Yes, November 6th 1860 was certainly a turning point in American History and depending upon your point of view, one for good, or one for bad. In some historian estimation as many as 3,000,000 Americans (mostly southerners) would lose their lives in the next five years because of events that followed this day 150th years ago.

November 6th, 1860, The election of a man whose personal ambition would not allow for any compromise with the southern states to defuse an explosive national problem. Who said "I would be the presdient of all the states or of none of them." A man who was never to see the day when he was President over all of those states. A man who would died before that end came and those states were reunited into the United States.