Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/351

Rh nois, was nominated for the Presidency, and immediately afterward Mr. Hamlin, of Maine, was named for the second office.

A patriotic attempt was made, chiefly by the Whigs and Americans, to make a fight for the Union under the name of the Constitutional Union Party, whose brief platform merely committed their candidates to &quot;the Constitution, the Union, and the enforcement of the laws.&quot; The nominees of this body of conservative men were John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. Their party and its platform were fully and fairly national.

Thus it appears that all national conservatives were scattered among divided parties, while the threatening opposition was made by one compacted organization. The canvass following these nominations differed in the South from the canvass in the North in the one circumstance, that there were no electoral tickets for Mr. Lincoln. The Southern vote was divided among Bell and Everett, Southern and Northern Whigs ; Douglas and Johnson, Northern and Southern Democrats; Breckinridge and Lane, Southern and Northern Democrats. These nominees represented the East, West, North and Middle States by four candidates, and the South by two. The opposition represented the North and West alone. No platform nor speaker advocated disunion as the desire of his party, notwithstanding the prominence of that question in the general canvass. There were more avowed disunionists personally supporting Breckinridge, but, as the course of events showed, Douglas men and Bell men became secessionists as soon as &quot;coercion&quot; was declared. The resentment of the attempt to gain the Presidency by the calculated strength of combined contiguous States, through appeals to sectional feeling, was warmly felt and boldly declared throughout the North by the advocates of Bell, Douglas and Breckinridge, but at the South this resentment was far stronger, because all