Excerpt from Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Vol. 2: Nineteenth President of the United States; 1861-1865
Mr. Hayes did not perceive the full significance and implication of the Presidential contest of 1860 while it was in progress. The Southern extremists had been threatening disunion so long that, in common with most men of the North, Hayes attached little importance to their present mutterings. In his thought, apparently, it was just an ordinary Presidential canvass, complicated, to be sure, by the fact that there were four candidates, but not one to get excited over. He had figured out in June the probability of Lincoln"s election, but hardly more than a month before election day he was anything but confident of the result. In a letter to his uncle of September 30, he wrote: "I have made a few little speeches in the country townships, and shall make a few more. I cannot get up must interest in the contest. A wholesome contempt for Douglas, on account of his recent demagoguery, is the chief feeling I have. I am not so confident that Lincoln will get votes enough as many of our friends. I think his chances are fair, but what may be the effect of fusions in such anti-Republican States as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, is more than I can tell or confidently guess until after the state elections."
On election day, November 6, he wrote in the Diary: "The Southern States are uneasy at the prospect of Lincoln"s election today. The ultra South threatens disunion, and it now looks as if South Carolina and possibly two or three others would go out of the Union. Will they? And if so, what is to be the result?
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