The year 1860 would like a word.

In all seriousness, the tendency not to see the secession crisis as an election crisis says interesting things about the memory of the Civil War. I think it's a product of the ideological work done by two otherwise opposed memories.

The Confederate Lost Cause memory alleged that secession was a legitimate right of the states & that the CSA really did secede, something that Lincoln (who considered the CSA a "rebellion") always rejected.

The Union memory of the war worked hard to cement it as a demonstration of American democracy's exceptionalism, & thus hurried to forget its revolutionary origins---a case where the election results were violently rejected by seceded states.

What cultural work is being done by the effort to place the contested 1860 presidential election "outside" the narrative of American history? (Cf. Greg Downs's new book The Second American Revolution on precisely this question.)

Clarifying postscript: https://twitter.com/wcaleb/status/1329786997007921153