Hon. J. L. M. Curry , LL.D., William Robertson Garrett , A. M. , Ph.D., Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 1.1, Legal Justification of the South in secession, The South as a factor in the territorial expansion of the United States
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

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[312] sixteen again distinctly familiarized the public mind with the idea of secession. The convention was composed of mixed and apparently incongruous political elements. The Democratic party was agreed on all points except one, while the Republican party disagreed on all policies except the one which they made the polar purpose of the campaign. The ultras of several parties, and of no party, were present in force. The spirit of control was necessarily sectional and against nationalism. The resolutions as read for discussion named the organization the National Republican Party, but Jesup, of Pennsylvania, objected to the word ‘national,’ and it was stricken, thus emphasizing the feeling that for this campaign at least the party should be sectional. The Union was riven by a convention aspiring to its control into two parts, and the sole reliance for victory was placed on the Northern part. Thus the idea developed still clearer that ‘the Union could not exist half free and half slave.’ A distinguished jurist of New York said—August, 1860—that this political action ‘is a conspiracy under the forms but in violation of the Constitution of the United States.’ Its success assured the control of the government, not by the will of the majority of the people, nor by a majority of the States located in all sections, but by the power of a unified geographical area whose strength in combination could seize and use the powers of the government. The United States are governed by party. If the party in power be sectional, the use of the powers of the Union and the distribution of its benefits will be mainly sectional. The country generally and the South uneasily understood this to be the result when the government passed out of the hands of national statesmen.

The salient statements in the platform were against the ‘peculiar Southern institution,’ as slavery was unfairly called, for it was not instituted by the South but was most properly a trust cast upon its care by the authors of it. On the third ballot Mr. Lincoln, of Illi.