ibal Hamlin of Maine; for no Southern man
was likely to invite exile or worse by taking the place; and the
Republican electoral tickets had no place or only a nominal one south of
Mason and Dixon's line, except in Missouri, where the emancipation idea
was still alive. But the three other parties contested with each other
in all the States. In Massachusetts, the Breckinridge party had as its
candidate for Governor the unscrupulous Butler; and among its
supporters was Caleb Cushing, erudite, brilliant, conscienceless, and a
pro-slavery bigot. At the South, the Douglas party had considerable
strength. The hot-heads who had split the Democracy and were ready to
divide the nation had by no means an undisputed ascendency. Stephens and
Toombs parted company; they headed respectively the Douglas and
Breckinridge electoral tickets in Georgia. Davis spent part of the
summer in privacy at the North; he saw enough to convince him that the
North would fight if challenged, but the warning was in vain.

The special interest of the campaign centered in the menace of disunion.
The territorial question in itself had grown almost wearisome, and had
no immediate application. The fugitive slave law had fallen into the
background; renditions were so uncertain and dangerous that they were
seldom attempted. John Brown's foray was to the North a bygone affair,
with no dream of its repetition. The few promoters of his project had
shrunk back at the catastrophe; the mass of the people had always looked
on it as a crazy affair; and with personal sympathy or honor for him,
the raid was almost forgotten,--but the South could not so easily
forget. But the living and burning issue was the threat of secession if
Lincoln should be elected,--a threat made openly and constantly at the
South. The campaign was full of bitterness. "Black Republicans" was a
term in constant use. The violent language was not all at the South.
Cushing declared, when in the preceding autumn Massachusetts reelected
Banks as governor, "A band of drunken mutineers have seized hold of the
opinion of this commonwealth--the avowed and proclaimed enemies of the
Constitution of the United States,"--with further hysteric talk about
the ship of state, with the pirate's flag at the masthead, drifting into
the gulf of perdition. The New York _Herald_ was full of wild and
inflammatory words. Papers of a different character--like the Boston
_Courier_, representative of the party which included