But the noise of the attack was heard around the world. In the North men of the highest standing proclaimed Brown a hero. At the time of his execution in December so thoughtful a man as Emerson compared Brown's gallows to the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. For a time the social conscience of the East, at least, sensed this attack as a blow against the common Erbfeind, as the Germans say of the French. It was the “arrogant South” that had been struck. But when the Congressional investigation was held, Republican leaders and religious organizations everywhere insisted that they had never known the man, though there was a widespread feeling that it would be wise for the Governor of Virginia not to visit the death penalty upon the “deluded” prisoner.
Governor Wise was not the man to forgive an assault on the Old Dominion, and he never thought of granting a pardon. He urged Virginia to reorganize her militia, and he filled the state armory with some of the weapons which were used with fatal effect at First Bull Run. Other Southern States followed the example of Virginia and laid in supplies for a conflict which many thought inevitable. Nor was it without significance that new military companies and regiments were organized and drilled in many parts of the North during the year 1860.
After months of angry and useless debates in Washington, the leaders of the Democratic party gathered in Charleston in April, 1860, to nominate their candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. No other town in the United States was more unfriendly to the cause of the leading candidate, Douglas. As the delegates gathered, it was seen that every delegation from every Northwestern State was instructed to vote as a unit for Douglas, and it became evident that a safe majority would insist on his nomination. The enthusiasm of the followers of the “Little Giant” surpassed all similar demonstrations at previous conventions. On the other hand, the committee on resolutions was opposed to Douglas, and by a vote of 17 to 16 it reported a platform which was simply a restatement of the Dred Scott decision, adding only that the Federal Government was bound by the Constitution to protect slavery in the Territories. When this report was read in the convention the Douglas majority rejected it, and accepted the minority report, which was the “popular sovereignty” of Douglas and the platform of 1856, for which all the South had stood in the campaign of that year. The convention was deadlocked, for the South could defeat Douglas for the nomination under the two-thirds rule, and Douglas could prevent the adoption of any Southern program or the nomination of any candidate other than himself. On Sunday, April 30, the clergy and the congregations of the city prayed as never before for a peaceable solution of the problem before the country, and every one seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation. On Monday evening, William L. Yancey, “the fire-eater” of Alabama, after a most remarkable speech, broke the deadlock by leading a bolt of practically all the lower Southern States. The Tammany Hall delegation of New York followed. The bolters held a meeting in another hall and called a convention of their element of the party in Richmond in June. The Douglas majority likewise adjourned a day or two later to meet in Baltimore at the same time.
The historic Jacksonian party had broken into factions. Each faction nominated a candidate. The Southerners, supported by the Buchanan Administration, named John C. Breckinridge, a moderate, in the vain hope of winning some Northern States; the Douglas men offered, of course, their favorite, and insisted that theirs was the only true Union ticket. A third convention was called to meet in Baltimore, and its nominees were John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. This was the remnant of the Know-Nothings of 1856. They asked for the maintenance of the Union as it was; but in the ensuing election they polled three hundred thousand fewer votes than Fillmore had received in 1856.
The Republicans met in Chicago about the middle of May, the advantage of local sentiment being in Lincoln's favor. The Seward men and their “rooters” came in trainloads from New York and Boston, and both in Chicago and Charleston a plentiful supply of whiskey had its share in the manufacture of enthusiasm. Cameron was the stumbling-block of the conservative Eastern Republicans, and he was expected to command his price. Horace Greeley, cast out of the Republican camp by the Seward men in New York, came as a delegate from Oregon, and he was busy from morn till night trying to defeat Seward. Chase, Lincoln, and Bates, though they were not in the convention, were doing what they could to defeat the great New York leader on the ground that he could not possibly carry Indiana and Illinois. It was more than a friendly rivalry.
In drafting the platform no reference was to be made to the idealistic Declaration of Independence, so popular in 1856; but the resolute threat of a bolt, by Joshua R. Giddings, caused a reconsideration and the adoption of the brief reference which one reads in the historic document. All raids into States or Territories were duly denounced, and slavery itself was guaranteed in all its rights. The Pacific railroad scheme of Douglas was again indorsed, and the old land policy of the West found expression in the free homestead plank. The tariff ideas of Clay appeared in a clause which promised protection to American industry, better wages to American labor, and higher prices for farm products. One sees here the genius of political management, not the fire of reformers, and if the Southerners had kept cool they could have read between the lines of this declaration all the guarantees that they required, save alone on the subject of slavery in the new Territories, which the Republicans could not possibly yield and hold their followers together. It was an alliance of the East and the Northwest, arranged by Seward in much the same way that Calhoun arranged the combination of 1828 which raised Jackson to the Presidency.
To the surprise of the country and especially of the East, Cameron, Greeley, and Bates proved able to defeat Seward, and Lincoln was nominated. Many people of the East had never heard of the successful candidate till they read in the papers that he had won. Lincoln was moderate in temper and conciliatory in tone, like the platform, but he was a sincere democrat, one who was in mind and thought one of the people. The great men of the party who had borne the burden and heat of the day felt outraged. Sumner never forgave Lincoln for his lack of culture, and for a time it seemed that Seward would not give his humble rival the support necessary to success. “The rail-splitter” of Illinois was ridiculed in the older Republican States as no other presidential candidate had been since “Old Hickory” offered himself as against the seasoned statesmanship of John Quincy Adams. The gentry of the East were in a worse plight than were the Southern statesmen of 1828, for Lincoln was more of a democrat than Jackson had been.
But if certain classes of the East accepted mournfully the candidate of their party, the plain people everywhere, farmers, mechanics, shopkeepers, and the smaller industrial interests, rejoiced that one of their own had been selected. While it is not likely that this caused many changes from one party to another, it did tend to bring out the vote and prevent the election from going to the House. Professional abolitionists could not honestly support the platform of the Republicans, but anti-slavery men, old-line Whigs, half of the former Know-Nothing party, and all of those who had so long feared or hated the South could cheerfully vote for Lincoln. In the Northwest it was an evenly matched contest. Douglas was only a little less popular than his great rival, the cause of his final defeat being the decision of the German element to cast in their lot with the Republicans. Carl Schurz, one of the best men who ever took part in American public life, and a radical of the radicals, exercised a decisive influence and turned the tide in Illinois and Iowa, where a few thousand votes lost would have defeated Lincoln. Though the enthusiasm of the Republicans was not so great as it had been in 1856, the people of the East and the Northwest did unite against the South, as planned in the Chicago platform, which so well represented the interests of the combination.