Nomination of Lincoln by the

considered the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, but some of the party leaders distrusted him and others for personal reasons were strongly antagonistic. When the convention met Seward and his friends were quite confident of his nomiRepublicans nation, but Lincoln, whose name had not been seriously considered in the East, had the support of Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, and a few individual delegates, and he was the favorite candidate of the crowds that paraded the streets and filled the convention hall. Seward led on the first two ballots, but Lincoln was a close second, and his unexpected strength made such an impression on the convention that Seward's enemies soon combined on Lincoln and on the third ballot he was nominated.

The Republican platform repudiated the principle enunciated by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision. It declared "that the new dogma, that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom."

Nomination of Bell by the Constitutional

Another ticket was put before the voters by the Constitutional Union party, which was made up of what remained of the Whig and "Know-nothing" organizations. This party held its first and only convention in Baltimore and nominated John Bell of Tennessee for president, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice-president. It adopted a short platform pledging itself "to recognize no political principles other than the Constitution of the country, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws."

Union Party

The Southern Democrats seemed to be forcing a "rule or ruin" policy, and most historians have taken the view that the radical leaders were already bent on secession. This is the usual explanation that has Unexpected been given of the folly of putting two Demo- the split in cratic tickets in the field.

results of

the Demo

The truth is, how- cratic Party

ever, that nobody at that time expected that

Lincoln could win with three candidates opposing him. It

was confidently expected

by the Southern delegates that no candidate would receive a majority of the electoral votes, and that the choice of a president would thus devolve upon the House of Representatives, in which event they had reason to hope that Breckinridge would be chosen president. As the campaign developed, however, and it became evident that Lincoln would carry more States than had been anticipated, Jefferson Davis, acting in behalf of the Southern wing of the Democratic party, called on Douglas and proposed that both he and Breckinridge should withdraw so as to allow the two Democratic factions to unite on a third candidate. Douglas declined to entertain the proposition, saying that as he had received a majority of the votes in the Charleston convention, he did not think it was incumbent upon him to withdraw from the race.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Lincoln carried all of the Northern States, except New Jersey, where he received four of the seven electoral votes. The election His total electoral vote was 180, Breckinridge's of Lincoln 72, Bell's 39, and Douglas's 12. The popular vote was as follows: Lincoln 1,866,000, Douglas 1,375,000, Breckinridge 847,000, Bell 587,000.

How the result was

the South

With the election of Lincoln the more radical Southern leaders at once began to make plans for withdrawing from the Union and forming a Southern Confederacy. In his debates with Douglas in 1858, Lincoln had regarded at declared: "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease to be divided." Seward, who had been regarded as the foremost leader of the Republican party, and who was later selected by Lincoln for the position of secretary of state, had referred to the contest between the North and the South as an "irrepressible conflict," which must make the nation all slave or all free. Notwithstanding the public declaration of the party in its platform that it Iwould not interfere with the domestic institutions of any State, many Southerners believed that the Republican party would in the near future inevitably undertake a general policy of emancipation. Furthermore, Lincoln had not received a single electoral vote south of Mason and Dixon's line, and he was the first president who had ever been elected to that office by a strictly sectional vote.

The South Carolina legislature was in session when the result of the election became known, and it imSecession of mediately called a State convention, which was South Carolina and to decide whether the State should remain in the Union or not. The delegates to this convention were regularly elected on the issue of secession, and when it convened December 20, 1860, it unanimously

the Gulf States

adopted an ordinance of secession, declaring that the union subsisting between South Carolina and the other States under the name of the United States of America was dissolved.

During the next six weeks conventions were held in all of the Gulf States, and ordinances of secession were adopted, in most cases by overwhelming majorities. Mississippi seceded January 9, 1861, Florida January 10, Alabama January 11, Georgia January 19, Louisiana January 26, and Texas February 1. In each case the legislature summoned a convention in the usual constitutional manner. There was

no conspiracy on the part of the political leaders, as was charged at the time. The people knew what was proposed, and they voted overwhelmingly for immediate secession. A few prominent leaders stood out in strong opposition to the movement. The most conspicuous of these were Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, Sam Houston of Texas, and James L. Petigru of South Carolina.

considered

The doctrine of secession was based on the compact theory of government. As we have already seen, this theory was almost universally held at the time that the Secession Constitution of the United States was adopted. historically The talk of secession, which had been indulged in with increasing frequency during the period of 1850-1860, was by no means new. It had been resorted to as a threat by almost every part of the Union in turn, but prior to the action of South Carolina in 1860, no attempt had been made to carry the threat into effect. Threats of secession had first been made in New England in opposition to the embargo, to the admission of Louisiana as a State, and to the War of 1812. When the Louisiana Bill was under discussion, Josiah Quincy of Massachusetts declared in the Senate: "If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for

a separation, . . . amicably if they can, violently if they must."

During the second war with England there appeared an article in the Connecticut Spectator of August 3, 1814, which was copied with editorial approval in the Salem Gazette, in which we find this statement: "State sovereignty excludes the possibility of State rebellion; a sovereign State may infract its treaties, but can never rebel, nor can any citizen of such State when acting under and in pursuance of its authority, be guilty of treason against the United States." In 1843 John Quincy Adams declared in an address to the people of the free States that the annexation of Texas "would be a violation of our national compact" of such a character as not only inevitably to result in a dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it; and we not only assert that the people of the free States ought not to submit to it, but we say, with confidence, they would not submit to it."

Views of

Charles

Francis
Adams

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in his Life of Daniel Webster makes the following statement: "When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of States at PhilaHenry Cabot delphia, and accepted by the votes of States in Lodge and popular conventions, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country from Washington and Hamilton on the one side, to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment entered upon by the States and from which each and every State had the right peaceably to withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised." Charles Francis Adams in an address on "The Constitutional Ethics of Secession" asks the question, to whom was allegiance due in case of direct conflict between a State and the Federal government? And he says: "I do not think the answer admits of doubt. If put in 1788, or indeed at any time anterior to 1825, the immediate reply of nine men out of ten in the Northern States, and of ninety