The political atmosphere in the runup to the 1860 election was filled with an intrigue that demonstrated the divisions that had simmered since the founding of the country.

The growing controversy over slavery split the Democrats into two opposing parties, each claiming the right to be called Democrat. Conservative Whigs that could not stomach the liberal policies of the new Republican party formed the Conservative Union party. Add independents that swirled outside the established parties and the political recipe resulted in a most unsavory bill of fare.

Southerners were adamant that their candidate must win, and if he didn’t, the Union would be broken. Disunion was the threat used to force the election of Stephen Douglas and the defeat of Abraham Lincoln.

The following editorial in the Cincinnati Daily Press just before the election was copied into the November 29, 1860, White Cloud Kansas Chief.

“The Future of a Government which is Carried on by Threats of Violence Suppose the gambling politicians should really succeed in frightening the people from an election of president by their threats and sham terrors. Then we should have violence completely inaugurated in our government. Then threatened rebellion would become a regular means of carrying the elections. Then the principle would be fairly recognized that a party in power has a right to break up the government if it cannot keep the control of it. Then treason would be the first qualification for office. What kind of a road to peace would this be? Is this a nation of cowards and slaves, to be ruled by threats? Does anybody expect entire surrender on the part of the people? The next election would require a repetition of the same farce, with such additions and exaggerations as would be necessary to make it effective. The ease, then, would undoubtedly require some actual demonstrations. With the entire control of the administration, army and navy, these would be adapted to the necessities of the case. We should have a government of traitors, carrying rebellion and treason just as far as they thought necessary to keep power.

Would not this be a beautiful culmination of the experiment of popular government in the greatest republic? A government saved from dissolution only by surrendering it to traitors? This is the spectacle we present to the world now. Members of the cabinet are vaunting threats which should be throttled in their throats with halters. And a weakbacked, maudlin president, instead of crushing out this treason as General Jackson did, affects the attitude of alarm and holds up his shaking hands, beseeching the people not to drive these dreadful fellows to desperation.

The farce has been played too long already. The public safety has been tampered with by putting notorious disunionists in the leading offices in the government; not only in this, but in the previous administration; men who perjured themselves when they swore fidelity to the Constitution. What government can be stable in which threatened rebellion is rewarded by the highest offices in it? An immediate and total revolution in the policy of the government is absolutely indispens- able to its safety.

We now present a most disgraceful spectacle to the world. A popular government, in which the people are expected to be governed by threats and violence. An administration threatening rebellion against the nation before it will give up power. If this is the kind of government we have got, it should come to an end as soon as possible. No such anarchy and organized disturbance has a right to exist. It would justify any foreign power in invading us and take possession of our country, which was unfit to govern itself. The government is in the hands of its enemies, and treason is petted by the administration.

No nation can exist which is ruled on such a plan. A revolution is necessary, which shall put the friends of the Union in office and consign traitors to the oblivion into which they will sink as soon as they lose the countenance of the administration. All party and sectional divisions should vanish when treason and rebellion raise their heads in the government, and insolently dictate the terms on which it shall be permitted to exist. The South will take care of the disunionists at home — they need no northern assistance of that. Let the North see that it is driven from the administration at Washington.

When the country is saved from the traitors in its own government, then it will be time enough to revive sectional and partisan divisions. The Northern man who, in this crisis, attempts to give reality and seriousness to these threats in order to cow the people into submission to them, makes himself an accomplice of traitors and is only betraying his country into the power of men whose political platform should have a halter suspended over it for very present use.”

Sound familiar? Except for a few lines, the editor’s words could have been written in our times.“The farce has been played too long already.” For the good of the nation, we must come to the realization that in America, an “administration” threatening rebellion before it will give up power can find no residency anywhere on The Way West.