Great point, very well expressed.
Of course you know that "Old Kinderhook" Van Buren was born near his father's tavern about 25 miles south of Albany, New York -- so he was hardly a "westerner".
And back in the day, after the old boys had quaffed back a few at Abie Van Buren's tavern in Old Kinderhook, they were said to be feeling "O.K." a term we still use today.
So here's to you, Marty!
;-)
By the way, for whatever it's worth: we should remember that Northerners didn't suddenly "get religion" in 1860 and switch from voting for Doughface Democrats or Whigs to these new whipper-snapper "wide awake" radical Republicans.
No, no, no...
The 1860 Republican victory was, in effect, engineered by Southern Fire Eaters, when they walked out of the 1860 majority Democrats' convention and formed their own minority party.
This made four major parties with presidential candidates, of whom Republicans were simply the largest, but far from a majority of all voters.
Sure, people claim that Republicans would have won anyway.
But that assumes a powerfully united Democrat party under Stephen Douglas could not have repeated its past victories over Lincoln's hapless Republicans.
The majority Democrats' 1860 fall preceded the rise of Republicans.
As to who would have won without a split into four parties, there are two ways of looking at it: if you combine northern Dems, Republicans, and the Constitutional Union Party as effectively voting against slavery, then it's more than 2/3 of the voters rejected slavery. If you view the Dems (even northerners) as a pro-slavery party, then it's closer to 50-50.
The 1860 Republican victory was, in effect, engineered by Southern Fire Eaters, when they walked out of the 1860 majority Democrats' convention and formed their own minority party.
William C. Davis offers another interpretation in his book, The Deep Waters of the Proud, Volume 1, page 30-31. In particular he mentions two aspects of this of which I had not been aware - the nomination process at Baltimore and Douglas' actions after receiving the nomination of the Baltimore convention.
How exactly did Douglas get the nomination at Baltimore? First, his friends controlled the rules and procedures of the Baltimore convention. They refused to allow the return of two of the Southern delegations that withdrew at the Charleston convention. The Douglas backers then gave Douglas the nomination without the two thirds majority that the rules required.
People like Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts then worked in Baltimore with those who had walked out of the convention. Those Northerners supported Breckenridge to be nominated supposedly because Breckenridge was against secession even if Lincoln should be elected. It is true that the fire eaters you mention did think the Baltimore nominations would lead to secession and a Southern nation.
Breckinridge was reluctant to accept his own nomination. He saw the problem with it leading to Lincoln's election. Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs met with Breckinridge and urged him to accept the nomination as it would put pressure on Douglas because it was obvious that Douglas could not win without the South. The only hope was that both Democrat nominees should withdraw so that a compromise candidate who would reunite the party could be chosen. Breckenridge agreed to accept his nomination with the objectives of the joint withdrawals of Douglas and Breckinridge, a reunited party, and a compromise nominee for the full party.
Davis met with Douglas to air this proposal. Douglas refused to withdraw his candidacy. Douglas' own ambition split the party and ensured Lincoln's election.
Considering that the Speaker of the House was a Republican, the Democratic splintering of the party was not the only cause for the Democratic loss. Slavery was failing, beating what is called an ‘up market retreat’ as free states were growing faster than slave states from immigration, and Texas’ demand to come in as a large state, and California’s demand to come in as a free state.
The situation was akin to IBM being chased out of the PC market. They withdrew to their server and mainframe markets, which are not bad markets, but market share is much lower.
So the slave owners thought, given their failure to spread over the wider country that they would just be rich in a smaller country. But there was no constitutional provision for them to break the preexisting union. They couldn’t convince enough people that they should do such a thing. They couldn’t get foreign countries to support them. So they lost.