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public career he had made enemies who were anxious for his defeat, his
campaign managers were too confident or too clumsy to take advantage of
opportunity; Lincoln's friends were busy, and by some expert trading, of
which, be it said in justice to Lincoln, he himself was ignorant,
succeeded in securing for him a majority of the votes on the third
ballot.

So, blindly and almost by chance, was the nomination secured of the one
man fitted to meet the crisis. The only other event in American history
to be compared with it in sheer wisdom was the selection of Washington
to head the Revolutionary army--a selection made primarily, not because
of Washington's fitness for the task, but to heal sectional differences
and win the support of the South to a war waged largely in the North.

The nomination, so curiously made, was received with anything but
enthusiasm by the country at large. "Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter,"
might appeal to some, but there was a general doubt whether, after all,
rail-splitting, however honorable in itself, was the best training for
a President. However, the anti-slavery feeling was a tie that bound
together people of the most diverse opinions about other things, and a
spirited canvass was made, greatly assisted by the final and suicidal
split in the ranks of the Democracy, which placed in nomination two men,
Lincoln's old antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas, representing the northern
or moderate element of the party, and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky,
representing the southern, or extreme pro-slavery element. And this was
just the corner into which Lincoln had hoped, all along, to drive his
opponents. Had the party been united, he would have been hopelessly
defeated, for in the election which followed, he received only a little
more than one third of the popular vote; but this was sufficient to give
him the northern states, with 180 electoral votes. But let us remember
that, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the choice for President of very much
less than half the people of the country.

The succeeding four months witnessed the peculiar spectacle of the South
leisurely completing its arrangements for secession, and perfecting its
civil and military organization, while the North, under a discredited
ruler of whom it could not rid itself until March 4th, was unable to
make any counter-preparation or to do anything to prevent the diversion
of a large portion of the arms and munitions of the country into the