ccording to the above enumeration. And on the
13th of February, 1861, the Congress of the United States in joint
session made the official count, and declared that Abraham Lincoln,
having received a majority of the votes of Presidential electors, was
duly elected President of the United States for four years, beginning
March 4, 1861.

One feature of the result must not be omitted. Many careless observers
felt at the time that the success of Lincoln was due entirely to the
fact of there having been three opposing candidates in the field; or,
in other words, to the dissensions in the Democratic party, which
divided its vote between Breckinridge and Douglas. What merely moral
strength the Democratic party would have gained had it remained
united, it is impossible to estimate. Such a supposition can only be
based on the absence of the extreme Southern doctrines concerning
slavery. Given the presence of those doctrines in the canvass, no
hypothesis can furnish a result different from that which occurred. In
the contest upon the questions as they existed, the victory of Lincoln
was certain. If all the votes given to all the opposing candidates had
been concentrated and cast for a "fusion ticket," as was wholly or
partly done in five States, the result would have been changed nowhere
except in New Jersey, California, and Oregon; Lincoln would still have
received but 11 fewer, or 169 electoral votes--majority of 35 in the
entire electoral college. It was a contest of ideas, not of persons or
parties. The choice was not only free, but distinct and definite. The
voter was not, as sometimes happens, compelled to an imperfect or
partial expression of his will. The four platforms and candidates
offered him an unusual variety of modes of political action. Among
them the voters by undisputed constitutional majorities, in orderly,
legal, and unquestioned proceedings, chose the candidate whose
platform pronounced the final popular verdict that slavery should not
be extended, and whose election unchangeably transferred the balance
of power to the free-States.

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[1] Benjamin Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, had been nominated at Baltimore,
but he declined the nomination, and the National Committee substituted
the name of Herschel V. Johnson.

[2] "In my opinion there is a mature plan throughout the Southern
States to break up the Union. I believe the election of a Republican
is to be the signal for that attempt, and that the leaders