"THE GOVERNMENT WILL NOT ASSAIL YOU." -President Lincoln. "WE HAVE HUMBLED THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES." -Governor Pickens. "NOT ANOTHER WORD: TRY IT BY THE SWORD!" -Lushington. CHAPTER I. THE POLITICAL STRUGGLE OF 1860. "Liberty, with a slave for a pedestal and a chain in her hand, is an image from which our understandings and hearts alike recoil.”CHANNING. CONSIDER it desirable, for the satisfactory reading of these Recollections, that the causes which led to the war for the preservation of the American Union should first be briefly set forth. Therefore, this chapter, and the one following, shall be devoted to the political struggle which resulted in the election of Abraham Lincoln to be President of the United States. Early in the spring of that year the Democratic party met in delegated Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, to nominate a candidate for the Presidency. The Convention was very evenly divided between men known at that time as Douglas Democrats, and those who entertained extreme Southern |