1860 United States presidential election in Tennessee

Tennessee was won by the Constitutional Union candidate and Tennessee native Senator John Bell and his running mate the 15th Governor of Massachusetts Edward Everett. They defeated the Southern Democratic candidate 14th Vice President of the United States John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky) and his running mate Senator Joseph Lane or Oregon as well as Democratic candidate Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois and his running mate 41st Governor of Georgia Herschel V. Johnson. Bell won the state by a narrow margin of 3.17%.


Republican Party candidate and president-elect Abraham Lincoln was not on the ballot in Tennessee. Tennessee was the only one of ten states where Lincoln was not on the ballot that would be carried by a candidate other than Breckinridge. Nonetheless, this is the last election in which Unionist Cocke County and Hancock County were not carried by the Republican presidential nominee.^[1]