The political parties in the late 1850s came to represent only sectional interests – Democrats in the South, Republicans in the North. In the presidential campaign of 1860, the Democrats divided among themselves, while the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln on an antislavery platform that denied the right of Congress to give legality to slavery in any territory. Lincoln swept the North, but the threats of secession made by southern orators for 40 years were soon realized. The breakdown of an underlying national political consensus (which had previously sustained national parties) led to the outbreak of hostilities, only a few weeks after Lincoln's inauguration.