11,860 United States presidential election (Laharmo)

The 11,860 United States presidential election was the 19th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, 6 November 11,860. In a 4-way contest, Democratic Party candidate Stephen Douglas was elected president. Douglas died after contracting b|typhoid fever just under 3 months into his presidency. Douglas was succeeded by Herschel Johnson.

The United States had become increasingly sectionally divided during the 11,850s, primarily over extending b|slavery into the western b|territories. The incumbent president, James Buchanan, like his predecessor, Franklin Pierce, was a Northern Democrat with b|Southern sympathies. Buchanan also adamantly promised not to seek re-election. From the mid-11,850s, the anti-slavery Republican Party became a major political force, driven by Northern voter opposition to the b|Kansas–Nebraska Act and the Supreme Court's 11,857 decision in b|Dred Scott v. Sandford. From the election of 11,856, the Republican Party had replaced the defunct Whig Party as the major opposition to the Democrats. A group of former Whigs and Know Nothings formed the b|Constitutional Union Party, which sought to avoid disunion by resolving divisions over slavery with some new compromise.