ollowed. Nor were efforts wanting to effect such a union.

Mr. Bell, the Whig candidate, was a highly respectable and experienced
statesman, who had filled many important offices, both State and
Federal. He was not ambitious to the extent of coveting the Presidency,
and he was profoundly impressed by the danger which threatened the
country. Mr. Breckinridge had not anticipated, and it may safely be said
did not eagerly desire, the nomination. He was young enough to wait, and
patriotic enough to be willing to do so, if the weal of the country
required it. Thus much I may confidently assert of both those gentlemen;
for each of them authorized me to say that he was willing to withdraw,
if an arrangement could be effected by which the divided forces of the
friends of the Constitution could be concentrated upon some one more
generally acceptable than either of the three who had been presented to
the country. When I made this announcement to Mr. Douglas--with whom my
relations had always been such as to authorize the assurance that he
could not consider it as made in an unfriendly spirit--he replied that
the scheme proposed was impracticable, because his friends, mainly
Northern Democrats, if he were withdrawn, would join in the support of
Mr. Lincoln, rather than of any one that should supplant _him_
(Douglas); that he was in the hands of his friends, and was sure they
would not accept the proposition.

It needed but little knowledge of the _status_ of parties in the several
States to foresee a probable defeat if the conservatives were to
continue divided into three parts, and the aggressives were to be held
in solid column. But angry passions, which are always bad counselors,
had been aroused, and hopes were still cherished, which proved to be
illusory. The result was the election, by a minority, of a President
whose avowed principles were necessarily fatal to the harmony of the
Union.

Of 303 _electoral_ votes, Mr. Lincoln received 180, but of the _popular_
suffrage of 4,676,853 votes, which the electors represented, he obtained
only 1,866,352--something over a third of the votes. This discrepancy
was owing to the system of voting by "general ticket"--that is, casting
the State votes as a unit, whether unanimous or nearly equally divided.
Thus, in New York, the total popular vote was 675,156, of which 362,646
were cast for the so-called Republican (or Lincoln) electors, and
312,510 against them. Now York was entitled to