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had furnished in 1856. The broad question at issue was whether a party disposed to restrict and discourage slavery wherever the Constitution gave it scope to do so, was to administer the government. Specific questions other than that of the territories were little discussed on either side. The South gave the most substantial issue to the canvass, by the threat of secession if the Republicans were successful. Douglas, being questioned during a speech at Norfolk, Va., declared that the election of Lincoln would not justify secession, and he would support a Republican administration in putting down nullification by force. He asked that Breckinridge would state his position on this question, but Breckinridge took no notice of the inquiry. The North remained incredulous of the South's purpose of disunion, but the menace of it was recognized as giving significance to the election. (The Republican thus spoke, August 25, of "The Issues of this Campaign":

"The South, through the mouth of many of its leading politicians and journals, defies the North to elect Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. It threatens secession in case he shall be elected. It arrogantly declares that he shall never take his seat. It passes resolutions of the most outrageous and insolent character, insulting every man who dares to vote for what they call a 'Black Republican.' To make a long matter very short and plain, they claim the privilege of conducting the government in all the future, as they have in all the past, for their own benefit and in their own way, with the alternative of dissolving the Union of the states. Now, if the non-slaveholding people have any spirit at all, they will settle this question at once and forever. Look at the history of the last two administrations, in which the slave interest has had undisputed sway. This sway, the most disgraceful and shameless of anything in the history of the government, must not be thrown off or else the Union will be dissolved. Let's try it! Are we

forever to be governed by a slave-holding minority? Will the passage of four years more of misrule make it any easier for the majority to assume its functions?

"There are many reasons why we desire to see this experiment tried this fall. If the majority cannot rule the country without the secession of the minority, it is time the country knew it. If the country can only exist under the rule of an oligarchy, let the fact be demonstrated at once, and let us change our institutions. We desire to see the experiment tried, because we wish to have the Southern people, who have been blinded and cheated by the politicians, learn that a ‘Black Republican' respects the requirements of the Constitution and will protect their interests. Harmony between the two sections of this country can never be secured until the South has learned that the North is not its enemy but its best friend. We desire to see it tried, that the whole horde of corrupt officials at Washington may be swept by the board, and something of decency and purity introduced there. We desire to see it, that the government may be restored to its original integrity. And any Northern man who has not pluck enough to stand up and help do this thing is a paltroon. It will be tried, and our minority friends may make up their mind to it."

Just before the State Republican Convention, Governor Banks declined a renomination. The Republican enthusiastically declared for Mr. Dawes as his successor. Against John A. Andrew's nomination it objected that his "more than Republican position" on the slavery question made him an inappropriate representative of the party, and would repel some moderate men. In the convention, the western Massachusetts delegates were not fully united upon Mr. Dawes, and he received but 326 votes to 723 for Mr. Andrew. The Republican's comment was, August 30:

"We do not believe this a wise or politic nomination; yet we have no doubt he will prove a wise and politic governor. He has a warm heart but a cool head; he may be hot and extreme in

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individual expression, going beyond, as he often does, the lines of the Republican organization and platform, but he feels keenly the responsibilities of power and follows kindly the conservatising influences of position. The Republicans can lose 10,000 votes on Mr. Andrew and not endanger his election. His John Brown sympathies and speeches, his Garrisonian affiliations, his negro-training predilections and all that sort of extreme anti-slaveryism with which his record abounds, will be trumpeted far and wide in the state to injure him, and out of it to harm Lincoln; and though it will doubtless have its effect in frightening timid and conservative recruits, it will strengthen others to labor, and can hardly anywhere change or endanger results."

But Andrew was the man for the time. From the days of the Liberty party he had been identified with constitutional opposition to slavery. He was lion-hearted and woman-hearted. He represented the purest conscience, the clearest intelligence, the most earnest purpose, of New England and at last the New England idea was to be tried out against the South Carolina idea.

While the South was imputing to the North the most hostile designs against slavery, no other action against it was intended or expected among the Republicans than the gradual appearance of emancipation as a local political issue in the border states, and their slow conversion to freedom, and the encouragement of a Republican party at the South by the influence of the Administration. "What changes may occur within the next half-century," said the Republican, October 20, 1860, "to hasten the work of negro emancipation on this continent, no one can foresee, but present appearances indicate its gradual retreat southward, and an irrepressible conflict in the slave states, protracted long after the question has been completely removed from national politics."

It was the division of their opponents that gave the election to the Republicans. Of the popular vote,

Lincoln received about 1,860,000, Douglas 1,370,000, Breckinridge 840,000, and Bell 590,000. In the electoral

college, Lincoln had 180 votes, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, and Douglas 12. Lincoln had the electoral vote of every Northern state save New Jersey, which was divided between him and Douglas; Douglas had in addition only the vote of Missouri; Bell carried Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia; and the other Southern states were for Breckinridge. Massachusetts gave Andrew 104,000 votes, Beach (Douglas) 35,000, Lawrence (Bell) 24,000, and Butler (Breckinridge) 6000.

To completely remove the question of slavery from national politics," leaving each state to slowly work out the problem for itself-that was the expectation with which the Republican, a sagacious, representative New England newspaper, welcomed the approaching presidency of Abraham Lincoln. The North for the most part looked for a subsidence of all slavery agitations, and the direction of the government's energies to promote the material prosperity of white people in general, instead of as heretofore the exclusive interest of the slaveholding states. The Abolitionists were little elatedfreedom for those in bondage scarcely looked nearer for a Republican victory. The South was looking forward to a career as an independent nation. The four million slaves looked for no change in their lot, and were either unconscious of the struggle or indifferent respecting its issues.

THE

CHAPTER XXIV.

SECESSION.

HE result of the election was no sooner known than the South Carolinians began to take action for the secession of their state with a vigor which allowed no doubt of the seriousness of their purpose. An energetic movement in the same direction began at once in all the Gulf and cotton states. The North was almost as much surprised as if it had received no warning. Mr. Seward had said toward the close of the canvass: "I do not think these threats before election are evidences of revolution and disunion after election, for the simple reason that I have always found that a man who does intend to strike a fatal blow does not give notice so long beforehand." Such reasoning was good as against the idea of a secret plot of a few conspirators, to which the North was long inclined to impute the origin of secession. But in truth the movement toward it was as open, and its causes as patent, as in the case of any other revolution. The South saw in the election of Lincoln the triumph of a party whose central principle and motive was hostility to the South's most characteristic institution. The avowed doctrine of the Republican party was the exclusion of slavery from the territories. The sentiment which underlay and inspired that doctrine was dislike to slavery in itself and everywhere; - so much

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