LINCOLN ELECTED
Thus the Presidential canvass in the United States for the year 1860
began with the very unusual condition of four considerable parties,
and four different tickets for President and Vice-President. In the
order of popular strength, as afterwards shown, they were:
_First_. The Republican party, which at the Chicago Convention had
nominated as its candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, of
Illinois, and for Vice-President, Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine. Its
animating spirit was a belief and declaration that the institution of
slavery was wrong in morals and detrimental to society; its avowed
policy was to restrict slavery to its present limits in the States
where it existed by virtue of local constitutions and laws.
_Second_. The Douglas wing of the Democratic party, which at Baltimore
nominated Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, for President, and whose
candidate for Vice-President was Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia.[1]
It declared indifference as to the moral right or wrong of slavery,
and indifference to its restriction or extension. Its avowed policy
was to permit the people of a Territory to decide whether they would
prevent or establish slavery, and it further proposed to abide by the
decisions of the Supreme Court on all questions of constitutional law
growing out of it.
_Third_. The Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, which at Baltimore
nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for President, and Joseph
Lane, of Oregon, for Vice-President. Its animating spirit was a belief
and declaration that slavery was morally right and politically
beneficial; its avowed policy was the extension of slavery into the
Territories, and the creation of new slave States, whereby it might
protect and perpetuate itself by a preponderance, or at least a
constant equality, of political power, especially in the Senate of the
United States. As one means to this end, it proposed the immediate
acquisition of the island of Cuba.
_Fourth_. The Constitutional Union party, which in its convention at
Baltimore nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, for President, and Edward
Everett, of Massachusetts, for Vice-President. It professed to ignore
the question of slavery, and declared that it would recognize no
political principle other than "the Constitution of the Country, the
Union of the States, and the enforcement of the Laws."
[Sidenote] Curtis, "Life of Buchanan," Vol. II., p. 294.
The first, most striking feature of the four-sided Presidential
canvass which now began, was the personal pledge by every one of the
candidates of devotion to the Union. Each of the factions was in some
form charging disunion motives or tendencies upon part or all of the
others; but each indignantly denied the allegation as to itself. To
leave no possible doubt, the written letters of acceptance of each of
the candidates emphasized the point. Lincoln invoked "the
inviolability of the Constitution, and the perpetual union, harmony,
and prosperity of all." Douglas made his pledge broad and full. "The
Federal Union," wrote he, "must be preserved. The Constitution must be
maintained inviolate in all its parts. Every right guaranteed by the
Constitution must be protected by law in all cases where legislation
is necessary to its enjoyment. The judicial authority, as provided in
the Constitution, must be sustained, and its decisions implicitly
obeyed and faithfully executed. The laws must be administered, and the
constituted authorities upheld, and all unlawful resistance to these
things must be put down with firmness, impartiality, and fidelity."
"The Constitution and the equality of the States," wrote Breckinridge,
"these are symbols of everlasting union. Let these be the rallying
cries of the people." Bell declared that, if elected, all his ability,
strength of will, and official influence should be employed "for the
maintenance of the Constitution and the Union against all opposing
influences and tendencies." Even President Buchanan, in a little
campaign speech from the portico of the Executive mansion, hastened to
purge himself of the imputation of suspicion or fear on this point. He
declared that neither of the Democratic conventions was "regular," and
that therefore every Democrat was at liberty to vote as he thought
proper. For himself, he preferred Breckinridge. The Democratic party,
when divided for the moment, "has always closed up its ranks, and
become more powerful even from defeat. It will never die whilst the
Constitution and the Union survive. It will live to protect and defend
both."
No progress was made, however, towards a reunion of the Democratic
party. The Buchanan faction everywhere waged unrelenting war on
Douglas, both in public discussion and in the use of official
patronage. The contest was made with equal obstinacy and bitterness in
the Northern and the Southern States. Douglas, on his part, was not
slow to retaliate. He immediately entered on an extensive campaign
tour, and made speeches at many of the principal cities of the
Northern States, and a few in the slave-States. Everywhere he
stigmatized the Breckinridge wing of the Democracy as an extremist and
disunion faction,[2] charging that it was as obnoxious and dangerous
as the Republicans. Whatever be his errors, it must be recorded to his
lasting renown that he boldly declared for maintaining the Union by
force. At Norfolk, Virginia, the question was put to him in writing.
