Video: 'Upheaval at the 1860 Democratic Convention: What Happened When a Party Split | Retro Report'

(Saturday, June 23, 1860) — Deeply divided over the issue of slavery, delegates at the 1860 Democratic National Convention meeting today at the Front Street Theater in Baltimore nominated Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for President of the United States.

Douglas won the nomination on the second ballot, defeating incumbent Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky by a vote of 181.5-7.5 (Breckinridge was nominated by a separate Southern Democratic Convention, see below).

Former Governor Herschel Vespasian Johnson of Georgia was nominated for vice president after Senator Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama refused the nomination.

A group of pro-slavery Southern Democrats held their own separate convention today at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore and nominated Breckinridge for president (by a vote of 81-24 over former Senator Daniel S. Dickinson of New York) and Senator Joseph Lane of Oregon for vice president.

The separate Douglas-Johnson and Breckinridge-Lane Democratic tickets would face the Republican ticket of Abraham Lincoln-Hannibal Hamlin (nominated in May 1860) in the 1860 presidential election.