Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 7.djvu/38

CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY. disruption. The Alabama delegation withdrew from the convention, followed by those of the other Gulf States. On May 19th a convention met at Baltimore under the name of the "Constitutional Union party" (its motto be-ing, "The Constitution, the Union and the Enforcement of the Laws"). John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, were nominated as its candidates for President and Vice-President.

On June 18th, the Douglas members of the Charleston convention met in Baltimore, and the supporters of the majority report who had withdrawn at Charleston assembled at Richmond, afterward adjourning to meet at Baltimore. They were not, however, admitted to that convention, as the Douglas members excluded them from participation in its proceedings, seating in their stead new delegates who came pledged to support Mr. Douglas, who was nominated by this convention. Upon the exclusion of the old delegates, Mr. Cushing, the president of the convention and five others of the Massachusetts delegates, together with delegates from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, California, Oregon and Arkansas, the only Democratic States, withdrew to join them. Having organized under the title of the "National State Rights Democracy" and adopted the now famous "majority report" from Charleston, John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, was nominated. Mr. Lincoln having been the choice of the Republican convention at Chicago in May, the campaign opened with four presidential candidates in the field.

The vote for President of the United States on November 6, 1860, was:

Abraham Lincoln........................................ 1,866,352 Stephen A. Douglas................................... 1,375,157 John C. Breckinridge..................................... 845,581 John Bell........................................................ 589,581