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trade opened. They demanded the right to extend slavery over all the Territories of the United States; the right to hold their slaves in all the States of the Union temporarily; that speaking or writing against slavery in any State of the Union should be a penal offense; that the North should catch their fugitive slaves, and send them back to bondage; and that the administration of the General Government should be placed in the hands of those only whom the South could trust, as the pledged enemies of republican equality, and the friends of slavery. These were the demands of the South, which, they said, must be acceded to, or they would dash the Union to pieces and from the fragments construct a Confederacy, with slavery for its corner

stone.

In the election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency, in 1860, the people of the United States said, most emphatically, "We will not accede to these arrogant and wicked demands. We will not thus change the Constitution of our fathers. We will abide by it as it is." In an appeal to the ballot-box the slaveholders were fairly and overwhelmingly defeated, and they determined to secede and break up the Union.

As long ago as 1856, Hon. Preston Brooks, of South Carolina, said, in a speech in Charleston, at an ovation given in his honor, for his brutal assault upon Senator Sumner, of Massachusetts, for words spoken in debate in his place in the Senate, "I tell you, fellow-citizens, from the bottom of my heart, that the only mode which I think available for meeting it [the issue], is just to tear the Constitution of the United States, trample it under foot, and form a Southern Confederacy, every State of which shall be a Slaveholding State."

Mr. Hunter, of Virginia, detailed in the Senate of the United States the changes in the Constitution with

which alone the Slaveholders would be satisfied. His demands were:

1. Congress shall have no power to abolish slavery in the States, or the District of Columbia, or the dockyards, forts, and arsenals of the United States.

2. Congress shall not abolish, tax, or obstruct the slave trade between the States.

3. It shall be the duty of each of the States to suppress combination, within its jurisdiction, for the armed invasion of any other State.

4. States shall be admitted with or without slavery, according to the election of the people.

5. It shall be the duty of the States to restore fugitive slaves, or pay the value of the same.

6. Fugitives from justice shall be deemed those who have offended the laws of the State within its jurisdiction, and shall have escaped therefrom.

7. Congress shall recognize and protect as property, what is held to be such by the laws of any State, in the Territories, dockyards, arsenals, forts, and wherever the United States have exclusive jurisdiction.

Mr. Hunter also demanded that there should always be two Presidents chosen, one by the Slavholding States, and the other by the North, and that no act should be valid unless approved by both Presidents. Thus giving to not more than three hundred thousand slaveholders as much power in the government as to the other thirty millions of population. He also demanded that the United States Supreme Court should consist of ten members, five to be chosen by the little handful of slaveholders, and the other five by the millions of freemen.

To accomplish their purpose, every man at the South was to be compelled, by the reign of terror, to support the cause of the slaveholders. Vigilance committees were organized, the mails were searched, and a system

of espionage introduced, such as no despotism on earth ever before equalled. A gentleman from Hinds County, Mississippi, wrote to the editor of the New York Tribune, under date of February 7, 1861:

"I have lived in this State twenty-five years. Yet if I should say, not openly upon the housetop, but at my own table, among my family and friends congregated there, that I do not consider that the South has any real grievance to complain of, and totally oppose the secession of this or any other State from the Union, my property, my life even, would not be safe an hour. It is very certain that those who are in favor of secession have no more than a bare majority in any of the Southern States. We, the Union men of the South, call on you of the North not to desert us."

The slaveholders demanded further, in addition to the right of the general extension of slavery, that the laws of the Free States should be so changed as to enable them to hold their enslaved servants at the North temporarily, while, at the same time, they refused to allow a Northern gentleman even to enter their States with a free hired colored servant.

The candidates for President in 1860 were Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, nominated by the Republican party, who was openly pledged to resist the extension of slavery, while he avowed that Congress had no constitutional right to interfere with slavery in those States where it existed, but that it was both the right and the duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories. John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, was the candidate of the slaveholders, pledged to administer the government in the most effectual way to nurture and to give increasing political power to the institution of slavery. Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, and John Bell, of Tennessee, were supported by those who wished to effect some compromise,

and who were ready, for the sake of avoiding civil war, to make very great concessions to the South.

The election took place on the 6th of November, and the result of the popular vote was, for electors: Lincoln, 1,857,610; Douglas, 1,365,976; Breckinridge, 847,953; Bell, 591,613; giving Lincoln the electoral votes of seventeen out of the thirty-three States; eleven for Breckinridge; three for Bell, and one-Missouri-with three-sevenths of New Jersey, for Douglas.

Mr. Lincoln received the electoral votes of California, 4; Connecticut, 6; Illinois, 11; Indiana, 13; Iowa, 4; Maine, 8; Massachusetts, 13; Michigan, 6; Minnesota, 4; New Hampshire, 5; New Jersey, 4; New York, 35; Ohio, 23; Oregon, 3; Pennsylvania, 27; Rhode Island, 4; Vermont, 5; Wisconsin, 5-180. John C. Breckinridge received the votes of Alabama, 9; Arkansas, 4; Delaware, 3; Florida, 3; Georgia 10; Louisiana, 6; Maryland, 8; Mississippi, 7; North Carolina, 10; South Carolina, 8; Texas, 4-72. Stephen A. Douglas, received the votes of Missouri, 9, and 3 of the 7 votes of New Jersey-12. John Bell received the votes of Kentucky, 12; Tennessee, 12; Virginia, 15—39. Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, was elected Vice-President, receiving 180 electoral votes, while Joseph Lane received 72, Edward Everett 39, and Herschel V. Johnson 12. The electors chosen in New Hampshire were, John Sullivan, of Exeter; Ebenezer Stevens, of Meredith,; David Gillis, of Nashua; Nathaniel Tolles, of Claremont; and Daniel Blaisdell, of Hanover.

On the fifteenth of February, in the presence of the two Houses of Congress, the Electoral votes were officially counted and declared by John C. Breckinridge, the slaveholders' candidate for President, who was at that time Vice-President and the President of the Senate. Amid deadly silence, the result was announced as follows: One hundred and eighty votes were cast for

Abraham Lincoln; seventy-two for John C. Breckinridge; thirty-nine for John Bell; twelve for Stephen A. Douglas. This gave to Abraham Lincoln a majority of fifty-seven votes over all the other candidates. Whereupon the Vice-President rising, said, "Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, having received a majority of the whole number of electoral votes, is duly elected President of the United States for the four years commencing on the 4th of March, 1861. And Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, having received a majority of the whole number of electoral votes, is duly elected Vice-President for the same term."

This was a day of great excitement in Washington. It was a slaveholding city, in the midst of slaveholding States, and fire-eaters from the South were there in great numbers, and had boldly threatened that the announcement of the vote for President should not be made, and that the government should be broken up in a row. James Buchanan was then President; had been intimidated by the slaveholders, and, if he was not in sympathy with them, had not the courage to prepare to meet and thwart their threats of violence. In that crisis the nation could place but little reliance upon his efficiency, and reposed but little confidence in his patriotism. General Winfield Scott had prepared to meet any emergency that might arise, by drawing to the city a military force and so planting their guns as to sweep the streets at the first outbreak, thus overawing the conspirators; and the day passed quietly, and everything was done with decency and in order.

On the 20th of December, 1860, a convention of a few score of slaveholders in South Carolina, led off in the rebellion, and passed the following resolution:—

"We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is

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