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114 • LINCOLN THE UNKNOWNin twenty would have given <strong>the</strong> Northwest to Douglas andthrown <strong>the</strong> election into <strong>the</strong> House of Representatives, where<strong>the</strong> South would have won.In nine Sou<strong>the</strong>rn States no one cast a Republican ballot.Think of it. In all Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana,Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas not oneman voted for Abraham <strong>Lincoln</strong>. This was ominous.To appreciate what happened immediately after <strong>Lincoln</strong>'selection, we must review <strong>the</strong> story of a movement that had ragedover <strong>the</strong> North like a hurricane. For thirty years a fanaticalgroup, obsessed by a holy zeal for <strong>the</strong> destruction of slavery,had been preparing <strong>the</strong> country for war. During all that timean unbroken stream of vitriolic pamphlets and bitter books hadflowed from <strong>the</strong>ir presses; and paid lecturers had visited everycity, town, and hamlet in <strong>the</strong> North, exhibiting <strong>the</strong> tattered,filthy garments worn by slaves, displaying <strong>the</strong>ir chains and manacles,holding up bloodstained whips and spiked collars ando<strong>the</strong>r instruments of torture. Escaped slaves <strong>the</strong>mselves werepressed into service and toured <strong>the</strong> country, giving inflammatoryaccounts of brutalities <strong>the</strong>y had seen and atrocities <strong>the</strong>yhad endured.In 1839 <strong>the</strong> American Anti-Slavery Society issued a bookletentitled "American Slavery As It Is—The Testimony of 1,000Witnesses." In this pamphlet, eye-witnesses related specific instancesof cruelties <strong>the</strong>y had observed: slaves had had <strong>the</strong>irhands plunged into boiling water, <strong>the</strong>y had been branded withred-hot irons, <strong>the</strong>ir teeth had been knocked out, <strong>the</strong>y had beenstabbed with knives, <strong>the</strong>ir flesh had been torn by bloodhounds,<strong>the</strong>y had been whipped until <strong>the</strong>y died, had been burned at <strong>the</strong>stake. Shrieking mo<strong>the</strong>rs had had <strong>the</strong>ir children torn from <strong>the</strong>mforever and sold in <strong>the</strong> slave-pen and on <strong>the</strong> auction-block.Women were whipped because <strong>the</strong>y did not bear more children,and strong white men with big bones and large muscles wereoffered twenty-five dollars for cohabiting with black women,since light-colored children sold for more money, especially if<strong>the</strong>y were girls.The favorite and most flaming indictment of <strong>the</strong> Abolitionistwas miscegenation. Sou<strong>the</strong>rn men were accused of cherishingnegro slavery because of <strong>the</strong>ir love of "unbridled licentiousness.""The South," cried Wendell Phillips, "is one great bro<strong>the</strong>lwhere half a million women are flogged to prostitution."