368.  Progress of Invention.—­The electric telegraph was now in common use.  It enabled the newspapers to tell the people what was going on as they never had done before.  Perhaps the invention that did as much as any one thing to make life easier was the sewing machine.  Elias Howe was the first man to make a really practicable sewing machine.  Other inventors improved upon it, and also made machines to sew other things than cloth, as leather.  Agricultural machinery was now in common use.  The horse reaper had been much improved, and countless machines had been invented to make agricultural labor more easy and economical.  Hundreds of homely articles, as friction matches and rubber shoes, came into use in these years.  In short, the thirty years from Jackson’s inauguration to the secession of the Southern states were years of great progress.  But this progress was confined almost wholly to the North.  In the South, living in 1860 was about the same as it had been in 1830, or even in 1800.  As a Southern orator said of the South, “The rush and whirl of modern civilization passed her by.”

CHAPTER 36

SECESSION, 1860-1861

[Illustration:  WILLIAM H. SEWARD.]

[Sidenote:  Candidates for the Republican nomination 1860.]

[Sidenote:  Lincoln nominated.  The platform.]

369.  The Republican Nomination, 1860.—­Four names were especially mentioned in connection with the Republican nomination for President.  These were Seward, Chase, Cameron, and Lincoln.  Seward was the best known of them all.  In the debates on the Compromise of 1850 he had declared that there was “a higher law” than the Constitution, namely, “the law of nature in men’s hearts.”  In another speech he had termed the slavery contest “the irrepressible conflict.”  These phrases endeared him to the antislavery men.  But they made it impossible for many moderate Republicans to follow him.  Senator Chase of Ohio had also been very outspoken in his condemnation of slavery.  Senator Cameron of Pennsylvania was an able political leader.  But all of these men were “too conspicuous to make a good candidate.”  They had made many enemies.  Lincoln had spoken freely.  But he had never been prominent in national politics.  He was more likely to attract the votes of moderate men than either of the other candidates.  After a fierce contest he was nominated.  The Republican platform stated that there was no intention to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed; but it declared the party’s opposition to the extension of slavery.  The platform favored internal improvements at the national expense.  It also approved the protective system.

[Sidenote:  The Charleston convention, 1860. McMaster, 360-361.]

[Sidenote:  The Douglas Democrats.]

[Sidenote:  The Breckinridge Democrats.]