the Free States. However, the disposition of Lincoln's vote gave him the
electoral college. He was chosen President by the votes of a minority of
the nation. But there was another minority vote which as events turned
out, proved equally significant. Breckinridge, the symbol of the slave
profiteers, and of all those whom they had persuaded to follow them,
had not been able to carry the popular vote of the South. They were
definitely in the minority in their own section. The majority of the
Southerners had so far reacted from the wild alarms of the beginning
of the year that they refused to go along with the candidates of the
extremists. They were for giving the Union another trial. The South
itself had repudiated the slave profiteers.

This was the immensely significant fact of November, 1860. It made a
great impression on the whole country. For the moment it made the fierce
talk of the Southern extremists inconsequential. Buoyant Northerners,
such as Seward, felt that the crisis was over; that the South had voted
for a reconciliation; that only tact was needed to make everybody happy.
When, a few weeks after the election, Seward said that all would be
merry again inside of ninety days, his illusion had for its foundation
the Southern rejection of the slave profiteers.

Unfortunately, Seward did not understand the precise significance of
the thought of the moderate South. He did not understand that while the
South had voted to send Breckinridge and his sort about their business,
it was still deeply alarmed, deeply fearful that after all it might at
any minute be forced to call them back, to make common cause with them
against what it regarded as an alien and destructive political power,
the Republicans. This was the Southern reservation, the unspoken
condition of the vote which Seward--and for that matter, Lincoln,
also,--failed to comprehend. Because of these cross-purposes, because