For the election of their nominee Mr. Beecher labored with pen and voice to the utmost of his ability. His sermons Sunday evenings often had reference to the great questions of the day. His lectures of this period were little more than political addresses, and by his Star Papers in the _Independent_, which were largely copied in other papers, he made his views known to the reading public throughout the land. Believing that the election of Abraham Lincoln was of the utmost importance, he gave himself unreservedly to make it an accomplished fact, and made himself as obnoxious to the timid and time-serving as he was admirable to the opposite party. Of this period he says: “We next had to flounder through the quicksands of four infamous years under President Buchanan, in which senators sworn to the Constitution were plotting to destroy that Constitution; in which the members of the Cabinet, who drew their pay month by month, used their official position, by breach of public trust and oath of allegiance, to steal arms, to prepare fortifications, and make ready disruption and war. The most astounding spectacle the world ever saw was then witnessed—a great people paying men to sit in the places of power and offices of trust to betray them.” Most portentous events followed the election. State after State in the South called their conventions and passed decrees of secession, in every case, except in South Carolina, by the jugglery of political leaders, in spite of the popular vote. Representatives withdrew from the House, senators from the Senate, and members from the Cabinet, and flocked to Montgomery, Ga., where a rebel government was being organized. The most specious arguments were urged in justification of secession, were substantially admitted even by so excellent an authority as the New York _Tribune_, and the right to coerce a sovereign State, as well as the expediency of the attempt, was denied by a large portion of the Northern press. Preparations to make secession successful, if resisted, were made openly, while the denial of the right to prevent the same tied the hands of the government and left it powerless in the toils of its enemies. In the meantime different schemes of conciliation, all amounting to some species of concession or compromise, were advanced both in and out of Congress, and urged to the very utmost possible limit of forbearance and kindness. Against “peace at any price” and all patched-up compromises Mr. Beecher, together with a multitude of others of like feeling at the North, threw his influence. His Thanksgiving sermon this year was upon this topic: “Against a Compromise of Principle.” He recounts the common but abundant blessings of the year, and gathers assurance that they are from God on the following testimony.