Election Day -- 1860

In 1860, the Democratic Party split into Northern and Southern wings. The Whig Party disbanded before the election but the conservative wing of the party and the Know-Nothings came together to form the Constitutional Union Party. The relatively new Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln who was elected on Nov. 6, 1860. What follows are excerpts from a New York Times article published Nov. 11, 1860 which describes what seems to have been an unusually peaceful election day in that city.

Note that the "Wide-Awakes" were groups of young, Republican activists, who mounted torch light parades to demonstrate their support of Lincoln. The "Dead Rabbits" was an Irish gang that dwelt in the infamous Five Points district.

---*--- Election Day in the City ---*--- All Quiet and Orderly at the Polls ---*--- Progress of the Voting in the Several Wards The clouds lowered gloomily over the City yesterday morning, when the polls were opened and very shortly afterward rain began to drizzle, with every prospect of a wet day. Was it an omen, and if so, an ill omen to Lincoln...? It did not, at any rate, keep one or the other party from the polls... People generally were awake -- wide awake, in fact -- very early yesterday, for they knew they had a duty to perform which could not occur but once in four years, and in actual shape it assumed, perhaps not more than once in a lifetime. And... they went to work with a will... The vote polled in each Ward, and each District... is said to have been the heaviest ever known in this City. At nearly every polling-place -- and there were close upon three hundred in all the Wards -- votes took their places en queue, and moved on very slowly to their duty as freemen... Considerable delay was caused at many polls by an indiscriminate challenging process, which occupied so much time that in nearly every Ward at sunset, when the polls closed, some hundreds of voters had not been able to "save the country," and having given the day to that nobly patriotic purpose, they felt, very naturally, slightly irascible thereat. The proceedings at the several Wards are slightly sketched below. The harmony of the whole proceedings renders the detail of them slightly monotonous, a defect, if it is one, which should be placed to the credit of the excellent Police arrangements... ---*--- The Polls During the Day First Ward ... Only three arrests were made -- two of a couple of half-drunken, half-grown boys, who got up a private quarrel... and were accommodated with a place on which to sleep off the effects of the bad rum which they had been pouring down... A man named James Stohles was arrested in the Fifth District of this Ward for attempting to vote illegally, and was committed for examination. Second Ward ... There was of course the usual amount of pushing, and crowding, and drinking, but there was no real disturbance, nor any act committed which demanded the intervention of the Police... Fourth Ward The Fourth Ward yesterday was to the full as quiet as its fellows. Fewer drunken men were visible in the vicinity than may be seen on more ordinary occasions than the election of a President and the salvation of a Union... Sixth Ward The "Bloody Sixth," yesterday, did nothing to justify its sanguinary cognomen and character... In the very haunt where confusion holds high (and) carnival and rowdyism is generally wont to assert its supremacy, the election, yesterday, progressed without the breaking of a ballot-box or the effective breaking of a head... Even at the polls in Mulberry-street (sic), where Dead Rabbits most do congregate, everything, until late late in the day, was as quiet as in a Church porch... As the day grew, and whiskey began to work, a few impromptu fights occurred among gentlemen who had nothing else to do, but the ground of difference were generally personal and not political...

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