Election of 1860 (Tindall, 1999)

Of the four candidates, not one was able to command a national following, and the campaign evolved into a choice between Lincoln and Douglas in the North, Breckenridge and Bell in the South. Once consequence of these separate campaigns was that each section gained a false impression of one another. The South never learned to distinguish Lincoln from the radicals; the North failed to gauge the force of southern intransigence--and in this Lincoln was among the worst. He stubbornly refused to offer the South assurances or to amplify his position, which he said was a matter of public record.