"I answer emphatically," replied Douglas, "that it is the duty of the
President of the United States, and all others in authority under him,
to enforce the laws of the United States passed by Congress, and as
the courts expound them, and I, as in duty bound by my oath of
fidelity to the Constitution, would do all in my power to aid the
Government of the United States in maintaining the supremacy of the
laws against all resistance to them, come from what quarter it might.
In other words, I think the President, whoever he may be, should treat
all attempts Douglas, to break up the Union by resistance to the laws,
as Old Hickory treated the nullifiers in 1832."
[Sidenote] Douglas, Norfolk Speech, August 25, 1860.
All parties entered upon the political canvass with considerable
spirit; but the chances of the Republicans were so manifestly superior
that their enthusiasm easily outran that of all their competitors. The
character and antecedents of Mr. Lincoln appealed directly to the
sympathy and favor of the popular masses of the Northern States. As
pioneer, farm-laborer, flat-boatman, and frontier politician, they saw
in him a true representative of their early if not their present
condition. As the successful lawyer, legislator, and public debater in
questions of high statesmanship, he was the admired ideal of their own
aspirations.
While the Illinois State Republican Convention was in session at
Decatur (May 10), about a week before the Chicago Convention, the
balloting for State officers was interrupted by the announcement, made
with much mystery, that "an old citizen of Macon County" had something
to present to the convention. When curiosity had been sufficiently
aroused, John Hanks, Lincoln's fellow-pioneer, and a neighbor of
Hanks, were suddenly marched into the convention, each bearing upright
an old fence-rail, and displaying a banner with an inscription to the
effect that these were two rails from the identical lot of three
thousand which, when a pioneer boy, Lincoln had helped to cut and
split to inclose his father's first farm in Illinois, in 1830. These
emblems of his handiwork were received by the convention with
deafening shouts, as a prelude to a unanimous resolution recommending
him for President. Later, these rails were sent to Chicago; there,
during the sittings of the National Republican Convention, they stood
in the hotel parlor at the Illinois headquarters, lighted up by
tapers, and trimmed with flowers by enthusiastic ladies. Their history
and campaign incidents were duly paraded in the newspapers; and
throughout the Union Lincoln's ancient and local _sobriquet_ of
"Honest Old Abe" was supplemented by the national epithet of "The
Illinois Bail-splitter." Of the many peculiarities of the campaign,
one feature deserves special mention. Political clubs, for parades and
personal campaign work, were no novelty; now, however, the expedients
of a cheap yet striking uniform and a half-military organization were
tried with marked success. When Lincoln made his New England trip,
immediately after the Cooper Institute speech, a score or two of
active Republicans in the city of Hartford appeared in close and
orderly ranks, wearing each a cap and large cape of oil-cloth, and
bearing over their shoulders a long staff, on the end of which blazed
a brilliant torch-light. This first "Wide Awake" [3] Club, as it
called itself, marching with soldierly step, and military music,
escorted Mr. Lincoln, on the evening of March 5, from the hall where he
addressed the people, to his hotel. The device was so simple and yet
so strikingly effective that it immediately became the pattern for
other cities. After the campaign opened, there was scarcely a county
or village in the North without its organized and drilled association
of "Wide Awakes," immensely captivating to the popular eye, and
forming everywhere a vigilant corps to spread the fame of, and solicit
votes for, the Republican Presidential candidate. On several occasions
twenty to thirty thousand "Wide Awakes" met in the larger cities and
marched in monster torch-light processions through the principal
streets.
His nomination also made necessary some slight changes in Mr. Lincoln's
daily life. His law practice was transferred entirely to his partner,
and instead of the small dingy office so long occupied by him, he was
now given the use of the Governor's room in the State-house, which was
not needed for official business during the absence of the Legislature.
