decisively the question of the loyalty of the citizens of the South after the war was to keep them surrounded "by barriers of fixed bayonets." He also recommended that they be deprived of power by taking from them their lands and Negroes, because "a traitor has no rights of property."^*
Almost three years after writing the above, Owen altered his opinion regarding the direction reconstruction should follow. In February 1865, he saw these problems as much more imaginary than real if only statesmen would strive to solve them on the broadest bases of democratic idealism, thereby eliminating the slaveholding, landholding class. He favored a relatively long period of post-war subjugation before the work of reconstruction should actually commence.^^
III. THE MERCURY AND POLITICS DURING THE CIVIL WAR
The Democratic party had held virtual control of the politics of the nation since the election of Franklin Pierce in 1852. Except for a brief period of "Know Nothing" ascendency from 1855 to 1857, California politics likewise had been dominated by the same party since 1 849. The success of the Republican party in the Presidential elections of 1850 presaged a change in national policy which culminated in the Civil War.
Since 1858 the Democrats had been split into two factions over the slavery question. In 1860 they held two separate conventions and separate Presidential candidates were nominated. The Northern and Southern elements named Stephen Arnold Douglas and John Cabell Breckinridge as their respective candidates. The remnants of the old Whig and American parties united under the name of the Constitutional Union party. They nominated John C. Bell, of Tennessee. They were committed to a platform of compromising the slavery question and maintaining the Union as it then was.
The victory of Lincoln in California, as in the nation at large, was won at the expense of a divided Democratic party. Douglas and Breckinridge together received a total of almost 72,000 votes, while the total vote for Lincoln was only slightly over 38,500. The totals for the state, according to Winfield Davis, were: Lincoln, 38,734; Douglas, 38,023; Breckinridge, 33,795, and Bell, 9,136.^
The pattern of the vote in San Jose showed that Union sentiment was relatively strong compared to the state as a whole. According to the Mercury the official count in San Jose was: Lincoln, ^^ i; Douglas, 377; Breckinridge, 232; and Bell, 31. Breckinridge trailed Douglas by 145 votes, while together the two Democratic candidates received 58 votes more than were cast for Lincoln. Comparison shows that Lincoln received a much larger share of the total vote in San Jose than he did in the state at large. On the other hand, the number of votes cast for Breckinridge was comparatively light.
