Читать книгу American Civil War For Dummies - Keith D. Dickson - Страница 66

Here’s how the South analyzed the results of the election. The Republicans won 180 electoral votes. This meant that even if only one candidate had opposed Lincoln, with the entire South united in support, Lincoln would still have won the election. The South simply lacked the electoral votes to offset the advantage of the Northern states.

Clearly, Southern political power had disappeared, and the Republican Party now could dominate the House and the presidency at will. There would be no congressional guarantees of slavery or protection of Southern rights coming from a House of Representatives dominated by the North. Without any words of conciliation coming from the Republicans, many Southerners in the cotton South feared the worst and began to contemplate the last option they believed they had left — leaving the Union.