LITMIR.BIZ

      Foreword

      KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON

      Just after the election of 1856, the Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case, stepped into an ongoing Congressional debate to rule that Congress could not bar slavery in the territories. Nor, said the decision, could the legislatures in the territories themselves. The year before the election of 1860, John Brown’s attempt to inspire a slave rebellion led to his execution.

      In 1860 there were four major candidates for president: Abraham Lincoln, heading the Republican ticket; Stephen A. Douglas, the champion of the popular sovereignty Democrats; John Bell, of the Constitutional Party; and John C. Breckinridge, the nominee of the Southern Democrats. Breckinridge favored protecting slavery in the territories. The contest came down to Lincoln versus Breckinridge, South versus North and West. Indeed, Lincoln and his running mate Hannibal Hamlin did not even appear on ballots in the South.

After a bitter election Abraham Lincoln won the Electoral College decisively by carrying the states of the West and North. But, taken together, the three other contenders garnered a larger popular vote than did ‘‘the Rail Splitter’’ from Illinois. The composition of the vote forecast the future. Here was a nation divided by region. Eighteen slave-free states supported Lincoln; eleven slave states backed Breckinridge. Douglas, who memorably had debated Lincoln over slavery and union in their earlier contest for the Senate, received only 12 electoral votes. In December 1860, after the ballots had been cast but before Lincoln had been officially notified of his election, South Carolina seceded from the union. The Charleston Mercury’s headline declared on December 20 of that year, ‘‘The Union Is Dissolved.’’¹ Other states followed.

On February 26, 1861, Abraham Lincoln replied to the Committee of Congress reporting the Electoral Count by writing ‘‘with deep gratitude to my countrymen for this mark of their confidence; with a distrust of my own ability to perform the required duty under the most favorable circumstances, now rendered doubly difficult by existing national perils; yet with a firm reliance on the strength of our free government, and the ultimate loyalty of the people to the just principles upon which it is founded, and above all an unshaken trust in the Supreme Ruler of the nations, I accept this trust.’’²

In his March 4, 1861, inaugural address Lincoln declared, ‘‘In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. . . . You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘PRESERVE, PROTECT, AND DEFEND IT.’ ’’ Fortunately for Lincoln, the mass audience was far more likely to read his words than hear them. Until the advent of radio more than a half century later, political speech created its impact when it was read by the public in newspapers. Of the first inaugural, one observer noted, ‘‘Mr. Lincoln was pale and very nervous, and did not read his address very well. His spectacles troubled him, his position was crowded and uncomfortable, and, in short, nothing has been done to render the performance of this great duty either dignified in effect or, physically speaking, easy for the President. The great crowd in the grounds behaved very well, but manifested little or no enthusiasm.’’³ Then, as now, impressions of politics are shaped by partisan predispositions. In How We Elected Lincoln, Lincoln enthusiast Abram Dittenhoefer recalls instead, ‘‘The President impressed me as being serious in manner. His voice sounded shrill, but he was talking at high pitch in order that he might be heard by as many as possible of the immense crowd. Little by little his auditors warmed toward him, until finally the applause became overwhelming, spontaneous, and enthusiastic. Then, for the first time, it dawned on me that Lincoln . . . [was] one of the few great men of all times; and I may say safely that my conviction was shared by all within hearing of his voice’’ (pp. 49–50). Little more than a month later, on April 12, 1861, the Confederates fired the first rocket on the Union’s Fort Sumter. Barely four years later, on April 14, 1865, Lincoln was shot.

      Abram

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