over all in the electoral college. But in ten states of the South not a ballot was cast for him. Thus was made manifest the "house divided against itself." While the cheers of his proud and happy townspeople filled the air on election night, the bitter anguish of the nation's jeopardy was in his heart, and in his face the shadow of his awful responsibility. CHAPTER XVIII PRESIDENT-ELECT Lincoln confronted at the outset by a crisis in the life of the nation. -The cotton states of the South refused to abide by the election of a northern man on an antislavery platform. — The North bewildered by the preparations for secession. - Many Northerners gave up the Union. -"Wayward sisters, depart in peace." Lincoln's beacon lights. His firm stand for the Union. Men feared he could not be inaugurated in Washington. — Parting from his stepmother. — Her gloomy forebodings. His property. Obliged to borrow money for His last visit to the old law office. White House expenses. - THE usual portion of a President-elect, the enjoyment of success and the good wishes of a united people, was denied Lincoln. Instead, angry confusion reigned around him. The leaders of the far South, the cotton states, had determined in advance not to abide by the election of a northern man, standing on a platform which declared it the right and duty of Congress to forbid slavery in the territories. They, too, had wearied of compromise. If they had supported Douglas and his doctrine of "popular sovereignty," Lincoln could not have been elected. They chose, instead, to break with the Democratic party of the North and follow Breckinridge, who had taken his stand squarely against the power of the government to set bounds to the institution of slavery. As they seceded from their party rather than accept the nomination of Douglas, so now the radical men at the South were ready to secede from the Union itself rather than accept the election of Lincoln. South Carolina, without waiting for the result of the voting, made the first move toward secession, and the men of the neighboring states gravely planned to join the revolt. The booksellers of Charleston rejected an edition of Harper's Weekly because it contained a portrait and sketch of the President-elect, while a paper in that city soon printed its Washington despatches under the general headline, "Foreign News." Most of the people of the North had carelessly assumed that the threats of disunion, which they had heard for many months, were uttered only for political effect. Now as they saw grim preparations for dividing the country, they were bewildered. A babel of voices sprang up in the counsels of the free states. The Union as a national ideal did not yet inspire the passion which all the people have felt for it since it was cemented by the best blood of both the North and the South and ransomed from destruction by the treasure poured forth with a lavish hand in the long Civil War. It had been for so many years the football of sectional politics that in 1860 there were many, alike in the slave states and the free states, who held it lightly. ་ There were Republicans, like Horace Greeley, who insisted on letting the South go its own way, and Henry Ward Beecher, who argued that secession would be a good thing for the North. The Abolitionists cried, "Let the Union slide," and Winfield Scott, the venerable and patriotic Lieutenant-general of the army, advised the Federal government to say, "Wayward sisters, depart in peace." Seward and a large section of the Republicans turned with hope to the old policy of compromise, and not less than forty measures, in this spirit, were presented to Congress. To the moral panic, a financial and industrial panic was added. Banks suspended, trade was paralyzed, and the national treasury nearly bankrupt. The country seemed to stand on the brink of wholesale disaster. The Mayor of New York solemnly called on the city council to consider the advisability of the secession of Manhattan Island and the establishment of the municipality as a free city. There were signs in the North of a violent reaction in sentiment on the question of slavery. |