o Virginia at the head of a band of strangers calling upon the
slaves to rise and arm.

Here was a supreme opportunity. The positive Southern force, the slave
profiteers, seized at once the attitude of champions of the South. It
was easy enough to enlist the negative force in a shocked and outraged
denunciation of everything Northern. And the Northern extremists did all
that was in their power to add fuel to the flame. Emerson called Brown
"this new saint who had made the gallows glorious as the cross." The
Southerners, hearing that, thought of the conspiracy to parcel out the
white women of Charleston. Early in 1860 it seemed as if the whole South
had but one idea-to part company with the North.

No wonder Lincoln threw all his influence into the scale to discredit
the memory of Brown. No wonder the Republicans in their platform
carefully repudiated him. They could not undo the impression made on the
Southern mind by two facts: the men who lauded Brown as a new saint were
voting the Republican ticket; the Republicans had committed themselves
to the anti-Southern policy of protection.

And yet, in spite of all the labors of pro-slavery extremists, the
movement for a breach with the North lost ground during 1860. When the
election came, the vote for President revealed a singular and unforeseen
situation. Four candidates were in the field. The Democrats, split into
two by the issue of slavery expansion, formed two parties. The
slave profiteers secured the nomination by one faction of John C.
Breckinridge. The moderate Democrats who would neither fight nor favor
slavery, nominated Douglas. The most peculiar group was the fourth. They
included all those who would not join the Republicans for fear of the
temper of the Abolition-members, but who were not promoters of slavery,
and who distrusted Douglas. They had no program but to restore the
condition of things that existed before the Nebraska Bill. About four
million five hundred thousand votes were cast. Lincoln had less than
two million, and all but about twenty-four thousand of these were in
the Free States. However, the disposition of Lincoln's vote gave him the
electoral college. He was chosen President by the votes of a minority of
the nation. But there was another minority vote which as events turned
out, proved equally significant. Breckinridge, the symbol of the slave
profiteers, and of all those whom they had persuaded to follow them,
had not been able to carry t