page_title: 1860 United States presidential election
section_title: Constitutional Union Party nomination
hierarchical_section_title: 1860 United States presidential election / Nominations / Constitutional Union Party nomination
caption_attribution_description: English: Campaign poster for 1860 U.S. presidential candidate John Bell and his running mate, Edward Everett
context_page_description: The 1860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860. In a four-way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin emerged triumphant. Lincoln's name did not appear on the ballot in 10 Southern States. His election served as the primary catalyst of the American Civil War.
  The United States had become increasingly divided during the 1850s over sectional disagreements, primarily the extension of slavery into the territories. The incumbent president, James Buchanan, like his predecessor, Franklin Pierce, was a Northern Democrat with sympathies for the South. During the mid-to-late 1850s, the antislavery Republican Party became a major political force in the wake of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Supreme Court's decision in the 1857 case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Starting in the 1856 United States presidential election and certainly by 1860, the Republican Party had replaced the defunct Whig Party as the major opposition to the Democrats.
context_section_description: Constitutional Union candidates:
  John Bell, former senator from Tennessee
  Sam Houston, governor of Texas
  John J. Crittenden, senator from Kentucky
  Edward Everett, former senator from Massachusetts
  William A. Graham, former senator from North Carolina
  William C. Rives, former senator from Virginia
  The Constitutional Union Party was formed by remnants of both the defunct Know Nothing and Whig Parties who were unwilling to join either the Republicans or the Democrats. The new party's members hoped to stave off Southern secession by avoiding the slavery issue. They met in the Eastside District Courthouse of Baltimore and nominated John Bell from Tennessee for president over Governor Sam Houston of Texas on the second ballot. Edward Everett was nominated for vice-president at the convention on May 9, 1860, one week before Lincoln.
  John Bell was a former Whig who had opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution. Edward Everett had been president of Harvard University and Secretary of State in the Millard Fillmore administration. The party platform advocated compromise to save the Union with the slogan "The Union as it is, and the Constitution as it is."
caption: A Constitutional Union campaign poster, 1860, portraying John Bell and Edward Everett, respectively the candidates for president and vice president. Once Lincoln was inaugurated and called up the militia, Bell supported the secession of Tennessee. In 1863, Everett dedicated the new cemetery at Gettysburg.
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