In what historians would one day come to call the most important and pivotal presidential election in American history, Abraham Lincoln in 1860 succeeded in accomplishing something that had eluded John C. Frémont in 1856—the Illinois lawyer won the presidency, even without carrying a single Southern state or winning a single Southern electoral vote.
Indeed, more people in the United States voted against Abraham Lincoln than for him, on the surface, at least, a less-than-rousing mandate for a man who, generations later, would be acclaimed as one of America's greatest presidents. But in a four-person race, Lincoln's 40 percent of the popular vote (54 percent of the Northern popular vote) and 180 electoral votes proved more than enough. He cruised to victory over National Democrat John C. Breckinridge (72 electoral votes and 18 percent of the popular vote), Buchanan's vice president, whom Southern Democrats nominated after bolting the convention that eventually nominated Stephen Douglas (Southerners made good on their threat to never support Douglas); Douglas, who despite capturing 29 percent of the popular vote, won only 12 electoral votes; and John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party, made up of old-line Whigs who refused to join the Republicans (39 electoral votes and 13 percent of the popular vote).
Lincoln carried every free state except New Jersey, whose electoral votes he split with Douglas. He won all the Northern states that Republicans lost in 1856, while holding all the states that Frémont had carried. In short, the Illinois lawyer won 500,000 more votes than Republicans won in 1856, which translated to an easy electoral victory. Despite winning only a minority of the popular vote, Lincoln would have triumphed even if the electoral votes of his three opponents had been combined.
In only their second national election, Republicans had captured the White House and established themselves as the most powerful party in the nation. Speaking to a crowd in Concord, Massachusetts, on the evening after the election, Charles Sumner called the Republican win “a victory not of the cartridge-box, but of the ballot-box…a poet, whose home is in Concord, has said that the shot fired here was heard round the world. I doubt not that our victory just achieved will awaken reverberations also to be heard around the world.” In practical terms, the Republican victory meant that the “slave-trade shall be suppressed in reality as in name,” Sumner said. That fact alone made the election results “destined to be ever memorable and a landmark of history.” He also expressed pleasure that Massachusetts had elected John A. Andrew governor and gave their electoral votes to Lincoln by almost unprecedented majorities.
In the weeks after the election, Sumner urged “moderation” among Republicans; yes, his party had prevailed, but gloating would not help Republicans accomplish their goals. Their mission now, “plain as day and bright as the sun,” was to simply stand fast by their principles—“they are of living rock, and no power can prevail against them”—never surrender to a threat of disunion, and trust the instincts of Abraham Lincoln. “He has those elements of character needed to carry us through the crisis,” Sumner said. “He is calm, prudent, wise, and also brave.” He would take up the Republican antislavery cause, backed by the Constitution, and, against “all menaces from whatever quarter,” would speak loudly that “the Union shall be preserved and made more precious by consecration to Human Rights.”
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But speaking it could not make it so.
Events happened with remarkable speed following Lincoln's election and began the unraveling of the Union that Sumner loved so dearly. On November 10, South Carolina called for a state convention to meet December 17 and vote on secession. Similar conventions were scheduled for Mississippi and Alabama in January 1861. Hysteria over Lincoln's victory gripped the Deep South. Mississippi planter R. S. Holt wrote to his brother that Lincoln's election was akin to a vote to “emancipate the slaves of the South and to involve Southern States in all the horrors which that event would plainly entail.” He warned of an “army of assassins” from the North who would fan out across the South, encouraging slaves to rise up against their masters, including poisoning slave-owners with “strichnine and arsenic” that had been manufactured in “special factories” expressly for this purpose. In Mississippi, the feeling was “almost unanimous in favor of an immediate withdrawal from the Union.”
On November 26, Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus concurred with the sentiment and summed up the general Southern position in a speech to his legislature: “It would be as reasonable to expect the steamship to make a successful voyage across the Atlantic with crazy men for engineers, as to hope for a prosperous future for the South under Black Republican rule.” There was only one “deliverance from this great danger” and that was the “reserved right of the states to withdraw from injury and oppression.”
Indeed, Pettus declared, secession was the only way to avoid the blight of “Black Republican politics and free negro morals”—elements that would transform Mississippi into a “cesspool of vice, crime, and infamy.” Four days later, the Mississippi legislature authorized Pettus to appoint secessionist commissioners to visit every slave state. Alabama followed with commissioners of its own. In December, as South Carolina was awaiting the secessionist convention, the state's two United States senators resigned their seats in Congress and the legislature prepared to arm a defense force of ten thousand men. In an analogy Sumner and Bostonians recognized well, the Charleston Mercury proclaimed: “The tea has been thrown overboard; the revolution of 1860 has been initiated.”
Charles Sumner, who, along with many Northern Republicans, misjudged the South's deep desire to secede, quickly recognized his error in a letter to Longfellow in early December: “S.C. will go out,” he predicted, “then Alab & Missip; the great question is, can Georgia be saved? Some say yes; others say no. Then, if all these go, where will the contagion stop?”
