One feature of the result must not be omitted. Many careless observers felt at the time that the success of Lincoln was due entirely to the fact of there having been three opposing candidates in the field; or, in other words, to the dissensions in the Democratic party, which divided its vote between Breckinridge and Douglas. What merely moral strength the Democratic party would have gained had it remained united, it is impossible to estimate. Such a supposition can only be based on the absence of the extreme Southern doctrines concerning slavery. Given the presence of those doctrines in the canvass, no hypothesis can furnish a result different from that which occurred. In the contest upon the questions as they existed, the victory of Lincoln was certain. If all the votes given to all the opposing candidates had been concentrated and cast for a "fusion ticket," as was wholly or partly done in five States, the result would have been changed nowhere except in New Jersey, California, and Oregon; Lincoln would still have received but 11 fewer, or 169 electoral votes--majority of 35 in the entire electoral college. It was a contest of ideas, not of persons or parties. The choice was not only free, but distinct and definite. The voter was not, as sometimes happens, compelled to an imperfect or partial expression of his will. The four platforms and candidates offered him an unusual variety of modes of political action. Among them the voters by undisputed constitutional majorities, in orderly, legal, and unquestioned proceedings, chose the candidate whose platform pronounced the final popular verdict that slavery should not be extended, and whose election unchangeably transferred the balance of power to the free-States. ---------- [1] Benjamin Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, had been nominated at Baltimore, but he declined the nomination, and the National Committee substituted the name of Herschel V. Johnson. [2] "In my opinion there is a mature plan throughout the Southern States to break up the Union. I believe the election of a Republican is to be the signal for that attempt, and that the leaders of the scheme desire the election of Lincoln so as to have an excuse for disunion. I do not believe that every Breckinridge man is a disunionist, but I do believe that every disunionist in America is a Breckinridge man."--Douglas, Baltimore Speech, Sept. 6, 1860. [3] We condense the following account of the origin of the "Wide Awakes" from memoranda kindly furnished us by William P. Fuller, one of the editors of the Hartford "Courant" in 1860, Major J.C. Kinney, at present connected with the paper, and General Joseph R. Hawley, the principal editor, now United States Senator from Connecticut, and who in 1860 marched in the ranks in the first "Wide Awake" parades.