Election Of 1860 And 1864 — Kentucky

Election Of 1860 And 1864 — Kentucky. Fort Hill Civil War Park. Kentucky did not support Lincoln in the 1860 and 1864 presidential elections. Many Kentuckians disagreed with Lincoln's policy of prohibiting the expansion of slavery into future U. S. territories and states. Some Kentuckians correctly feared 1860, Kentucky was ranked ninth in state and slave population, seventh in farm value, and fifth in livestock value. , Therefore, in Kentucky during the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln finished last out of the four candidates, winning less than one percent of the popular vote with only 1,364 votes. Lincoln received only ten votes in his ancestral and birth counties (Washington, Hardin, and Larue), and only five votes from Fayette County, the home of his in-laws, the Todds. Tennessean John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party won forty five percent of the popular vote in Kentucky with 66,051 votes (and all twelve electoral votes), Bell was viewed as the least radical of all of the 1860 presidential candidates. His platform contained one plank: the preservation of the Union. , The 1864 election brought similar results for Lincoln in Kentucky. He won approximately thirty percent of the popular vote with 27,787 votes (173 votes from his ancestral counties) as compared to the Democratic Party candidate, former Union general George McClellan, who won just under seventy percent of the popular vote with 64,301 votes (and all twelve electoral votes). , Despite Kentucky's reaction to its native son and the Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln won both elections.