The Southern leaders knew all these things. But they made up their minds that now the time had come to secede from the Union and to establish a Southern Confederacy. For the first time all the southernmost states were united. No matter what Lincoln and the Republicans might say, the Southern slaveholders believed that slavery was in danger. In advising secession, many of them thought that by this means they could force the Northerners to accept their terms as the price of a restored Union. Never were political leaders more mistaken.

The Constitution permits each state to choose presidential electors as it sees fit. At the outset these electors had generally been chosen by the state legislatures. But, in the course of time, all the states save one had come to choose them by popular vote. The one state that held to the old way was South Carolina. Its legislature still chose the state's presidential electors. In 1860 the South Carolina legislature did this duty and then remained in session to see which way the election would go. When Lincoln's election was certain, it called a state convention to consider the question of seceding from the United States. In other Southern states there was some opposition to secession. In Georgia, especially, Alexander H. Stephens led the opposition. He said that secession "was the height of madness." Nevertheless he moved a resolution for a convention.Indeed, all the southernmost states followed the example of South Carolina and summoned conventions. LINCOLN'S BOOKCASE. From the Keyes-Lincoln Memorial Collection, Chicago.