ommittee withdrew (October 18) its
straight Douglas ticket. This action left in the field the original
electoral ticket nominated by the Democratic State Convention at
Reading, prior to the Charleston Convention, untrammeled by any
instructions or agreements. It was nevertheless a fusion ticket in
part, because nine of the candidates (one-third of the whole number)
were pledged to Douglas. What share or promise the Bell faction had in
it was not made public. At the Presidential election it was voted for
by a large number of fusionists; but a portion of the Douglas men
voted straight for Douglas, and a portion of the Bell men straight for
Bell.[5]

[Sidenote] Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 328.

[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 328.

In New Jersey also a definite fusion agreement was reached between the
Bell, Breckinridge, and Douglas factions. An electoral ticket was
formed, composed of two adherents of Bell, two of Breckinridge, and
three of Douglas. This was the only State in which the fusion movement
produced any result in the election. It turned out that a considerable
fraction of the Douglas voters refused to be transferred by the
agreement which their local managers had entered into. They would not
vote for the two Bell men and the two Breckinridge men on the fusion
ticket, but ran a straight Douglas ticket, adopting the three electors
on the fusion ticket. By this turn of the canvass the three Douglas
electors whose names were on both tickets were chosen, but the
remainder of the fusion ticket was defeated, giving Lincoln four
electoral votes out of the seven in New Jersey. Some slight efforts
towards fusion were made in two or three other States, but
accomplished nothing worthy of note, and would have had no influence
on the result, even had it been consummated.

All these efforts to avert or postpone the grave political change
which was impending were of no avail. In the long six years' agitation
popular intelligence had ripened to conviction and determination.
Every voter substantially understood the several phases of the great
slavery issue, its abstract morality, its economic influence on
society, the intrigue of the Administration and the Senate to make
Kansas a slave-State, the judicial status of slavery as expounded in
the Dred Scott decision, the validity and the effect of the
fugitive-slave law, the question of the balance of political power as
involved in the choice between slavery extension an