Chapter 6:
- Mr. Lincoln's election to the Presidency -- its danger to the Union -- warnings of the President and his trying position -- his policy in the emergency, and the reasons for it -- his supreme object the preservation of the Union-meeting of Congress, and the hostility of the two parties toward each other -- the wrongs of the Southhow rash and causeless would be rebellion in the cotton States -- the right of secession discussed and denied in the message -- the President's position defined -- question of the power to coerce a State -- distinction between the power to wage war against a State, and the power to execute the laws against individuals -- views of Senator (now President) Johnson, of Tennessee -- President Buchanan's solemn appeal in favor of the Union -- his estrangement from the secession leaders -- Cessation of all friendly intercourse between him and them.
On the 6th November, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, and immediately thereafter the Legislature of South Carolina passed an Act for the call of a Convention to carry the State out of the Union, calculating that by this precipitate violence she might force the other cotton States to follow in her lead. Every discerning citizen must now have foreseen serious danger to the Union from Mr. Lincoln's election. After a struggle of many years, this had accomplished the triumph of the antislavery over the slaveholding States, and established two geographical parties, inflamed with malignant hatred against each other, in despite of the warning voice of Washington. It at once became manifest that the apprehensions of civil war, arising from this event, had proved as disastrous to the business of the country as if the struggle had actually commenced. Although the. harvests of the year had been abundant, and commerce and manufactures had never been more prosperous, terror and alarm everywhere prevailed. In the midst of all the elements of prosperity, every material interest was at once greatly
