pressed Lincoln hard in many quarters. From the national standpoint, the most significant aspect of the popular vote was the failure of Breckinridge to secure a majority in the slave States.1 Union sentiment was still stronger than the secessionists had boasted. The next most significant fact in the history of the election was this: Abraham Lincoln had been elected to the presidency by the vote of a section which had given over a million votes to his rival, the leader of a faction of a disorganized party.

'Douglas and Bell polled 135,057 votes more than Breckinridge; see Greeley, American Conflict, I, p. 328.

CHAPTER XIX

THE MERGING OF THE PARTISAN IN THE PATRIOT

On the day after the election, the palmetto and lone star flag was thrown out to the breeze from the office of the Charleston Mercury and hailed with cheers by the populace. "The tea has been thrown overboard— the revolution of 1860 has been initiated," said that ebullient journal next morning.1 On the 10th of November, the legislature of South Carolina called a convention of the people to consider the relations of the Commonwealth "with the Northern States and the government of the United States." The instantaneous approval of the people of Charleston, the focus of public opinion in the State, left no doubt that South Carolina would secede from the Union soon after the 17th of December, when the convention was to assemble. On November 23d, Major Robert Anderson, in command of Fort Moultrie in Charleston harbor, urged the War Department to reinforce his garrison and to occupy also Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney, saying, "I need not say how anxious I am-indeed, determined, so far as honor will permit-to avoid collision with the citizens of South Carolina. Nothing, however, will be better calculated to prevent bloodshed than our being found in such an attitude that it would be madness and folly to attack us." "That there is a settled determination," he continued, "to leave the Union, and to obtain possession of this work, is 'Rhodes, History of the United States, III, pp. 116 ff.

apparent to all." No sane man could doubt that a crisis was imminent. Unhappily, James Buchanan was still President of the United States.

To those who greeted Judge Douglas upon his return to Washington, he seemed to be in excellent health, despite rumors to the contrary.2 Demonstrative followers insisted upon hearing his voice immediately upon his arrival, and he was not unwilling to repeat what he had said at New Orleans, here within hearing of men of all sections. The burden of his thought was contained in a single sentence: "Mr. Lincoln, having been elected, must be inaugurated in obedience to the Constitution." "Fellow citizens," he said, in his rich, sonorous voice, sounding the key-note of his subsequent career, "I beseech you, with reference to former party divisions, to lay aside all political asperities, all personal prejudices, to indulge in no criminations or recriminations, but to unite with me, and all Union-loving men, in a common effort to save the country from the disasters which threaten it.''3

In the midst of forebodings which even the most optimistic shared, Congress reassembled. Feeling was tense in both houses, but it was more noticeable in the Senate, where, hitherto, political differences had not been a barrier to social intercourse. Senator Iverson put into words what all felt: "Look at the spectacle exhibited on this floor. How is it? There are Republican Northern senators upon that side. Here are Southern senators on this side. How much social intercourse is there between us? You sit upon

1

'Rhodes, History of the United States, III, pp. 131-132.

2 Chicago Times and Herald, December 7, 1860.

your side, silent and gloomy; we sit upon ours with knit brows and portentous scowls. . . . Here are two hostile bodies on this floor; and it is but a type of the feeling that exists between the two sections.""

Southern senators hastened to lay bare their grievances. However much they might differ in naming specific, tangible ills, they all agreed upon the great cause of their apprehension and uneasiness. Davis voiced the common feeling when he said, "I believe the true cause of our danger to be that a sectional hostility has been substituted for a general fraternity." And his colleague confirmed this opinion. Clingman put the same thought more concretely when he declared that the South was apprehensive, not because a dangerous man had been elected to the presidency; but because a President had been elected who was known to be a dangerous man and who had declared his purpose to war upon the social system of the South.

With the utmost boldness, Southern senators announced the impending secession of their States. "We intend," said Iverson of Georgia speaking for his section, "to go out peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. . . . In this state of feeling, divided as we are by interests, by a geographical feeling, by everything that makes two people separate and distinct, I ask why we should remain in the same Union together?'”

No Northern senator had better reason than Douglas to believe that these were not merely idle threats. The knowledge sobered him. In this hour of peril,

his deep love for the Union welled up within him, submerging the partisan and the politician. "I trust," he said, rebuking a Northern senator, "we may lay aside all party grievances, party feuds, partisan jealousies, and look to our country, and not to our party, in the consequences of our action. Sir, I am as good a party man as anyone living, when there are only party issues at stake, and the fate of political parties to be provided for. But, Sir, if I know myself, I do not desire to hear the word party, or to listen to any party appeal, while we are considering and discussing the questions upon which the fate of the country now hangs.""

In this spirit Douglas welcomed from the South the recital of special grievances. "Give us each charge and each specification.... I hold that there is no grievance growing out of a nonfulfillment of constitutional obligations, which cannot be remedied under the Constitution and within the Union."" And when the Personal Liberty Acts of Northern States were cited as a long-standing grievance, he heartily denounced them as in direct violation of the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. At the same time he contended that these acts existed generally in the States to which few fugitives ever fled, and that the Fugitive Slave Act was enforced nineteen out of twenty times. It was the twentieth case that was published abroad through the press, misleading the South. In fact, the present excitement was, to his mind, due to the inability of the extremes of North and South to understand each other. "Those of us that live upon the border, and have