Lincoln sat alone with
the operator in the telegraph box at Springfield, receiving as they
came in the results of the elections of Presidential electors in the
various States. Long before the returns were complete his knowledge of
such matters made him sure of his return, and before he left that box
he had solved in principle, as he afterwards declared, the first and by
no means least important problem of his Presidency, the choice of a
Cabinet.

The victory was in one aspect far from complete. If we look not at the
votes in the Electoral College with which the formal choice of
President lay, but at the popular votes by which the electors were
returned, we shall see that the new President was elected by a minority
of the American people. He had a large majority over Douglas, but if
Douglas had received the votes which were given for the Southern
Democrat, Breckinridge, he would have had a considerable majority over
Lincoln, though the odd machinery of the Electoral College would still
have kept him out of the Presidency. In another aspect it was a
fatally significant victory. Lincoln's votes were drawn only from the
Northern States; he carried almost all the free States and he carried
no others. For the first time in American history, the united North
had used its superior numbers to outvote the South. This would in any
case have caused great vexation, and the personality of the man chosen
by the North aggravated it. The election of Lincoln was greeted
throughout the South with a howl of derision.

CHAPTER VI

SECESSION

1. _The Case of the South against the Union_.

The Republicans of the North had given their votes upon a very clear
issue, but probably few of them had fully realised how grave a result
would follow. Within a few days of the election of Lincoln the first
step in the movement of Secession had been taken, and before the new
President entered upon his duties it was plain that either the
dissatisfied States must be allowed to leave the Union or the Union must
be maintained by war.

Englishmen at that time and since have found a difficulty in grasping the
precise cause of the war that followed. Of those who were inclined to
sympathise with the North, some regarded the war as being simply about
slavery, and, while unhesitatingly opposed to slavery, wondered whether
it was right to make war upon it; others, regarding it as a war for the
Union and not against slavery at all, wondered