tables, singing at the top of their voices the popular campaign song, Oh ain't you glad you joined the Republicans?" Here at intervals further telegrams came from New York, all announcing large majorities. The scene became one of the wildest excitement, and Mr. Lincoln and his friends soon withdrew to a little telegraph office on the square, where they could receive reports more quietly. Up to this time the only anxiety Mr. Lincoln had shown about the election was in the returns from his State and town. He didn't "feel quite easy," as he said, "about Springfield." Towards morning, however, the announcement came that he had a majority in his own precinct. Then it was that he showed the first emotion, a jubilant chuckle, and soon after he remarked cheerfully to his friends, that he guess'd he'd go home now," which he did. But Springfield was not content to go home. Cannon banged until daylight, and on every street corner and in every alley could be heard groups of men shouting at the top of their voices, "Oh, ain't you glad you joined the Republicans?"

Twenty-four hours later and the full result of that Tuesday's work was known. Out of 303 electoral votes, Lincoln had received 180. Of the popular vote he had received 1,866,452-nearly a half million over Douglas, a million over Breckenridge, a million and a quarter over Bell. It was a victory, but there were facts about the victory which startled the thoughtful. If Lincoln had more votes than any one opposing candidate, they together had nearly 1,000,000 over him. Fifteen States of the Union gave him no electoral votes, and in ten States he had not received a single popular vote.

CHAPTER XXI

MR. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT-ELECT

ALTHOUGH the election of November 6 made Lincoln the President-elect of the United States, for four months, he could exercise no direct influence on the affairs of the country. If the South tried to make good her threat to secede in case he was elected, he could do nothing to restrain her. The South did try, and at once. With the very election returns the telegraph brought Lincoln news of disruption. Day by day this news continued, and always more alarming. On November 10, the United States senators from South Carolina resigned. Six weeks later, that State passed an ordinance of secession and began to organize an independent government. By the end of December, the only remnant of United States authority in South Carolina was the small garrison commanded by Major Anderson which occupied Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbor. The remaining forts and batteries of that harbor, the lighthouse tender, the arsenal, the post-office, the custom-house, in short, everything in the State over which the Stars and Stripes had floated, was under the Palmetto Flag.

In his quiet office in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln read, in January, reports of the proceedings of conventions in Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, by all of which States, in that month, ordinances of secession were adopted. In February, he saw representatives of these same States unite in a general convention at Montgomery, Alabama, and the newspapers told him how promptly and in

telligently they went to work to found a new nation, the Southern Confederacy, to provide it with a constitution, and to give it officers.

Mr. Lincoln observed that each State, as she went out of the Union, prepared to defend her course if necessary. On November 18, Georgia appropriated $1,000,000 to arm the State, and in January she seized Forts Pulaski and Jackson and the United States arsenal. Louisiana appropriated all the federal property in her borders, even to the mint and custom-house and the money they contained. Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi were not behind in their seizures, and when the new government was formed at Montgomery, it promptly took up the question of defending its life.

Mr. Lincoln was not only obliged to sit inactive and watch this steady dissolution of the Union, but he was obliged to see what was still harder-that the administration which he was to succeed was doing nothing to check the destructionists. Indeed, all through this period proof accumulated that members of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet had been systematically working for many months to disarm the North and equip the South. The quantity of arms sent quietly from Northern arsenals was so great that the citizens of the towns from which they went became alarmed. Thus the Springfield

Republican" of January 2, 1861, noted that the citizens of that town were growing excited over "the procession of government licenses which, during the last spring and summer, and also quite recently, have been engaged in transporting from the United States Armory to the United States freight station, an immense quantity of boxes of muskets marked for Southern distribution." "We find," the paper continues, "that in 1860 there were removed for safe-keeping in other arsenals 135,430 government arms. This has nothing to do with the distribution occasionally made for

State militia." And when, in December, the citizens of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, found that 123 cannon had been ordered South from the arsenal there, they made such energetic protests that President Buchanan was obliged to countermand the order of his Secretary of War.

The rapid disintegration which followed the election of Mr. Lincoln filled the North with dismay. There was a general demand for some compromise which would reassure the South and stop secession. It was the place of the Republicans, the conservatives argued, to make this compromise. A furious clamor broke over Mr. Lincoln's head. His election had caused the trouble; now what would he do to quell it? How much of the Republican platform would he give up? Among the newspapers which pleaded with the President-elect to do something to reassure the South the most able was the New York "Herald." Lincoln was a "sectional President," declared the "Herald," who, out of 4,700,000 votes cast, had received but 1,850,000, and whom the South had had no part in electing.

If Mr. Lincoln intends to carry on the government according to the principles laid down in the Chicago platform and the documents issued under the authority of the Republican "national" committee, the inevitable tendency of his administration will be to encourage servile insurrections and to make the Southern States still more uncomfortable within the Union than they could by any possibility be without it. If the new President recognizes the fact that he is not bound by the Chicago platform-the people having repudiated it; . . . if he comes out and tells the people that he will govern the country according to the views of the majority, and not to serve the purposes of the minority, all may yet be well. Mr. Lincoln must

throw his pledges to the winds, let his party go to perdition in its own way, and devote himself to the service of the whole country. It is Mr. Lincoln's bounden duty to come out now and declare his views.

It was not only the opposition press which urged Lincoln to offer some kind of compromise; many frightened Republican newspapers added their influence. The appeals of thousands of letters and of scores of visitors were added to the arguments of the press. Lincoln, however, refused to express his views anew. "I know the justness of my intentions," he told an interviewer in November, "and the utter groundlessness of the pretended fears of the men who are filling the country with their clamor. If I go into the presidency, they will find me as I am on record, nothing less, nothing more. My declarations have been made to the world without reservation. They have been often repeated, and now self-respect demands of me and of the party which has elected me that, when threatened, I should be silent."

Business was brought almost to a standstill throughout the North by the prospect of disunion. "It is an awful time for merchants," wrote a correspondent to Charles Sumner, worse than in 1857. And if there is not some speedy relief, more than half of the best concerns in the country will be ruined." Numbers of prominent men urged the Presidentelect to say something conciliatory for the sake of trade. His replies published in Nicolay and Hay's " Abraham Lincoln " are marked by spirit and decision. To one man of wealth he wrote on November 10:

I am not insensible to any commercial or financial depression that may exist, but nothing is to be gained by fawning around the "respectable scoundrels" who got it up. Let them go to work and repair the mischief of their own making, and then perhaps they will be less greedy to do the like again.

66

And to Henry J. Raymond, the editor of the New York Times," he gave, on November 28, in answer to a request for his views, what he called a "demonstration" of the cor