His proposal to Lincoln to seek a
quarrel with four European nations, who had done us no harm, in
order to arouse a feeling of Americanism in the Confederate States,
was an outgrowth of this conviction. It was an indefensible
proposition, akin to that which prompted Bismarck to make use of
France as an anvil on which to hammer and weld Germany together, but
it was not an unpatriotic one, since it was bottomed on a desire to
preserve the Union without civil war."
Never was a political leadership more fairly, more nobly, and more
reasonably won. When the ballot boxes were opened on the first Tuesday
in November, Lincoln was found to have secured the electoral vote of
every Northern State except New Jersey, and in New Jersey four electors
out of seven. Breckinridge, the leader of the extreme Southern
Democrats, had back of him only the votes of the Southern States outside
of the Border States, these latter being divided between Bell and
Douglas. Douglas and his shallow theories of "squatter sovereignty" had
been buried beneath the good sense of the voters of the North.
IV
LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT ORGANISES THE PEOPLE FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF
NATIONAL EXISTENCE
After the election of November, 1860, events moved swiftly. On the 20th
of December, comes the first act of the Civil War, the secession of
South Carolina.
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