A very dangerous element was composed of a number of leaders who belonged to the Pro-Slavery wing, but desiring to be elected to offices, masked their designs under the cover of the Douglas Democracy. The most important of these was Claiborne F. Jackson, a politician of moderate abilities and only tolerable courage, but of great partisan activity. He professed to be a Douglas Democrat, and as such was elected Governor at the State election. Born in Kentucky 54 years before, he had resided in Missouri since 1822. A Captain in the Black Hawk War, his service had been as uneventful and brief as that of Abraham Lincoln, who was two years his junior, and he was one of the Pro-Slavery clique who had hounded the great Thomas H. Benton out of politics on account of his mild Free Soilism. In person he was tall, erect, with something of dignity in his bearing. He essayed to be an orator, had much reputation as such, but his speeches developed little depth of thought or anything beyond the customary phrases which were the stock in trade of all the orators of his class south of Mason and Dixon's line.
The fermentation period culminated in the Presidential campaign of 1860, the hottest political battle this country had ever known.
The intensity of the interest felt in Missouri was shown by the bigness of the vote, which aggregated 165,618. As the population was but 1,182,012, of which 114,965 were slaves, it will be seen that substantially every white man went to the polls.
The newly-formed Republican Party, mostly confined to the radical Germans of St. Louis, cast 17,028 votes for Abraham Lincoln.
The Slaveowners and their henchmen—"Southern Rights Democrats"—cast 31,317 votes for John C. Breckinridge.
The "Regular Democrats" polled 58,801 votes for Stephen A. Douglas and "Squatter Sovereignty."
The remains of the "Old Line Whigs," and a host of other men who did not want to be Democrats and would not be Republicans, cast 58,372 votes for John Bell, the "Constitutional Union" candidate.
Thus it will be seen that out of every 165 men who went to the polls 17 were quite positive that the extension of Slavery must cease; 31 were equally positive that Slavery should be extended or the Union dissolved; 59 favored "Squatter Sovereignty," or local option in the Territories in regard to Slavery; 58 thought that "all this fuss about the nigger was absurd, criminal, and dangerous. It ought to be stopped at once by suppressing, if necessary, by hanging, the extremists on both sides, and letting things go on just as they have been."