Abraham Lincoln is Elected

From "Selma; Her Institutions, and Her Men" by John Hardy, pub. 1879:

Instead of Selma sending to Cincinnati and Louisville for corn to supply her market, it was amply supplied from the rich canebrake over the Alabama and Mississippi Railroad. On the other hand immense saw mills were erected along the line of the Alabama and Tennessee Railroad. Not only lumber in immense quantities, but lime manufactories were put up and coal and iron mines opened, all being emptied into the lap of Selma adding to her business and commerce, evincing clearly, to even the dullest mind, the greatness of the country surrounding our beautiful and growing city.

As we move along in our narrative we must not neglect the fact, that an organization of fifty men in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, was formed in 1855, with headquarters in New Orleans, and whose object was the conquering, and finally annexing the United States, of Nicaragua, one of the Spanish American States, thereby putting another arm to the power of negro slavery. Thirty million dollars of twenty year bonds were issued, and a large amount of them sold, men raised and a military organization formed, and Gen. Wm. Walker, of New Orleans, placed in command Selma took her part in this movement; two of her citizens were enrolled among the fifty. A company of one hundred and eight men was raised and organized and taken command of by Capt. __hite Brantly, a brave and gallant young man. This company went to Nicaragua and participated in a number of battles with the natives, and at the end of the twelve months, for which they entered, were honorable discharged and returned to Selma, with the loss of only six of their number. This organization was so quietly done, that but few of the people of Selma ever knew of the movement.

The prosperous state of affairs, alluded to, continued until 1860, when the deep and determined murmurings of our people commenced to be heard, at the unfair and hostile demonstrations of the Northern section of the Union, against the property of the South. The troubles at Charleston, in the National Democratic Convention, which lead to an eruption and a division of that National Party, are well remembered. The North had enrolled itself almost to a unit into the Republican party, at the head of which, stood Abraham Lincoln, with plainly avowed hostility to the negro property of the Southern States. The Democratic Party of the nation was divided between Douglass and Breckinridge, and the Whigs of the South centered on John Bell. It did not take a prophet to tell that Mr. Lincoln would be elected in November 1860.

No sooner had Lincoln been elected, than the Southern States, almost as a unit, decided to form a separate government. Mr. Lincoln had not gotten fairly seated, before a call for a force to suppress the rebellion was made upon the Northern people, who rallied to the call with alacrity. The rumbling of war was heard from one end of the country to the other, like deep sounding thunder.

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