catalogue of crimes of the slaveholders, fired all hearts. Confident of success, and determined to leave nothing undone to secure it, the republican party entered upon the

canvass.

This Presidential campaign has had no parallel. The enthusiasm of the people was like a great conflagration, like a prairie fire before a wild tornado. A little more than twenty years had passed since Owen Lovejoy, brother of Elijah Lovejoy, on the bank of the Mississippi, kneeling on the turf not then green over the grave of the brother who had been killed for his fidelity to freedom, had sworn eternal war against slavery. From that time on, he and his associate abolitionists had gone forth preaching their crusade against oppression, with hearts of fire and tongues of lightning, and now the consummation was to be realized of a President elected on the distinct ground of opposition to the extension of slavery. For years the hatred of that institution had been growing and gathering force. Whittier, Bryant, Lowell, Longfellow, and others, had written the lyrics of liberty; the graphic pen of Mrs. Stowe, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," had painted the cruelties of the overseer and the slaveholder, but the acts of slaveholders themselves did more to promote the growth of anti-slavery than all other causes. The persecutions of abolitionists in the South; the harshness and cruelty attending the execution of the fugitive slave laws; the brutality of Brooks in knocking down, on the floor of the Senate, Charles Sumner, for words spoken in debate; these and many other outrages had fired the hearts of the people of the free states against this barbarous institution. Beecher, Phillips, Channing, Sumner, and Seward, with their eloquence; Chase, with his logic; Lincoln, with his appeals to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to the opinions of the founders of the republic, his clear statements, his apt illustrations, above all, his wise moderation-all had swelled the voice of the people, which found expression through the ballot-box, and which declared that slavery should go no further. It was now proclaimed

that "the further spread of slavery should be arrested, and it should be placed where the public mind should rest in the belief of its ultimate extinction."

A most remarkable feature of the campaign was the personal canvass made by Douglas. This is almost the only instance in which a presidential candidate has taken the stump in his own behalf. The division in the democratic party must have destroyed any hope on his part of success; yet he made a personal canvass, displaying all the vigor, and spirit, and eloquence, for which he was so distinguished. He spoke in most of the free, and in many of the slave states, and his appeals were against Breckenridge on one side, and Lincoln on the other, as representing sectionalism, while he assumed that he carried the banner of the Union. If the efforts of any one man could have changed the result, his would have changed it, but they were in vain. Lincoln received 180 electoral votes, and a popular vote of 1,866,452. Douglas received 12 electoral votes, and 1,375,157 of the popular vote. Breckenridge received 72 electoral, and a popular vote of 847,953; and Bell 39 electoral votes, and 570,631 of the popular vote. By the success of Mr. Lincoln, the executive power of the country passed from the hands of the slaveholders. They had controlled the government for much the larger portion of the time during which it had existed.

CHAPTER XI.

LINCOLN REACHES WASHINGTON.

BUCHANAN'S WEAKNESS.-TRAITORS IN HIS CABINET.-EFFORTS TO COMPROMISE.-SEVEN STATES SECEDE AND ORGANIZE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.-COUNTING THE ELECTORAL VOTE.-LINCOLN STARTS FOR WASHINGTON.—HIS JOURNEY.-ASSASSINATION PLOT. -ARRIVAL AT THE CAPITAL.

ON the 7th of November, 1860, it was known throughout the republic, that Lincoln had been elected. Not until the 4th of March could he be inaugurated. Meanwhile the clouds, black and threatening, were gathering at the South. It was evident that mischief was brewing. South Carolina rejoiced over the election of Lincoln, with bonfires and processions. His election furnished a pretext for rebellion. A conspiracy had existed since the days of nullification, to seize upon the first favorable opportunity to break up the Union.1

For the four eventful months between Lincoln's election and inauguration, conspirators against the Union would still have control of the government. Buchanan, a weak, old man, was influenced to a great extent by traitors in his cabinet, and conspirators in Congress. A majority of his

1. In October, 1856, a meeting of the governors of slave states was held at Raleigh, North Carolina, convened at the instance of Governor Wise, who afterward proclaimed that if Fremont had been elected, he would have marched to Washington at the head of twenty thousand men, and prevented his inauguration.

