Excellent, plus it allows us to look at 1856 presidential election results. Now I don't have to reply on memory, which is faulty. The other Alabama county carried by Bell was Greene, in the heart of the western Black Belt. The county profile included large numbers of men who fit the Whig profile - planters, bankers and others involved with commerce and the cotton trade.

When asked to vote for delegates to the secession convention, most of the Alabama counties which provided heavy support for the Bell-Everett ticket voted for "straight-out" candidates. In other words, immediate secessionists. There's a relationship, because secession really was on the ballot in that election.

We discussed the low vote for the Constitutional Union Party in Alabama's Winston County, the state's celebrated citadel of Unionism. As you noted, Bell-Everett received a grand total of forty votes from Winston County citizens. That alone should demonstrate that there is no relationship between voting for the Constitutional Union ticket and being against secession. Most of the hard-core Unionists in Winston County must have voted for Democrats, either Breckinridge or Douglas.

Let's look at the other so-called "Avalanche" counties where the Democrats routinely defeated Whigs by overwhelming margins. All are located in the northern third of the state, stretching from the Georgia border to the Mississippi line. In each county the Bell-Everett ticket in 1860 received about the same percentage of the total vote as Millard Filmore got in 1856. No matter what the new party label happened to be, voters recognized the candidates as being Whigs and voted accordingly.

The real action took place within the Democratic Party, which split over slavery. A vote for Breckinridge-Lane could be interpreted by the public as a vote for the expansion of slavery. Democrats excoriated Senator Douglas for his position on slavery in the territories, which Southerners called "Squatter Sovereignty". In their view, Douglas undermined the rights of citizens of any states to bring thier slaves into the territories. Breckinridge upheld that right, so his wing of the Democratic Party was known as Southern Rights Democrats. The Douglas wing was called the National Democratic Party.

As noted, Bell-Everett votes are painfully small but match historical pattern. Breckinridge carried all of these counties, but Douglas ran a strong second in many of them, including Winston. These are counties where a certain element accepted the "national" position on slavery, which was that residents of a U.S. territory could vote to exclude slavery prior to statehood. Based on Winston County, we are much more likely to find unconditional Unionists (like their hero, Andrew Jackson) in these counties.

You'll have to scroll down - for some reason my tables insert a number of empty rows before you actually see the table.

Blount County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	1,251	05	65 Bell	698 Breckinridge	488 Douglas
1856	807	05	37 Filmore	770 Buchanan
Calhoun County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	2,765	13	364 Bell	2,347 Breckinridge	54 Douglas
1856	2,573	17	443 Filmore	2,130 Buchanan
Cherokee County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	2,466	21	527 Bell	1,706 Breckinridge	223 Douglas
1856	1,992	23	455 Filmore	1,537 Buchanan
DeKalb County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	1,255	16	204 Bell	849 Breckinridge	202 Douglas
1856	1,030	14	130 Filmore	900 Buchanan
Fayette County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	1,695	21	359 Bell	1,299 Breckinridge	37 Douglas
1856	1,239	35	440 Filmore	799 Buchanan
Jackson County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	2,455	05	130 Bell	1,760 Breckinridge	565 Douglas
1856	1,887	05	97 Filmore	1,790 Buchanan
Jefferson County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	1,153	21	245 Bell	831 Breckinridge	77 Douglas
1856	893	22	196 Filmore	697 Buchanan
Marion County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	1,245	16	197 Bell	986 Breckinridge	62 Douglas
1856	898	22	198 Filmore	700 Buchanan
Marshall County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	1,369	12	165 Bell	441 Breckinridge	763 Douglas
1856	972	09	89 Filmore	883 Buchanan
Randolph County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	2,644	21	567 Bell	1,734 Breckinridge	343 Douglas
1856	2,143	32	683 Filmore	1,460 Buchanan
St. Clair County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	1,377	12	174 Bell	963 Breckinridge	240 Douglas
1856	901	09	83 Filmore	818 Buchanan
Walker County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	852	12	103 Bell	446 Breckinridge	303 Douglas
1856	595	24	146 Filmore	449 Buchanan
Winston County	Total	%	Former Whigs	Democratic Party
1860	390	10	40 Bell	203 Breckinridge	147 Douglas
1856	235	06	14 Filmore	221 Buchanan