Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University writes this day over at National Review
... the congressional elections this year are overwhelmingly national, just as the elections of 1860 were dominated by one national issue, namely slavery.
In 1860, some abolitionists split the anti-slavery vote by running their own candidate — who had no chance of winning — instead of supporting Abraham Lincoln, who was not pure enough for some abolitionists. Lincoln got just 40 percent of the vote, though that turned out to be enough to win in a crowded field.
I'm giving this one a D. The existence of slavery was not an issue in 1860 -- all major candidates, Lincoln included, accepted that there was no authority granted to the national government to abolish slavery in the states where it already existed. The question was whether the national government could, would or should bar the extension of slavery into territories, such as Kansas and Nebraska, which had not yet been organized into states.
What abolished slavery, effectively, was the decision of the lunatic fringe of the South to make war on the national government.
What Sowell attempts here is to draw a highly misleading parallel between the electoral fate of various cheesy Republican lampreys and the abolition of de jure slavery. I don't think so.