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HISTORY 1850-1861] provoked a further secession of border state delegates, who, in company with the Richmond body, nominated (q.v.) and Joseph Lane for president and vice-president. The remainder of the original convention nominated Douglas and H. V. Johnson.

218. The remnant of the old Whig and Know-Nothing parties, now calling itself the Constitutional Union party, met

at Baltimore and nominated (q.v.) and Edward Everett. The Republican convention met at Chicago. Its “platform” of 1856 had been somewhat broad-constructionist in its nature and leanings, but a strong Democratic element in the party had prevented it from going too far in this direction. The election of 1856 had shown that, with the votes of Pennsylvania and Illinois, the party would have then been successful, and the Democratic element was now ready to take almost anything which would secure the votes of these states. This state of affairs will go to explain the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, for president, with Hannibal Hamlin, a former Democrat, for vice-president, and the declaration of the platform in favour of a protective tariff. The mass of the platform was still devoted to the necessity of excluding slavery from the Territories. To sum

up: the Bell party wished to have no discussion of slavery; the Douglas Democrats rested on “squatter sovereignty” and the Compromise of 1850, but would accept the decision of the Supreme Court; the Republicans demanded that Congress should legislate for the prohibition of slavery in the Territories; and the Southern Democrats demanded that Congress should legislate for the protection of slavery in the Territories.

219. No candidate received a majority of the popular vote, Lincoln standing first and Douglas second. But Lincoln and

Hamlin had a clear majority of the electoral vote, and so were elected, Breckinridge and Lane coming next. It is worthy of mention that, up to the last hours of Lincoln's first term of office, Congress would always have contained a majority opposed to him but for the absence of the members from the seceding states. The interests of the South and even of slavery were thus safe enough under an anti-slavery president. But the drift of events was too plain. Nullification had come and gone, and the nation feared it no longer. Even secession by a single state was now almost out of the question; the letters of Southern governors in 1860, in consultation on the state of affairs, agree that no state would secede without assurances of support by others. If this crisis were allowed to slip by without action, even a sectional secession would soon be impossible.

220. In October 1860 Governor W. H, Gist, of South Carolina, sent a letter to the governor of each of the other cotton states

except Texas, asking co-operation in case South Carolina should resolve upon secession, and the replies were favourable. The democratic revolution which, since 1829, had compelled the legislature to give the choice of presidential electors to the people of the states had not affected South Carolina; her electors were still chosen by the legislature. That body, after having chosen the state's electors on the 6th of November, remained in session until the telegraph had brought assurances that Lincoln had secured a sufficient number of electors to ensure his election; it then (on the 10th) summoned a state convention and adjourned. The state convention, which is a legislative body chosen for a special purpose, met first at Columbia and then at Charleston, and on the 20th of December unanimously passed an “ordinance of secession,” repealing the acts by which the state had ratified the Constitution and its amendments, and dissolving “the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the ‘United States of America.’ ” The convention took all steps necessary to prepare for war, and adjourned. Similar ordinances were passed by conventions in

Mississippi (Jan. 9, 1861), Florida (Jan. 10), Alabama (Jan. 11), Georgia (Jan. 19), Louisiana (Jan. 26) and Texas (Feb. 1).

221. The opposition in the South did not deny the right to secede, but the expediency of its exercise. Their

effort was to elect delegates to the state conventions who would vote not to secede. They were beaten, says A. H. Stephens, by the cry, originally uttered by T. R. R. Cobb before his state legislature (Nov. 12, 1860), “we can make better terms out of the Union than in it.” That is, the states were to withdraw individually, suspend the functions of the Federal government within their jurisdiction for the time, consider maturely any proposals for guarantees for their rights in the Union, and return as soon as satisfactory guarantees should be given. A second point to

be noted is the difference between the notions of a state convention prevalent in the North and in the South. The Northern state convention was generally considered as a preliminary body, whose action was not complete or valid until ratified by a popular vote. The Southern state convention was looked upon as the incarnation of the sovereignty of the state, and its action was not supposed to need a popular ratification. When the conventions of the seceding states had adopted the ordinances of secession, they proceeded to other business. They appointed delegates, who met at Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, formed a provisional constitution (Feb. 8)

for the “Confederate States,” chose a provisional president and vice-president (Jefferson Davis and A. H. Stephens), and established an army, treasury, and other executive departments. The president and vice-president were inaugurated on the 18th of February. The permanent constitution, adopted on the 11th of March, was copied from that of the United States, with variations meant to maintain state sovereignty, to give the cabinet seats in Congress, and to prevent the grant of bounties or any protective features in the tariff or the maintenance of internal improvements at general expense; and it expressly provided that in all the territory belonging to the Confederacy but lying without the limits of the several states “the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government” (see ).

222. Under what claim of Constitutional right all this was done passes comprehension. That a state convention

should have the final power of decision on the question which it was summoned to consider is quite as radical doctrine as has yet been heard of; that a state convention, summoned to consider the one of secession, should go on, with no appeal to any further popular authority or mandate, to send delegates to meet those of other states and form a new national government, which could only exist by warring on the United States, is a novel feature in American Constitutional law. It was revolution or nothing. Only in Texas, where the call of the state convention was so irregular that a popular vote could hardly be escaped, was any popular vote allowed. Elsewhere the functions of the voter ceased when he voted for delegates to the state convention; he could only look on helplessly while that body went on to constitute him a citizen of a new nation.

223. The Border states were in two tiers—North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas next to the seceding states, and

Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri next to the free states. None of these was willing to secede. There was, however, one force which might draw them into secession. A state which did not wish to secede, but believed in state sovereignty and the abstract right of secession, would be inclined to take up arms to resist any attempt by the Federal government to coerce a seceding state. In this way, in the following spring, the original seven seceding states were reinforced by four of the Border states.

224. In the North and West surprisingly little attention was given to the systematic course of procedure along the