14 John Hanks: see paragraph [250].
[258. The meeting for choosing a candidate[15] for President of the United States; the two fence-rails; the Chicago meeting; Abraham Lincoln elected President of the United States.]—In the spring of 1860 a great convention, or meeting, was held in one of the towns of Illinois. Lincoln was present at that convention. The object of the people who had gathered there was to choose a candidate that they would like to see elected President of the United States. A number of speeches had been made, when a member of the convention rose and said that a person asked the privilege of making the meeting a present. It was voted to receive it. Then John Hanks and one of his neighbors brought in two old fence-rails and a banner with these words painted on it:—
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ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE RAIL CANDIDATE FOR THE PRESIDENCY IN 1860. TWO RAILS FROM A LOT OF 3000 MADE IN 1830 BY JOHN HANKS AND ABE LINCOLN. |
The rails were received with cheer after cheer, and Lincoln was chosen candidate. About a week after that a much greater meeting was held in Chicago, and he was chosen there in the same way. The next November Abraham Lincoln, "the Illinois rail-splitter," was elected President of the United States. He had reached the top. There he was to die.
15 Candidate (can'di-date): a person who seeks some office, such as that of governor or president, or a person who is recommended by a party for such an office. The people in favor of the candidate vote for him; and if he gets a sufficient number of votes, he is elected.
[259. The great war between the North and the South; why a large part of the people of the South wished to leave the Union.]—In less than six weeks after Lincoln actually became President, in the spring of 1861, a terrible war broke out between the North and the South. The people of South Carolina fired the first gun in that war. They, together with a great part of the people of ten other southern states, resolved to leave the Union.[16] They set up an independent government called the Confederate States of America, and made Jefferson Davis its president.
The main reason why so many of the people of the South wished to withdraw from the United States was that little by little the North and the South had become like two different countries.
At the time of the Revolution, when we broke away from the rule of England, every one of the states held negro slaves; but in the course of eighty years a great change had taken place. The negroes at the North had become free, but those of the South still remained slaves. Now this difference in the way of doing work made it impossible for the North and the South to agree about many things.
They had come to be like two boys in a boat who want to go in opposite directions. One pulls one way with his oars, the other pulls another way, and so the boat does not get ahead.
At the South most of the people thought that slavery was right, and that it helped the whole country; at the North the greater part of the people were convinced that it was wrong, and that it did harm to the whole country.