Even in Massachusetts, now, the speed of events in the South made many nervous. Distinguished orator Edward Everett, a one-time Massachusetts governor, president of Harvard College, secretary of state, and U.S. senator, blamed the Republicans and their abolitionist supporters for pushing the country to the brink of a “final catastrophe.” More than twenty thousand Massachusetts Unionists signed a petition favoring a compromise on slavery and slavery expansion and delivered it to Congress. Sumner dismissed it as “all wind” and ventured that it was far too late for compromise. “There must be no yielding on our part,” he wrote. “We are on the eve of great events.”
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina—the South Carolina that had been home to John C. Calhoun, Andrew P. Butler, and Preston Brooks—became the first state to secede from the Union.
Meeting in Charleston, secession convention delegates submitted the ordinance to dissolve the Union shortly after 1:00 P.M., and by 1:30, all 169 members had voted yes. Church bells pealed and business activity ceased in celebration. “Men rushed joyously about, whooping and shouting,” historian Maury Klein wrote, “rending the air with cheers, waving palmetto flags and blue cockades that were the secessionist badge.” One celebrant shouted: “The greatest enthusiasm pervades our entire community. We feel we have done right, and are prepared to defend our act.”
That evening, a more solemn, formal ceremony took place at Institute Hall in Charleston, the signing of the Ordinance of Secession. At the conclusion of the two-hour event, convention president David F. Jamison announced that South Carolina was now “an Independent Commonwealth.” The immense throng that gathered roared its approval and rushed out to celebrate late into the night. One South Carolina congressman warned that “Northern invaders” would be met with “bloody flags” if they made any attempt to “conquer” his state by force.
South Carolina secession convention delegates endorsed the idea of appointing commissioners—sometimes referred to as the “apostles of disunion”—to travel to other states to discuss secession strategy and the formation of a new confederacy. Many of the names were familiar. Andrew Pickens Calhoun, son of John C. Calhoun, was named South Carolina's commissioner to Alabama (he arrived in Montgomery on January 6, 1861). Congressman James Orr, a dear friend of Preston Brooks's, was named the commissioner to Georgia, and former congressman John McQueen, Brooks's friend who was with him when he died, was selected to journey to Texas.
There is little doubt that, had Brooks still been alive, he would have been an eager and active commissioner. He would have seconded Orr's remarks to Georgia delegates: The South “had suffered indignities and insults until they were no longer tolerable.” The North was in the grip of “a blind and relentless fanaticism,” and a Lincoln presidency would lead rapidly to “southern degradation and dishonor.” Orr, who described himself as a “conservative and Union-loving man,” saw no alternative for the South save for secession.
In the North, Charles Sumner acknowledged that Lincoln's election had been followed by the “menaced storm” and that “it is clear that the South is more in earnest than ever before.” Yet, despite his own desire for the Union to remain intact, Sumner refused to even consider any compromise on the slavery question. When Union-loving Kentucky Senator John J. Crittenden, Henry Clay's successor, proposed a compromise to stave off further secession (including an irrevocable constitutional amendment that would guarantee slavery in all current or future territories below the 36° 30′ latitude), Sumner was appalled. Even when Massachusetts businesses submitted petitions calling for compromise, he urged state lawmakers to stay strong in opposition. “Pray,” he pleaded with Governor Andrew. “Keep Massachusetts sound and firm—FIRM—FIRM—against every word or step of concession.” When outgoing President Buchanan urged Sumner to convince Massachusetts to adopt the Crittenden proposition, Sumner said the Commonwealth's people “would see their state sink below the sea and become a sandbank before they would adopt those propositions acknowledging property in man.”
For weeks in late 1860 and early 1861, Congress flailed unsuccessfully trying to achieve various “peace” compromises, while in January, five more Southern states followed South Carolina out of the Union: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana. Texas voted to secede on February 1. On February 4, the seven seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama, to form the provisional government for the Confederate States of America. While President-elect Lincoln was constructing his cabinet, “the country was falling to pieces,” wrote biographer David Donald. Some congressional moderates debated admitting New Mexico to the Union as a slave state to appease the South, a move Sumner deemed “a fatal dismal mistake.” Such a move would split the Republican Party just as it had ascended to power. “Nothing is gained by it,” he said. “But everything is lost—our principles—the cause for which we have contended.” Sumner confided to Andrew that “every word of concession” had two negative effects: first, such actions encouraged slaveholders, and second, they succeeded in “dividing and demoralizing our own friends & filling them with doubts & distrust.”
Sumner was well aware of the potential consequences if there were no compromise. He detested violence, but knew that war was a distinct possibility. “Much as I desire the extinction of slavery, I do not wish to see it go down in blood,” he said.
Meanwhile, as inauguration day approached, Abraham Lincoln slipped into Washington incognito aboard a secret overnight train, acting on the advice of bodyguard Allan Pinkerton, who feared a Southern assassination attempt on the president-elect's life.
On March 4, in his inaugural address, Lincoln tried to reassure the South that “their property, their peace, and their personal security” would not be jeopardized by a Republican administration., but he also warned: “No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union—that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void…and acts of violence…against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.”
He was hopeful, however, that the country could settle its differences without violence, emphasizing that the North and South were “friends, not enemies…though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.” In his memorable inaugural close, Lincoln predicted that the “mystic chords of memory…will yet swell to the chorus of the Union, when again touched…by the better angels of our nature.”
But Lincoln was wrong. The better angels no longer exerted influence in North or South—nor would they for years to come.