The 1860 United States presidential election in Texas was held on November 6, 1860. State voters chose four electors to represent the state in the Electoral College, which chose the president and vice president. Soon after this election, Texas seceded from the United States in March 1861 and joined the Confederate States of America. It would not participate in the following elections in 1864 and 1868. The state would not be readmitted into the Union until 1870 and would not participate in another presidential election until 1872. This would stand as the best performance of any Presidential candidate in Texas history for over 65 years, until Woodrow Wilson (76.92%) surpassed it in 1916. Other than Wilson, only Franklin D. Roosevelt exceeded Breckenridge's percent of the vote, though he did so in three of his four runs: in 1932 (88.06%), 1936 (87.08%), and 1940 (80.92%). This leaves Breckinridge's performance as the overall 5th best performance in Texas presidential history.
Background
Before candidates were even nominated, Texas, as the frontier of slavery in the United States, was always recognized as extremely important to the extension of slavery, and nefarious tales of abolition plots there were common in the Southern media. Texas delegates to the first Democratic National Convention refused to accept “Northern Democrat” Stephen A. Douglas′ platform of “popular sovereignty” — locally called “squatter sovereignty” — because they believed that it would prevent the expansion of slavery in the same manner as the Republicans’ “free soil” policy. Texas was among the most insistent states upon a platform that guaranteed expansion of slavery into the territories and consequently the state Democratic party unanimously supported the nomination of Southern Democrat nominee John C. Breckinridge. Douglas, indeed, had so little support amongst the Texas electorate that his supporters had agreed to transfer their allegiance to Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, although their ultimate goal was to support whomever stood the best chance of beating Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln, who did not have significant ballot distribution in Texas.
Analysis
With the state media overwhelmingly behind him, Texas overwhelmingly voted for Breckinridge by a margin of 50.97 points. Breckinridge won 75.47 percent of the vote, making Texas his strongest state. Despite the allegiance of Douglas supporters, Bell carried only three counties in the state and it is sometimes thought that the German-American abolitionists in such counties as Gillespie refrained from visiting the polls. Besides the counties he won, Bell only exceeded forty percent of the vote in six other counties. Douglas gained a mere 18 votes as a write-in candidate.