Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/354

CHAPTER VI.

THE CRISIS PRODUCED BY SECTIONALISM.

THE EFFECT PRODUCED BY THE PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST OF 1860—NORTHERN RECOIL FROM THE YAWNING BLOODY CHASM—COMMERCIAL INTEREST—SOUTHERN ALARM—SOUTHERN EFFORTS TO AVOID SECESSION—RALLY OF THE NORTHERN EXTREMISTS—BUCHANAN’S PERPLEXITY—BEGINNING OF FEDERAL MOVEMENTS TO HOLD THE SOUTH BY FORCE—SECESSION MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH.

MR. LINCOLN was elected to the Presidency by a majority of the electoral votes of the States exclusively North, but his electoral vote represented only about one-third of the individual voters of the Union. He received 1,857,610 votes out of a few less than 5,000,000 total cast. The section which had gained a "fixed majority" of the electoral votes by States, put a President and Vice- President in office against the protesting votes of nearly three millions of the voting people of the United States, and it should be observed that even a united vote of the an ti- Lincoln electors would not have changed the result. A minority of States and of people placed a new administration in power. The election was legal according to the letter of the law, but this singular subjection of majority to minority with its coincident paralysis of the voting power of the States in the South, occurred through the divisions of the national conservative voters. The official count of the votes was made in due time according to established usage, whereupon Vice-President Breckinridge made the announcement of Mr. Lincoln s election amid

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