Mr. Keitt, member of Congress from South Carolina, said in the convention of his state, which adopted the ordinance of secession: "I have been engaged in this movement ever since I entered political life."

Mr. Rhett said: "The secession of South Carolina is not the event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or the non-enforcement of the fugitive slave law. It is a matter that has been gathering head for thirty years."

Cabinet were open disunionists-secessionists, who retained their places, and used their power to disarm and dismantle the ship of state, that it might be surrendered an easy conquest to those preparing to seize it. Mr. Memminger, of South Carolina, who became the rebel Secretary of the Treasury, boasted that Buchanan being President, the Federal Government would be taken at great disadvantage, and it was necessary to prepare things, so that Lincoln would be for a while powerless.

rank of general in the Before he resigned, he transferring the arms in

On the 12th of December, Lewis Cass, Secretary of State, resigned, because the President refused to reinforce the forts in Charleston harbor. Jeremiah S. Black, who, as Attorney General of Buchanan, had given an opinion that the Federal Government had no power to coerce a seceding state, was his successor. Howell Cobb, of Georgia, the Secretary of the Treasury, and afterwards a general in the rebel army, managed to destroy the credit of the govern ment, and when, December 10, he resigned, because his "duty to Georgia required it," he left the treasury empty. John B. Floyd, soon to hold the rebel army, was Secretary of War. partly disarmed the free states, by the northern arsenals to the slave states, and he sent the few soldiers belonging to the United States regular army so far away as not to be available, until the conspirators should have time to consummate the revolution. Isaac Tancy, of Connecticut, Secretary of the Navy, scattered the navy beyond seas, so that the naval force should be beyond the reach of the government. Such were the bold, unscrupulous acts of the conspirators. Some of them intended to prevent the inauguration of Lincoln, and to surrender the Capitol and the public archives to the insurgents, and it is probable that they would have carried out this design, but for the fact that General Winfield Scott was at the head of the army, and that with him was a small but reliable force, so that an overt act of treason might have been dangerous.

But the leaders of the conspiracy went forward in their

guilty preparations with impunity. If Buchanan had dismissed the traitors in his Cabinet, arrested the conspirators at the capital, called to his aid strong and loyal men, and declared like General Jackson: "The Union must be preserved," it is possible that the conspiracy might have been crushed in its inception. But he was weak, vacillating, and like clay in the hands of Jefferson Davis, Cobb, Toombs, and their associates. The strange spectacle was presented of a government in the hands of conspirators plotting to overthrow it. From the official desks and portfolios of its officers were sent forth their messages of treason. While in Congress, and in the Cabinet, the conspirators were boldly carrying on their schemes for the overthrow of the government, no attempt was made to interfere with, much less to arrest, open and avowed traitors.

I have said that nothing was done; yet this is not strictly true. The feeble old man in the executive chair did appoint a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer; declaring that, though secession was wrong, he had no power to prevent it. Meanwhile the conspirators were laboring industriously to make the revolution an accomplished fact before the inauguration of Lincoln, or, if they could not accomplish this, then by plundering the government, securing the forts, ships, and munitions of war, they meant to leave Lincoln with no means at his command wherewith to protect and maintain the government, and put down the rebellion.

Some of the democratic party were indignant at the conduct of the Executive. General Cass, as has been stated, resigned because the President refused to reinforce Fort Moultrie, held by the gallant and faithful Major Anderson. Joseph Holt, of Kentucky, succeeded Floyd as Secretary of War. Edwin M. Stanton, bold, staunch, and true, succeeded Black as Attorney General, and General John A. Dix was appointed Secretary of the Treasury. Stanton, Dix, and Holt were unflinching Union men, and did all in their power to prevent the surrender of the government to the