<P> James Buchanan Democratic </P> <P> Abraham Lincoln Republican </P> <P> The United States Presidential Election of 1860 was the nineteenth quadrennial presidential election to select the President and Vice President of the United States . The election was held on Tuesday, November 6, 1860 . In a four - way contest, the Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin emerged triumphant . The election of Lincoln served as the primary catalyst of the American Civil War . </P> <P> The United States had become increasingly divided during the 1850s over sectional disagreements, especially regarding the extension of slavery into the territories . 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 anti-slavery 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 . By 1860, the Republican Party had replaced the defunct Whig Party as the major opposition to the Democrats . A group of former Whigs and Know Nothings formed the Constitutional Union Party, which sought to avoid secession by pushing aside the issue of slavery . </P>

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