Ditto: “ Everyone knew secession was nearly inevitable. There was no surprise.”
No, my impression is that very few, if any, Northerners fully grasped what was going on in 1860.
Yes, all understood they didn’t want slavery in their own states or in western territories.
That’s why so many abandoned the old Whig party for the radical new Republicans.
But they didn’t really understand how or why Northern and Southern Democrats split into two parties, and whether that meant minority Republicans could carry the election.
Indeed, I think the majority expectation, North, South, East & West was that the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives, where deals would be made and agreements struck which satisfy everyone a little, and preserve the Union.
Few expected that Republicans alone would sweep the election, and even fewer understood what that must mean.
But within two days of the November 1860 election, South Carolina began to organize it’s secession convention, with the result that Northerners were confused & split on how to respond.
Lincoln during these months kept publicly silent, and privately very circumspect.
I guess that was the key. Northerners who voted for Lincoln believed that they were finally standing up to the slave owners. They wanted to have their say and wanted their voice to be heard. They didn't expect that the Republican would crush the other candidates.
Still less did they think they were going to crush the South militarily. That's something people (disgruntled Southerners and Copperheads as well as progressive academics) came up with later. It's reading back what turned out to happen into the intentions of people at the time.
It's like a tug of war. Most voters are pulling one way to prevent the voters on the other side from getting everything their own way. If it turns out that one side wins, theorists come out to say that there was a secret plan to annihilate the other side, but massive victories or defeats were rarely something people contemplated -- certainly not something on the average voters mind.
Could an obscure former one-term Congressman from Illinois really beat the famous and talented Stephen A. Douglas, who had already defeated Lincoln for Senator in 1858? Wouldn't Bell be able to hold on to Fillmore's vote (the old Whigs) and keep the Republicans from sweeping the North? Wasn't it likely that with so many candidates in the race that the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives? Douglas was certainly optimistic at least when his campaign started out, expecting support in both the North and the South -- which didn't pan out.
If there was uncertainty about the outcome of the election, there also must have been uncertainty about the likelihood of secession. It didn't happen in 1850, or during the Nullification Crisis, or in 1820, or during the War of 1812. At first the Upper South and the Border States certainly weren't in favor of secession, and couldn't their influence prevail over the hotheads further South?
Lincoln was certainly optimistic that secession could be avoided. What he and others probably didn't understand is that much of the conflict in the South wasn't just between secessionists and unionists but between immediatists and cooperationists. That is to say, there was a large group that was willing to countenance secession if enough states supported it and pledged to form a new government. Many of the Southern politicians Northerners counted on (and a large part of the Southern public) were already open to secession if the conditions were right, and Northerners didn't realize it.
Another question is whether Southern Democrats really had secession on their minds when they split the party, thus ensuring Lincoln's victory. It's an appealing theory in some ways, but I suspect they were as short-sighted as anybody else, and were looking backward, punishing Douglas for what they regarded as his past disloyalty or unreliability, rather than looking forwards with some complicated strategy of achieving independence in a slaveowners' nation. They also considered that the election might well be decided by the House of Representatives and a compromise candidate selected. We can say now that if somebody's actions produced a certain result that they must have intended that result, but things weren't that clear-cut at the time.