Their purpose was to bring to bear for the preservation of the Union the votes of a large body of men who would not vote for the Republican candidate on the one hand or for either of the Democratic candidates--presently to be nominated--on the other. Their hope was that among four candidates there would be no election, and that in an election by states in the House of Representatives their candidate might be chosen as one upon whom lovers of the Union could unite without regard to party. When the election came they polled no less than 589,581 votes and carried thirty-nine electoral votes against Douglas's twelve and Breckinridge's seventy-two. But their hope of throwing the election into the House of Representatives was doomed to disappointment. The Republican convention met at Chicago on May 16, and after some contest nominated Mr. Lincoln. When all the nominations were made, presenting three candidates in opposition to him, Mr. Lincoln's election was practically certain, with only the remote chance that the choice might be thrown into the House of Representatives, as a possible doubt of that result. In fact he was elected, though the majority against him on the popular vote was nearly a million. In the meantime the canvass had mightily tended to additional embitterment. It had drawn the line more sharply than ever between the sections. It had completely disrupted and scattered into three warring groups all those forces that stood out against a party which had no being except in one section of the Union. It had familiarized men's minds with the idea of disunion. It had been a campaign of threats and defiances. It had well-nigh made an end of conservatism as a sentiment influential on either side. It had intensified distrust, accentuated hatred, embittered the relations of men, and prepared the minds of the people North and South for disunion and war. The time had come which statesmen had so long foreboded when threats of disunion--oft repeated on both sides and usually received scoffingly as mere vaporings--took on a seriously menacing character. The time had come when the warring sectional interests, prejudices and principles were ready to make final appeal to the brutal arbitrament of steel and gunpowder. The situation had been strained to the breaking point, and the fact that it did not break at once was due to conditions and inspirations which need another chapter for their explanation. CHAPTER X THE BIRTH OF WAR The election of Mr. Lincoln filled the whole country with alarmed apprehension. At the North no less than at the South men anxiously asked of themselves and of their neighbors "What is going to happen?" What had already happened was something unprecedented in the history of the country. On its face it was merely the election of a president by a majority of the electoral college vote, against whose election there had been a heavy popular majority.