The party was established in 1854 by opponents of slavery and secession in the commonwealth, with the newly-chartered state chapter first sending its own among over 600 delegates to the 1856 Republican National Convention. However, the Virginia delegates ultimately abstained from casting ballots for president, instead casting ballots for William L. Dayton for vice-president; both candidates were defeated in the general by Democrats James Buchanan and John C. Breckinridge. Virginia's delegates to the 1860 convention were initially split between a majority for Abraham Lincoln and a minority for Simon Cameron in the first and second ballots, with delegates settling on Lincoln on the third ballot for president, and voted for Cassius M. Clay for vice-president on the first and second ballots (with Clay being defeated in the convention by Hannibal Hamlin). While John Bell and Edward Everett of the Constitutional Union Party, a party of conservative former Whigs who supported slavery but opposed secession, carried Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, Lincoln and Hamlin eventually won the presidential election.