Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/344

CHAPTER V.

THE CONFLICT OVER THE CONSTITUTION.

THE AGITORS OF SECTIONALISM COMBINE IN 1859—THE CONSTITUTIONAL UNIONISTS DIVIDE—THE SOUTH UNABLE TO CONTROL THE QUESTION—RESOLUTIONS OF MR. DAVIS, 1860—STRONG UNION FEELING IN THE SOUTH—PARTY CONVENTIONS IN 1860—PLATFORMS, NOMINATIONS AND CANVASS FOR THE PRESIDENCY—NATIONAL UNION SENTIMENT OVERTHROWN—MR. LINCOLN ELECTED—THE FIXED SECTIONAL MAJORITY OF STATES ATTAINED.

THE Thirty-fifth Congress met in 1859, and it soon appeared that aggressive anti-slavery agitation was now moving its line forward toward a more commanding position. Kansas had been relegated to the care of the people of the territory, who had made an anti-slavery constitution, and secured control of the territorial government. In due time it would surely be marshaled into the columns of the Northern States. Agitation in that center could now no longer produce political results. There was a broader field of operations inviting the renewal of aggression. The control of the national government secured by "a fixed sectional majority, which would make the nation strong, centralized and supreme in its sovereignty over all States, was the crown to be placed on the political association that had grown from a handful of despised Abolitionists to a multitude—a million and a half strong in one-half the States, whose concentrated vote would be so used as to carry enough States of the North in a solid body to control the electoral college. The antagonists of this combination for sectional power were so divided as to inspire the