Archibald Campbell and John Curtiss Underwood attempted to have the Republican National Convention held in Wheeling, Virginia.

However, the hostile reaction to the Republican Party by the south after John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry resulted in the committee choosing to host the convention in Chicago.

The party's delegation to the national convention was the sixth-largest there, despite a credentials challenge against the entire south by opponents of William H. Seward.

This was the first presidential election since the formation of political parties in which Virginia did not vote for the Democratic or Democratic-Republican candidate.

Lincoln's best results, by far, were in the four counties that comprised the state's northern panhandle, a region which had long felt alienated from Richmond and which was economically and culturally linked to its neighbors Ohio and Pennsylvania and which would become the key driver in the successful effort to form a separate state.