“Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

From “Lincoln 365,” by Arnold Kunst

September 26

In the 1860 Presidential election Lincoln won California and Oregon as well as every Northern free state except New Jersey. It was enough to give him a comfortable Electoral College majority. On the face of it, that sounds very impressive. But unfortunately, there were three other major candidates for President that year. And in the popular vote Lincoln only won 39% - that is the smallest plurality of any victorious presidential candidate in all of American presidential history, before or since. Or, to put the case a little differently, at a time when the 15^th President, James Buchanan, actually described himself as “the last President of the United States,” at a time when the nation was dissolving like snow in spring, the 16^th President received a vote of no-confidence from 61% of the 1860 electorate.