This also was a room of modest proportions, with scanty and plain
furniture. Here Mr. Lincoln, attended only by his private secretary,
Mr. Nicolay, passed the long summer days of the campaign, receiving the
constant stream of visitors anxious to look upon a real Presidential
candidate. There was free access to him; not even an usher stood at the
door; any one might knock and enter. His immediate personal friends
from Sangamon County and central Illinois availed themselves largely
of this opportunity. With men who had known him in field and forest
he talked over the incidents of their common pioneer experience with
unaffected sympathy and interest, as though he were yet the flat-boatman,
surveyor, or village lawyer of the early days. The letters which came
to him by hundreds, the newspapers, and the conversation of friends,
kept him sufficiently informed of the progress of the campaign, in
which personally he took a very slight part. He made no addresses,
wrote no public letters, held no conferences. Political leaders several
times came to make campaign speeches at the Republican wigwam in
Springfield. But beyond a few casual interviews on such occasions, the
great Presidential canvass went on with scarcely a private suggestion
or touch of actual direction from the Republican candidate.
It is perhaps worth while to record Lincoln's expression on one point,
which adds testimony to his general consistency in political action.
The rise of the Know-Nothing or the American party, in 1854-5 (which
was only a renewal of the Native-American party of 1844), has been
elsewhere mentioned. As a national organization, the new faction
ceased with the defeat of Fillmore and Donelson in 1856; its fragments
nevertheless held together in many places in the form of local
minorities, which sometimes made themselves felt in contests for
members of the Legislature and county officers; and citizens of
foreign birth continued to be justly apprehensive of its avowed
jealousy and secret machinery. It was easy to allege that any
prominent candidate belonged to the Know-Nothing party, and attended
the secret Know-Nothing lodges; and Lincoln, in the late Senatorial,
and now again in the Presidential, campaign, suffered his full share
of these newspaper accusations.
[Sidenote] Lincoln to Edward Lusk, October 30, 1858. MS.
We have already mentioned that in the campaign of 1844 he put on
record, by public resolutions in Springfield, his disapprobation of,
and opposition to, Native-Americanism. In the later campaigns, while
he did not allow his attention to be diverted from the slavery
discussion, his disapproval of Know-Nothingism was quite as decided
and as public. Thus he wrote in a private letter, dated October 30,
1858: "I understand the story is still being told and insisted upon
that I have been a Know-Nothing. I repeat what I stated in a public
speech at Meredosia, that I am not, nor ever have been, connected with
the party called the Know-Nothing party, or party calling themselves
the American party. Certainly no man of truth, and I believe no man of
good character for truth, can be found to say on his own knowledge
that I ever was connected with that party."
[Sidenote] Lincoln to Hon. A. Jonas, July 21, 1860. MS.
So also in the summer of 1860, when his candidacy for President did
not permit his writing public letters, he wrote in a confidential note
to a friend: "Yours of the 20th is received. I suppose as good or even
better men than I may have been in American or Know-Nothing lodges;
but, in point of fact, I never was in one, at Quincy or elsewhere....
And now a word of caution. Our adversaries think they can gain a point
if they could force me to openly deny the charge, by which some degree
of offense would be given to the Americans. For this reason it must
not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the charge."
[Sidenote] Lincoln to Dr. Theodore Canisius, May 17, 1859.
His position on the main question involved was already sufficiently
understood; for in his elsewhere quoted letter of May 17, 1859, he had
declared himself against the adoption by Illinois, or any other place
where he had a right to oppose it, of the recent Massachusetts
constitutional provision restricting foreign-born citizens in the
right of suffrage. It is well to repeat the broad philosophical
principle which guided him to this conclusion: "Understanding the
spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am
opposed to whatever tends to degrade them."
[Illustration: JOHN BELL.]
