To unite these political remnants in any definite
political whole seemed beyond human ingenuity. A common
sentiment, however, they did have--a real love of the Union and a
real unhappiness, because its existence appeared to be
threatened. The outcome was that they organized the
Constitutional Union Party, nominating for President John Bell of
Tennessee, and for Vice President Edward Everett of
Massachusetts. Their platform was little more than a profession
of love of the Union and a condemnation of sectional selfishness.
This Bell and Everett ticket has a deeper significance than has
generally been admitted. It reveals the fact that the sentiment
of Union, in distinction from the belief in the Union, had become
a real force in American life. There could be no clearer
testimony to the strength of this feeling than this spectacle of
a great congregation of moderate people, unable to agree upon
anything except this sentiment, stepping between the sectional
parties like a resolute wayfarer going forward into darkness
along a perilous strand between two raging seas. That this
feeling of Union was the same thing as the eager determination of
the Republicans, in 1860, to control the Government is one of
those historical fallacies that have had their day.
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