It needed but little knowledge of the _status_ of parties in the several
States to foresee a probable defeat if the conservatives were to
continue divided into three parts, and the aggressives were to be held
in solid column. But angry passions, which are always bad counselors,
had been aroused, and hopes were still cherished, which proved to be
illusory. The result was the election, by a minority, of a President
whose avowed principles were necessarily fatal to the harmony of the
Union.
Of 303 _electoral_ votes, Mr. Lincoln received 180, but of the _popular_
suffrage of 4,676,853 votes, which the electors represented, he obtained
only 1,866,352--something over a third of the votes. This discrepancy
was owing to the system of voting by "general ticket"--that is, casting
the State votes as a unit, whether unanimous or nearly equally divided.
Thus, in New York, the total popular vote was 675,156, of which 362,646
were cast for the so-called Republican (or Lincoln) electors, and
312,510 against them. Now York was entitled to 35 electoral votes.
Divided on the basis of the popular vote, 19 of these would have been
cast for Mr. Lincoln, and 16 against him. But under the "general ticket"
system the entire 35 votes were cast for the Republican candidates, thus
giving them not only the full strength of the majority in their favor,
but that of the great minority against them superadded. So of other
Northern States, in which the small majorities on one side operated with
the weight of entire unanimity, while the virtual unanimity in the
Southern States, on the other side, counted nothing more than a mere
majority would have done.
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