As the campaign progressed the chances of the result underwent an
important fluctuation, involving some degree of uncertainty. The
Democratic disruption, and the presence of four tickets in the field,
rendered it possible that some very narrow plurality in one or more of
the States might turn the scale of victory. Calculating politicians,
especially those belonging to the party hitherto in power, and who had
enjoyed the benefits of its extensive Federal patronage, seized
eagerly upon this possibility as a means of prolonging their official
tenure, and showed themselves not unwilling to sacrifice the
principles of the general contest to the mere material and local
advantage which success would bring them.
[Sidenote] Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 324.
Accordingly, in several States, and more notably in the great State of
New York, there was begun a quiet but unremitting effort to bring
about a coalition or "fusion," as it was termed, of the warring
Democratic factions, on the basis of a division of the spoils which
such a combination might hope to secure. Nor did the efforts stop
there. If the union of the two factions created the probability, the
union of three seemed to insure certainty, and the negotiations for a
coalition, therefore, extended to the adherents of Bell and Everett.
Amid the sharp contest of ideas and principles which divided the
country, such an arrangement was by no means easy; yet in a large
voting population there is always a percentage of party followers on
whom the obligations of party creeds sit lightly. Gradually, from talk
of individuals and speculations of newspapers, the intrigue proceeded
to a coquetting between rival conventions. Here the formal proceedings
encountered too much protest and indignation, and the scheme was
handed over to standing committees, who could deliberate and bargain
in secret. It must be stated to the credit of Douglas, that he
publicly rejected any alliance not based on his principle of
"non-intervention";[4] but the committees and managers cared little
for the disavowal. In due time they perfected their agreement that the
New York electoral ticket (numbering thirty-five) should be made up of
adherents of the three different factions in the following proportion:
Douglas, eighteen; Bell, ten; Breckinridge, seven. This agreement was
carried out, and the fusion ticket thus constituted was voted for at
the Presidential election by the combined opponents of Lincoln.
In Pennsylvania, notwithstanding that Douglas disapproved the scheme,
an agreement or movement of fusion also took place; but in this case
it did not become complete, and was not altogether carried out by the
parties to it, as in New York. The electoral ticket had been nominated
by the usual Democratic State Convention (March 1) prior to the
Charleston disruption, and, as it turned out, about one-third of these
nominees were favorable to Douglas. After the disruption, the Douglas
men also formed a straight, or Douglas, electoral ticket. In order to
unite the two wings at the October State election, the Executive
Committee of the original convention recommended (July 2) that the
electors first nominated should vote for Douglas if his election were
possible; if not, should vote for Breckinridge. A subsequent
resolution (August 9) recommended that the electors should vote for
either Douglas or Breckinridge, as the preponderance of Douglas or
Breckinridge votes in the State might indicate. On some implied
agreement of this character, not clearly defined or made public, the
Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell factions voted together for governor
in October. Being beaten by a considerable majority at that election,
the impulse to fusion was greatly weakened. Finally, the original
Democratic State Committee rescinded (October 12) all its resolutions
of fusion, and the Douglas State Committee withdrew (October 18) its
straight Douglas ticket. This action left in the field the original
electoral ticket nominated by the Democratic State Convention at
Reading, prior to the Charleston Convention, untrammeled by any
instructions or agreements. It was nevertheless a fusion ticket in
part, because nine of the candidates (one-third of the whole number)
were pledged to Douglas. What share or promise the Bell faction had in
it was not made public. At the Presidential election it was voted for
by a large number of fusionists; but a portion of the Douglas men
voted straight for Douglas, and a portion of the Bell men straight for
Bell.[5]
[Sidenote] Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 328.
[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 328.
In New Jersey also a definite fusion agreement was reached between the
Bell, Breckinridge, and Douglas factions. An electoral ticket was
formed, composed of two adherents of Bell, two of Breckinridge, and
three of Douglas. This was the only State in which the fusion movement
produced any result in the election. It turned out that a considerable
fraction of the Douglas voters refused to be transferred by the
agreement which their local managers had entered into. They would not
vote for the two Bell men and the two Breckinridge men on the fusion
ticket, but ran a straight Douglas ticket, adopting the three electors
on the fusion ticket. By this turn of the canvass the three Douglas
electors whose names were on both tickets were chosen, but the
remainder of the fusion ticket was defeated, giving Lincoln four
electoral votes out of the seven in New Jersey. Some slight efforts
towards fusion were made in two or three other States, but
accomplished nothing worthy of note, and would have had no influence
on the result, even had it been consummated.
