of the 1864 election....most ballot boxes around the state were destroyed by Confederates in the state.  What is generally believed....Lincoln had around 30,000 votes, while McClellan took 5,000.  This number?  Well....it's mostly created out of thin air by the Chicago Tribune newspaper.....so in a factual way, nothing about the results in the state for 1864 is believed.  I would add....the round-number business makes this also a bit of a joke. 

Yeah, pretty comical but that's history for you.