Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith and Courage by Joe Wheeler

Author:Joe Wheeler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Of the campaign that followed, Isaac Arnold writes, “This presidential campaign has had no parallel. The enthusiasm of the people was like a great conflagration, like a prairie fire before a wild tornado.” 11 Lincoln’s backers took full advantage of their candidate’s homespun roots during their campaigning. To be able to field a candidate who actually had been born in a log cabin and actually had split hundreds—perhaps thousands—of rails was almost too good to be true.

How very much had happened since Owen Lovejoy had stood over the newly dug grave of his brother Elijah (an abolitionist editor slain for daring to criticize slavery). Whittier, Bryant, Lowell, Longfellow, and other poets had all championed the cause of liberty. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin continued to speak to hearts and minds everywhere. Charles Sumner’s fiery eloquence had nearly cost him his life. Henry Ward Beecher, Wendell Phillipps, and William Ellery Channing had added their voices to the cause, as had Salmon Chase with his logic, and Lincoln with the clearest voice of all. All of these voices now blended and found expression at the ballot box. The nation declared that slavery should go no further.

In the national election Lincoln received 180 electoral votes, with a popular vote of 1,866,452. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s old debate partner, received 12 electoral votes and 1,375,157 popular votes. Breckinridge received 72 electoral votes and 847,953 popular votes, and John Bell (of the newly formed Constitutional Union Party) got 39 electoral votes and 590,631 popular votes.

Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth president of the United States.

The South had dominated the American Republic for most of its existence. But now the nation’s executive power passed out of the hands of those who believed the Negro to be a nonperson and into the hands of those who believed that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution applied to all people.

TREASON IN WASHINGTON

I only wish I could have gotten there [Washington, D.C.] to lock the door before the horse was stolen.

—A BRAHAM LINCOLN

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