Northerners+-+Jennifer+Y

Name: Benjamin Washington Age: 50 Status: Once a politician, but retired. Political Position: Republican (used to be) Character: Intelligent. He tries to keep the middle ground between North and South arguments. Dickinson is a cynic. He is a quiet old man who conceives the world as the way it is. Home: Massachusetts but moved to Delaware. Time: March, 1861

Dear Diary. It has been 10 years since I retired from the government of my beloved country. So many things have changed drastically and I feel old to catch up the current issues. Nowadays, the major issue seems slavery. I call it the biggest mistake of our founding fathers to not firmly state and solve this issue in the Declaration of Independence at the first place. Wedge got deeper and deeper between North and South and finally, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas seceded from the United States, forming the Confederate States of America. Is America going to be divided like this forever? Will this be the end of our history?

For years, secession had been held out as a blustering threat that both North and South believed would never be used. Yet, the South’s breaking away was human nature and historical inevitability. The widespread southern feeling that the South was being overpowered by northern political, industrial, banking, and manufacturing strength; the fear that the southern way of life was threatened by northern control of Congress; race-baiting hysteria that southern editorialists and politicians fanned with talk of black control of the South and widespread intermarriage and rape of southern white womanhood. True, true. Everything was true. I deny saying that the southerners were in a fair position like the northerners. It was obvious that Lincoln’s election of 1860 was the final death blow to Southerners to take their last option; secession.

Tensions remained fairly high after the issue of Hinton Rowan Helper’s book, The Impending Crisis in the South. In this mood, the country approached the election of 1860, a campaign that eventually became a four-man contest.

The Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina. Douglas had a majority of the delegates, but at that time a party rule required a two thirds vote for the nomination. Douglas, faced with the bitter opposition of the Southerners and the Buchanan faction, could not gain this majority. Why? It goes back to the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Lincoln challenged Douglas to choose between the principle of popular sovereignty proposed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the United States Supreme Court case of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Instead of responding it directly, Douglas stated “Freeport Doctrine” - emphasizing popular sovereignty upon slavery despite court’s ruling. This doctrine alienated Southern Democrats, who preferred strict adherence to the Dred Scott decision regardless of personal views. His answer was good enough to win him re-election to the Senate, but hurt him in the coming presidential campaign. Finally, the convention split up when Southern “fire eaters” led by William. Yancey walked out in protest of the convention’s refusal to include in the platform a plank demanding federal protection of slavery in all the territories. Dear diary, if I could clearly explain all the twirling situations in the government, I would have been elected as the president already. I am telling you it was a sin of founding fathers to not solve this issue in the beginning.

A second Democratic convention several weeks later in Baltimore also failed to reach a consensus, and the sundered halves of the party nominated separate candidates, The Southern wing of the party nominate Buchanan’s vice president, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, on a platform calling for a federal slave code in all the territories. What was left of the national Democratic Party nominated Douglas on a platform of popular sovereignty.

A third presidential candidate was added by the Constitutional Union Party, a collection of aging former Whigs and Know Nothings from the southern and Border States as well as a handful of moderate Southern Democrats. It nominated John Bell of Tennessee on a platform that sidestepped the issues and called simply for the Constitution, the Union, and the enforcement of the laws. This was very clever of them to sit and watch people fighting.

The Republicans met in Chicago, confident of victory and determined to do nothing to jeopardize their favorable position. Accordingly, they rejected as too radical front-running New York Senator William H. Seward in favor of Illinois favorite son Abraham Lincoln. The platform was designed to have something for all Northerners, including the provisions of the 1856 Republican platform as well as a call for federal support of a trans-continental railroad. Once again its centerpiece was a call for the containment of slavery. Douglas, believing only his victory could reconcile North and South, became the first U.S. presidential candidate to make a vigorous nationwide speaking tour. In his speeches he urged support for the Union and opposition to any extremist candidates that might endanger its survival, by which he meant Lincoln and Breckinridge.

On Election Day the voting went along strictly sectional lines. Breckinridge carried the Deep South; Bell, the Border States; and Lincoln, the North. Douglas, although second in popular votes, carried only a single state and part of another. Lincoln led popular votes, and though he was short of a majority in that category, he did have the needed majority in electoral votes and was elected.

I believe electing Lincoln as the 16th president was somewhat appropriate and inappropriate. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” True, maybe he is the arbitrator to stop schism of Confederation. Yet, I doubt in his stance of slavery. I think he was not interested in the issue of slavery unlike media portrays it. From what I see, Lincoln is not being active to either prohibit or enforce it. He even tried to gain support from Southerners by saying that he opposes intermarriages between whites and blacks, blacks being voters, and electing them as court justices. In my opinion, anti-slavery title of Lincoln was merely a device for political reasons. To tell the truth, I thought Lincoln would be more morally courageous, but from the “House Divided” speech, I was fully disappointed; “It will become one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new – North as well as South.”

America is on the verge of civil war. I hope Lincoln can reunite North and South and forever end the issue of slavery again.