re: #304 HappyWarrior

So though, I’ve been doing some reading and research about the antebellum period. While it is true that many Democrats were supporters of slavery especially in the South, you also had a lot of Northern Democrats that were opposed too. Likewise many Southern Whigs were also supportive of slavery. What we call today the Republican party was not just made up of anti-slavery Whigs but anti-slavery Democrats too. If you read Team of Rivals, you’ll see that Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton had been a Democrat. That’s not to say that the Democratic Party of the Antebellum era was great and indeed two of their presidents, Pierce and Buchanan belong in the bottom tier of U.S Presidents but the DEMOCRATS WERE THE ONLY SLAVE OWNERS stuff is myth.

The 1860 election was a 4-way split
The Democratic party was split into two factions: the Northern Democrats, who ran Stephen Douglas (won 1 state, Missouri) and the Southern Democrats who ran John Breckenridge & won the Confederate states.