On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th president of the UnitedStates. The government was operating in crisis mode. Seven states, led by South Carolina, had seceded since the election. The confrontation over Ft. Sumter led to open warfare by April, prompting Virginia's secession, taking Robert E. Lee with her. The Confederacy was now just across the Potomac.
Maryland was threatening to follow suit. Lincoln's failure to stop this action would maroon his capital behind enemy lines. The election gave him little leverage, however. He had narrowly avoided an assassination plot in Baltimore on the way to his inaugural. His 35% of the vote in a contentious four-way race was enough for victory only because of the nearly even split between John Breckinridge (Southern Democrat) and John Bell (Constitutional Unionist). In nine of the southern states, Lincoln's name did not appear on the ballot.
Though his name was on the Maryland ballot, Lincoln finished dead last with 2.5% of the vote statewide, and only 50 votes in Montgomery County. This despite the presence of county resident Francis Preston Blair, who had organized the Republican Party's founding meeting at his Silver Spring estate. Maryland was after all a slave state, with slaves making up 40% of the population.