All these efforts to avert or postpone the grave political change
which was impending were of no avail. In the long six years' agitation
popular intelligence had ripened to conviction and determination.
Every voter substantially understood the several phases of the great
slavery issue, its abstract morality, its economic influence on
society, the intrigue of the Administration and the Senate to make
Kansas a slave-State, the judicial status of slavery as expounded in
the Dred Scott decision, the validity and the effect of the
fugitive-slave law, the question of the balance of political power as
involved in the choice between slavery extension and slavery
restriction--and, reaching beyond even this, the issue so clearly
presented by Lincoln whether the States ultimately should become all
slave or all free. In the whole history of American polities the
voters of the United States never pronounced a more deliberate
judgment than that which they recorded upon these grave questions at
the Presidential election in November, 1860.
From much doubt and uncertainty at its beginning, the campaign swept
onward through the summer months, first to a probability, then to an
assurance of Republican success. In September the State of Maine
elected a Republican governor by 18,000 majority. In October the
pivotal States gave decisive Republican majorities: Pennsylvania
32,000 for governor, Indiana nearly 10,000 for governor, and Ohio
12,000 for State ticket and 27,000 on Congressmen. Politicians
generally conceded that the vote in these States clearly foreshadowed
Lincoln's election. The prophecy not only proved correct, but the tide
of popular conviction and enthusiasm, rising still higher, carried to
his support other States which were yet considered uncertain.
The Presidential election occurred on November 6,1860. In seventeen of
the free-States--namely, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode
Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California, and
Oregon--all the Lincoln electors were chosen. In one of the
free-States (New Jersey) the choice resulted in 4 electors for Lincoln
and 3 for Douglas, as already explained. This assured Lincoln of the
votes of 180 Presidential electors, or a majority of 57 in the whole
electoral college. The 15 slave-States were divided between the other
three candidates. Eleven of them--Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware,
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina,
South Carolina, and Texas--chose Breckinridge electors, 72 in all.
Three of them--Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia--chose Bell electors,
39 in all; and one of them--Missouri--Douglas electors, 9 in number,
which, together with the 3 he received in the free-State of New
Jersey, gave him 12 in all: the aggregate of all the electors opposed
to Lincoln being 123.
The will of the people as expressed in this popular vote was in due
time carried into execution. As the law prescribes, the Presidential
electors met in their several States on the 5th of December, and cast
their official votes according to the above enumeration. And on the
13th of February, 1861, the Congress of the United States in joint
session made the official count, and declared that Abraham Lincoln,
having received a majority of the votes of Presidential electors, was
duly elected President of the United States for four years, beginning
March 4, 1861.
One feature of the result must not be omitted. Many careless observers
felt at the time that the success of Lincoln was due entirely to the
fact of there having been three opposing candidates in the field; or,
in other words, to the dissensions in the Democratic party, which
divided its vote between Breckinridge and Douglas. What merely moral
strength the Democratic party would have gained had it remained
united, it is impossible to estimate. Such a supposition can only be
based on the absence of the extreme Southern doctrines concerning
slavery. Given the presence of those doctrines in the canvass, no
hypothesis can furnish a result different from that which occurred. In
the contest upon the questions as they existed, the victory of Lincoln
was certain. If all the votes given to all the opposing candidates had
been concentrated and cast for a "fusion ticket," as was wholly or
partly done in five States, the result would have been changed nowhere
except in New Jersey, California, and Oregon; Lincoln would still have
received but 11 fewer, or 169 electoral votes--majority of 35 in the
entire electoral college. It was a contest of ideas, not of persons or
parties. The choice was not only free, but distinct and definite. The
voter was not, as sometimes happens, compelled to an imperfect or
partial expression of his will. The four platforms and candidates
offered him an unusual variety of modes of political action. Among
them the voters by undisputed constitutional majorities, in orderly,
legal, and unquestioned proceedings, chose the candidate whose
platform pronounced the final popular verdict that slavery should not
be extended, and whose election unchangeably transferred the balance
of power to the free-States.
