During the election of 1860, Lincoln was chosen by the Republicans as their party candidate. The Democrats chose Douglas for their ticket. Lincoln won all electoral votes of every free state except New Jersey, which awarded him four of its seven votes. He thus gained a majority of electoral votes and won the election. However, Lincoln received less than 40 per cent of the popular vote, almost none of which came from the South. Southerners feared Lincoln would restrict or end slavery.
Before the 1860 presidential election, Southern leaders had urged that the South secede from the Union if Lincoln should win. Many Southerners favored secession as part of the idea that the states have rights and powers which the federal government cannot legally deny. The supporters of states' rights held that the national government was a league of independent states, any of which had the right to secede.
In December 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede. Five other states - Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana - followed in January 1861. In February, representatives from the six states met in Montgomery, Ala., and established the Confederate States of America. They elected Jefferson Davis of Mississippi as president and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia as vice president. In March, Texas joined the confederacy. Lincoln was inaugurated two days later.
In his inaugural address, Lincoln avoided any threat of immediate force against the South. But he stated that the Union would last forever and that he would use the nation's full power to hold federal possessions in the South. One of the possessions, the military post of Fort Sumter, lay in the harbor of Charleston, SC. The Confederates fired on the fort on April 12 and forced its surrender the next day. Following the firing on Fort Sumter, Fredrick Douglass wrote a fiery editorial Nemesis:.
At last our proud Republic is overtaken. Our National Sin has found us out.