Originally published on August 5, 2026 (Episode 469)
Introduction
YEAR of meteors! brooding year!
I would bind in words retrospective some of your deeds
and signs;
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad;.
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair,
mounted the scaffold in Virginia;
(I was at hand—silent I stood, with teeth shut close—I
watch'd;
I stood very near you, old man, when cool and indiffer-
ent, but trembling with age and your unheal'd
wounds, you mounted the scaffold;)
That was Walt Whitman, from the 1871 edition of Leaves of Grass; and the 19th Presidentiad to which he refers is the election of 1860. No election in the history of the United States can come close to being more confusing, tumultuous and consequential than the election of 1860.
Now Jonathan Earle seeks to disclose its mysteries. And in fact in his new book He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860, he reveals that the 1860 contest was even stranger than we might have imagined it to be.
About the Guest
Jonathan Earle is Associate Professor of History at Louisiana State University, where he also serves as the Roger Hadfield Ogden Dean of the LSU Honors College. A specialist in nineteenth-century political and intellectual history, he is the author of several books on the coming of the Civil War and the political culture of the antebellum United States, of which He Has the People is the latest.
For Further Investigation
Jonathan Earle, He Has the People: Abraham Lincoln and the Election of 1860
Orville Vernon Burton, The Age of Lincoln
Richard Carwardine, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power
Michael F. Holt, The Election of 1860: A Campaign Fraught with Consequences
Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860–1861
Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1871 edition), “Year of Meteors (1859–60)”
Related Episodes
True Blue: Clayton Butler on white Unionists in the Deep South
Civil War Politics: Paul Escott on political traditions, personalities, and the limits of pragmatism
The Abolitionist Civil War: Frank Cirillo on how the abolitionist movement transformed during the Civil War, eventually destroying itself
Horace Greeley, American Editor: James Lundberg on the Method in His Madness
Tags
Abraham Lincoln • Election of 1860 • Civil War • American Politics • Republican Party • Jonathan Earle • Nineteenth-Century America • Political Culture • Political History • United States History
