Major Robert Anderson, a fifty-five year old Kentucky-born artilleryman and former slaveowner, was assigned to replace the long-serving Bostonian Lieutenant Colonel John L. Gardner as commander of Fort Moultrie near Charleston, South Carolina.  Secretary of War John B. Floyd saw Anderson as a cooler head for the tense relations between federal and state authorities in Charleston and as a conciliatory appointment at the time.  (By John Osborne) 

The victory of John Bell and the Constitutional Union ticket in Virginia was seen at the moment as a vote for moderation.  But Bell only narrowly won the state with 74,481 votes, just 156 more than the more radical Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge.  Abraham Lincoln gained only 1,929 votes, around 1 percent.  Within months Virginia seceded from the Union. (By John Osborne)  

United States Marshal Ike Rynders, a leading Democrat in New York City, announced the mixed results of the presidential election to a late night crowd outside of Tammany Hall.  He said "My friends and fellow Democrats! The City is all safe. I had hoped that the country would be so, too, but there are those who can smell a nigger a mile and a half off, and they have prevented it." New York City's fusion ticket had defeated Lincoln handily but New York State's electoral vote went to the Republican candidate nevertheless.  (By John Osborne)

Charles Dickens' English magazine All Year Round was suffering in popularity and in October, 1860 he decided that he himself would provide a new serial to boost sales.  The product of this was his novel Great Expectations, the first episode of which appeared in All Year Round on December 1, 1860.  The circulation of the magazine was immediately boosted and grew to 100,000 while the story ran.  The novel was later serialized in the United States by Harper's Weekly. (By John Osborne)