So, blindly and almost by chance, was the nomination secured of the one man fitted to meet the crisis. The only other event in American history to be compared with it in sheer wisdom was the selection of Washington to head the Revolutionary army--a selection made primarily, not because of Washington's fitness for the task, but to heal sectional differences and win the support of the South to a war waged largely in the North. The nomination, so curiously made, was received with anything but enthusiasm by the country at large. "Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter," might appeal to some, but there was a general doubt whether, after all, rail-splitting, however honorable in itself, was the best training for a President. However, the anti-slavery feeling was a tie that bound together people of the most diverse opinions about other things, and a spirited canvass was made, greatly assisted by the final and suicidal split in the ranks of the Democracy, which placed in nomination two men, Lincoln's old antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas, representing the northern or moderate element of the party, and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, representing the southern, or extreme pro-slavery element. And this was just the corner into which Lincoln had hoped, all along, to drive his opponents. Had the party been united, he would have been hopelessly defeated, for in the election which followed, he received only a little more than one third of the popular vote; but this was sufficient to give him the northern states, with 180 electoral votes. But let us remember that, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the choice for President of very much less than half the people of the country. The succeeding four months witnessed the peculiar spectacle of the South leisurely completing its arrangements for secession, and perfecting its civil and military organization, while the North, under a discredited ruler of whom it could not rid itself until March 4th, was unable to make any counter-preparation or to do anything to prevent the diversion of a large portion of the arms and munitions of the country into the southern states. It gave the southern leaders, too, opportunity to work upon the feelings of their people, more than half of whom, in the fall of 1860, were opposed to disunion. It should not be forgotten that, however fully the South came afterwards to acquiesce in the policy of secession, it was, in its inception, a plan of the politicians, undertaken, to a great extent, for purposes of self-aggrandizement. They controlled the conventions which, in every case except that of Texas, decided whether or not the state should secede. "We can make better terms out of the Union than in it," was a favorite argument, and many of them dreamed of the establishment of a great slave empire, in which they would play the leading parts.