On the face of the election
returns, Douglas made a sorry showing; he had won the electoral vote of but a
single State, Missouri, though three of the seven electoral votes of New Jersey
fell to him as the result of fusion. yet as the popular vote in the several
States was ascertained, defeat wore the guise of a great personal triumph.
Leader of a forlorn hope, he had yet received the suffrages of 1,376,957
citizens, only 489,495 less votes than Lincoln had polled. Of these, 163,525
came from the South, while Lincoln received only 26,430 all from the border
slave States. As compared with the vote of Breckinridge and Bell at the South,
Douglas's vote was insignificant; but at the North, he ran far ahead of the
combined vote of both. It goes without saying that had Douglas secured the full
Democratic vote in the free States, he would have pressed Lincoln hard in many
quarters. From the national standpoint, the most significant aspect of the
popular vote was the failure of Breckinridge to secure a majority in the slave
States. Union sentiment was still stronger than the secessionists had boasted.
The next most significant fact in the history of the election was this: Abraham
Lincoln had been elected to the presidency by the vote of a section which had
given over a million votes to his rival, the leader of a faction of a
disorganized party. (Allen Johnson, Stephen A. Douglas: A Study in American
Politics [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908], 440-41)
Further Reading
Jeff Lindsay, "The Stephen A. Douglas Prophecy," in Mormon Answers: Fulfilled Prophecies of Joseph Smith
FAIR, Timing of Stephen A. Douglas prophecy
