He was silent in the face of pitiless abuse and carricature, yet he sent many confidential letters, advising, encouraging, admonishing the Republican leaders. While his supporters carried fence-rails in processions and shouted hosannahs, he quietly directed matters from his home. And, although he would sometimes laugh with a pure humor that bubbled up unconsciously from his blameless nature, as the strain of the political campaign increased, the tragic sadness of his countenance deepened, for his keen eyes began to see the awful significance of the eminence to which he was to be lifted. A year ago the rebellion of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry had dramatically revealed the irreconcilable temperaments of North and South. While Virginia enthusiastically hanged the man who tried to create an armed negro revolution, the North tolled her bells, lowered her flags to half-mast and glorified him as a holy martyr. X A month before the first vote for President was cast, Governor Gist, of South Carolina, addressed a secret circular to the other slave State governors saying, that if Lincoln were elected, which seemed almost certain, South Carolina would secede from the Union. The whole South was urged to join in this dismemberment of the republic. The answers of the governors, even before the election had occurred, showed that it was not the intention of the slave States to submit to the rule of the majority, and that, already, armed resistance to the national authority was acceptable as the alternative to “the yoke of a black Republican President.” If any secret voice of this germinating treason reached Lincoln at Springfield he kept it to himself. But when his victory was assured by a majority that made the combined vote of his opponents seem insignificant, his continued silence in the midst of general rejoicing and boasting showed that he understood the gravity of the situation. South Carolina withdrew from the Union, seizing custom houses, post offices, arsenals and forts. [Illustration: Smith Stanton Chase President Lincoln Welles Seward Blair Bates Carpenter’s picture, painted under the personal supervision of Lincoln, represents the moment when the President told his cabinet that he would issue the Proclamation of Emancipation in fulfilment of a personal vow to God.]