In the election of 1860 Lincoln polled only 26,430 votes in the entire south and those were from the upper section. Douglas, the moderate Democrat, received 163,525 votes in the south; Bell, of the Unionist party, received 515,973 votes in the same section, while Breckenridge, the extreme pro-slavery candidate, received 570,871 votes in the entire south. Breckenridge carried the lower south by a plurality while Lincoln carried the west and north by a plurality, and was elected president. The Douglas and Bell voters of the south were opposed to secession, but all the secession vote went to Breckenridge although not all the Breckenridge vote was for secession. A majority in the south opposed secession but the southern states fell into the hands of the secessionists by a plurality. Why did the south secede? Lincoln was elected on a platform defying the Dred Scott decision of 1857. According to this decision the Constitution recognized slavery and therefore Congress could not prohibit it in the western territories. This could be done only by the states through their constitutions or by the federal government through a constitutional amendment. This was a great legal victory for slavery, but Lincoln defied the decision, and expected the next move on the part of pro-slavery advocates to be an attempt to legalize slavery in the northern states through a Supreme Court decision. Lincoln, when asked what he meant by saying the union could not exist half free and half slave, said that slavery would eventually have to go but it would probably last one hundred years. He did not realize that slavery was dying. This election of Lincoln on a platform defying a decision of the Supreme Court caused the lower south to secede, as a gesture to uphold the courts and the Constitution. Lincoln coerced them in order to uphold the Constitution, for he had been legally elected president and his office required his execution of federal laws. Thus, both the north and the south fought to defend the Constitution. Both felt themselves defensive--neither section understood the other--and emotionalism in the matter was so kindled that reason could not function on either side. The Civil War was a war about an abstraction--the status of slavery in the western territory--which was the real cause of the war. There were other differences between the north and the south but none of them would have resulted in war had not the slave question entered into the conflict.