With Abraham Lincoln's election, Johnson urged his state not to follow South Carolina out of the Union. As he later wrote, "I believed . . . that the State of Georgia had the right to secede, although I deplored the policy of exercising it and anticipated the worst of consequences." At the state convention he put forward a resolution calling for delegates from the southern states to gather in Atlanta in February and compose a list of terms to be presented to the Lincoln administration. It was narrowly defeated by the motion for immediate secession.

Garrett's parents were members of the Society of Friends (Quakers), and he remained a member throughout his life...His work as an abolitionist and Underground Railroad organizer and operator would result in his national reputation.

Douglass's growing sophistication as a speaker brought other difficulties in the mid-1840s. At first, his speeches were simple accounts of his life in bondage. But as he matured as an antislavery lecturer, he increasingly sought to provide a critical analysis of both slavery and northern racial prejudice. His eloquence and keen mind even led some to question whether he had ever been a slave. As Douglass's skills--combined with his circumspection--prompted critics to question his credibility, some white abolitionists feared that his effectiveness on the platform might be lost.

Literacy and a growing social consciousness made Frederick into an unruly bondsman. In 1833, after being taken by master Thomas Auld to a plantation near St. Michael's, Maryland, he organized a secret school for slaves, but it was discovered and broken up by a mob of local whites. To discipline Frederick, Auld hired him out to a local farmer who had a reputation as a "slave breaker." Instead he became increasingly defiant and refused to allow himself to be whipped. Hired out to another local farmer, he again organized a secret school for slaves.

Douglas was not proslavery, as many of his opponents charged, but he was aware of the dangers involved in debating the right or wrong of slavery…To Douglas, there was no tribunal on earth that could decide the moral question of slavery to the satisfaction of each side. In the interest of maintaining the Union, slavery must be dealt with as a "political question involving questions of public policy." He was confident that it was poorly adapted to western conditions and that the people of the territories, if left to settle the question for themselves, would decide against it.

Davis built a powerful central government. He saw himself as a strict constructionist but never doubted that the Confederate Constitution gave him war powers that were necessary in the crisis. From the first he insisted that state troops come under the central government's control, and when four state governors sought the return of state-owned arms he declared in disgust that "if such was to be the course of the States . . .

The common people of the Confederacy grew disaffected not for ideological reasons, but because their conditions of life became intolerable. Often they favored stronger government action if it would alleviate suffering. Impoverished soldiers' families also resented the privileges enjoyed by planters, particularly those related to the draft, such as the exemption of overseers and the ability of those with means to hire a substitute. The combination of poverty and resentment over a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight" nourished a growing stream of desertions from the Confederate ranks.

Although not an elected delegate, Curtin attended the Republican convention at Chicago in May 1860, and there he influenced most members of the Pennsylvania delegation to abandon Cameron and join with politicians from several other states in a movement to derail the candidacy of New York Senator William H. Seward, the clear favorite for the presidential nomination at the outset of the convention.