An American History

In the election on the sixth of November Lincoln carried all the Northern states except New Jersey, receiving 180 electoral votes. Douglas got only 12 electoral votes, from Missouri and New Jersey. Bell carried Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, with 39 votes. And Breckinridge got the 72 votes of the rest of the Southern states. But the electoral vote does not tell the story of the election. Douglas polled a very large popular vote in all the states of the North. He received 1,370,000 votes to Lincoln's 1,860,000 and would have easily won with the support of the united Democratic party. He was repudiated by the administration of Buchanan and by the radical slavery leaders of the South, yet he received nearly twice as many votes (1,370,000 to 850,000) as their candidate, Breckinridge. It was a wonderful testimony to his personal and political hold on his countrymen. Again, although Lincoln received 180 electoral votes to 123 for Douglas, Bell, and Breckinridge combined, his popular vote was only 1,860,000 as against 2,810,000 cast for his opponents. He was the choice of exactly 40 per cent of the voters of the country. Finally, the election showed that the South as a whole was not in favor of secession in 1860.

[John Brown] felt that he was commissioned by God to free the slaves in the South. He conceived the wild plan of posting in the fastnesses of the Appalachian Mountains small bodies of armed men, who should make descents into the plains, seize negroes, and conduct them back to his ‘camps of freedom.’ He made a beginning at the little Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, where with only eighteen men he seized the United States arsenal and, raiding the houses of a few of the neighboring planters, forcibly freed about thirty of their slaves. They were huddled together with his men in the arsenal, rather bewildered, and more like captives than newly baptized freemen, when a detachment of United States marines (under the command of Robert E. Lee) arrived on the scene, battered down the doors of the arsenal, and easily made captives of Brown's band (October 18, 1859). Brown, severely wounded, was tried for treason by the laws of Virginia. He pleaded only his divine commission in his defense and was speedily condemned and hanged. When Brown was hailed as a martyr by many antislavery men in the North, who were jubilant to see a blow struck for freedom, even if it were a murderous blow, thousands in the South were persuaded that the "Black Republicans" were determined to let loose upon their wives and children the horrors of negro massacre.

Within six weeks after the secession of South Carolina the states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas had severed their connection with the Union. Delegates from six of these seven " sovereign states " met at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4, 1861, and organized a new Confederacy. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was chosen president, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia vice president. A constitution was drawn up and submitted to the several states of the Confederacy for ratification. This constitution was very similar to the Constitution of the United States, except that slavery was expressly sanctioned, Congress was forbidden to levy protective duties, the president was elected for a term of six years without eligibility for reelection, and the members of the cabinet were given the right to speak on the floor of Congress. A Confederate flag, the " stars and bars," was adopted. A tax of one eighth of a cent a pound on exported cotton was levied. President Davis was authorized to raise an army of 100,000 men and secure a loan of $15,000,000, and a committee of three, with the impetuous Yancey of Alabama as chairman, was sent abroad to secure the friendship and alliance of European courts. Both Davis and Stephens believed that the South would have the fight "a long and bloody war" to establish its independence.