The U.S. presidential election of 1860 was a realigning election. The nation had been divided through most of the 1850s on the issue of slavery, with Northerners and Southerners disagreeing over whether or not it should be expanded to the territories, and fighting for each new state admitted to the Union. In 1860, this issue finally came to a head, bringing Abraham Lincoln and the Republican party to power, while it simultaneously fractured the formerly dominant Democratic Party in two.

The immediate result was the secession of seven southern states to form their own country and the outbreak of the American Civil War.