----------
[1] Benjamin Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, had been nominated at Baltimore,
but he declined the nomination, and the National Committee substituted
the name of Herschel V. Johnson.
[2] "In my opinion there is a mature plan throughout the Southern
States to break up the Union. I believe the election of a Republican
is to be the signal for that attempt, and that the leaders of the
scheme desire the election of Lincoln so as to have an excuse for
disunion. I do not believe that every Breckinridge man is a
disunionist, but I do believe that every disunionist in America is a
Breckinridge man."--Douglas, Baltimore Speech, Sept. 6, 1860.
[3] We condense the following account of the origin of the "Wide
Awakes" from memoranda kindly furnished us by William P. Fuller, one
of the editors of the Hartford "Courant" in 1860, Major J.C. Kinney,
at present connected with the paper, and General Joseph R. Hawley, the
principal editor, now United States Senator from Connecticut, and who
in 1860 marched in the ranks in the first "Wide Awake" parades.
The "Wide Awake" organization grew out of the first campaign meeting
in Hartford on February 25, 1860--State election campaign. Hon. Cassius
M. Clay was the speaker, and after the meeting was escorted to the
Allyn House by a torch-light parade. Two of the young men who were to
carry torches, D.G. Francis and H.P. Blair, being dry goods clerks, in
order to protect their clothing from dust and the oil liable to fall
from the torches, had prepared capes of black cambric, which they wore
in connection, with the glazed caps commonly worn at the time. Colonel
George P. Bissell, who was marshal, noticing the uniform, put the
wearers in front, where the novelty of the rig and its double
advantage of utility and show attracted much attention. It was at once
proposed to form a campaign club of fifty torch-bearers with glazed
caps and oil-cloth capes instead of cambric; the torch-bearing club to
be "auxiliary to the Young Men's Republican Union." A meeting to
organize formally was appointed for March 6; but before the new
uniforms were all ready, Abraham Lincoln addressed a meeting in
Hartford on the evening of March 5. After his speech, the cape-wearers
of the previous meeting with a number of others who had secured their
uniforms escorted Mr. Lincoln to the hotel.
The club was definitely organized on the following night. William
P. Fuller, city editor, had, in noticing this meeting for organization,
written in the "Courant" of March 3: "THE WIDE AWAKES.--The Republican
club-room last evening was filled as usual with those who are going to
partake in the great Republican triumph, in this State in April next,"
etc., etc. The name "Wide Awakes" was here applied to the Republican
Young Men's Union, torch-bearers included; but at the meeting of March
6, the torch-bearers appropriated it by making it the distinctive
title to their own special organization, which almost immediately,
there as elsewhere, swallowed up the names and the memberships of
other Republican clubs. Just one year after they escorted Mr. Lincoln
in their first parade, he was inaugurated President of the United
States.
[4] "I will give you my opinion as to fusion. I think that every man
[_sic_] who believes that slavery ought to be banished from the halls
of Congress, and remanded to the people of the Territories subject to
the Constitution, ought to fuse and act together; but that no Democrat
can, without dishonor, and forfeiture of self-respect and principle,
fuse with anybody who is in favor of intervention, either for slavery
or against slavery. Lincoln and Breckinridge might fuse, for they
agree in principle. I can never fuse with either of them, because I
differ from both. I am in favor of all men acting together who are
opposed to this slavery agitation, and in favor of banishing it from
Congress forever; but as Democrats we can never fuse, either with
Northern abolitionists, or Southern bolters and secessionists."--Douglas,
Speech at Erie, Penn., New York "Tribune," October 3, 1860, p. 4.
[5] The vote in Pennsylvania stood: Lincoln, 268,030; Breckinridge
(nominally), 178,871; Douglas, 16,765; Bell, 12,776.