Raleigh speech costly to Stephen Douglas

“At his next stop, in Raleigh, North Carolina, [Stephen Douglas, presidential candidate of the Northern Democratic Party in 1860] rode in a long train of carriages filled with dignitaries who had to inch their way through a throng of over 15,000. A band led the procession….  Women hung out of windows to wave their handkerchiefs…. After a reception like this, he knew he could carry North Carolina….

“He spoke for an hour and 45 minutes…. He railed against disunionists, North and South…. He told his audience…  that just as he believed slavery belonged in the territories where people wanted it, slavery did not belong where it was not desired….

“That speech [and a similar one in Harrisburg, Pa., soon after] cost Douglas the South. … He was now despised for telling people bent on secession that they not only could not do it, but that Abraham Lincoln should stop them, and that he, Stephen Douglas, would help him.”

— From “Lincoln for President: An Unlikely Candidate, An Audacious Strategy and the Victory No One Saw Coming” by Bruce Chadwick (2009)

In a four-candidate race (except in the South where Republicans didn’t bother to put Lincoln on the ballot), Douglas finished second in popular votes, fourth in electoral votes. In North Carolina he won less than 3 percent of the vote.

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