3. The Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, which declared that
slavery was right, and whose policy was to extend it, and to make
new slave States. Its candidates were John C. Breckinridge of
Kentucky for President, and Joseph Lane of Oregon for
Vice-President.

4. The Constitutional Union party, which ignored slavery in its
platform, declaring that it recognized no political principles
other than "the Constitution of the country, the Union of the
States, and the enforcement of the laws." Its candidates were
John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward Everett of
Massachusetts for Vice-President.

In enthusiasm the Republicans quickly took the lead. "Wide Awake"
clubs of young men, wearing caps and capes of glazed oilcloth to
protect their clothing from the dripping oil of their torches,
gathered in torchlight processions miles in length. Fence rails,
supposed to have been made by Lincoln in his youth, were set up
in party headquarters and trimmed with flowers and lighted
tapers. Lincoln was called the "Rail-splitter Candidate," and
this telling name, added to the equally telling "Honest Old Abe,"
by which he had long been known in Illinois, furnished country
and city campaign orators with a powerful appeal to the sympathy
and trust of the working-people of the United States. Men and
women read in newspaper and pamphlet biographies the story of his
humble beginnings: how he had risen by simple, earnest work and
native genius, first to fame and leadership in his own State, and
then to fame and leadership in the nation; and these titles
quickly grew to be much more than mere party nicknames--to stand