The nominations thus made at Philadelphia completed the array for the presidential battle of 1856.  The Democratic national convention had met at Cincinnati on June 2, and nominated James Buchanan for President and John C. Breckinridge for Vice-President.  Its work presented two points of noteworthy interest, namely:  that the South, in an arrogant pro-slavery dictatorship, relentlessly cast aside the claims of Douglas and Pierce, who had effected the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and nominated Buchanan, in apparently sure confidence of that super-serviceable zeal in behalf of slavery which he so obediently rendered; also, that in a platform of intolerable length there was such a cunning ambiguity of word and concealment of sense, such a double dealing of phrase and meaning, as to render it possible that the pro-slavery Democrats of the South and some antislavery Democrats of the North might join for the last time to elect a “Northern man with Southern principles.”

Again, in this campaign, as in several former presidential elections, Mr. Lincoln was placed upon the electoral ticket of Illinois, and he made over fifty speeches in his own and adjoining States in behalf of Fremont and Dayton.  Not one of these speeches was reported in full, but the few fragments which have been preserved show that he occupied no doubtful ground on the pending issues.  Already the Democrats were raising the potent alarm cry that the Republican party was sectional, and that its success would dissolve the Union.  Mr. Lincoln did not then dream that he would ever have to deal practically with such a contingency, but his mind was very clear as to the method of meeting it.  Speaking for the Republican party, he said: 

“But the Union in any event will not be dissolved.  We don’t want to dissolve it, and if you attempt it, we won’t let you.  With the purse and sword, the army and navy and treasury, in our hands and at our command, you could not do it.  This government would be very weak, indeed, if a majority, with a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury, could not preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undisciplined, unorganized minority.  All this talk about the dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly.  We do not want to dissolve the Union; you shall not.”

While the Republican party was much cast down by the election of Buchanan in November, the Democrats found significant cause for apprehension in the unexpected strength with which the Fremont ticket had been supported in the free States.  Especially was this true in Illinois, where the adherents of Fremont and Fillmore had formed a fusion, and thereby elected a Republican governor and State officers.  One of the strong elements of Mr. Lincoln’s leadership was the cheerful hope he was always able to inspire in his followers, and his abiding faith in the correct political instincts of popular majorities.  This trait was happily exemplified in a speech he made at a Republican banquet in Chicago about a month after the presidential election.  Recalling the pregnant fact that though Buchanan gained a majority of the electoral vote, he was in a minority of about four hundred thousand of the popular vote for President, Mr. Lincoln thus summed up the chances of Republican success in the future: