As winter turned to spring in Alabama, white men across the state prepared for the Democratic National Convention, to be held in Charleston, South Carolina. Many southerners, both radical and conservative, worried that the Democratic Convention could bring trouble for the party and for the South.
In the early months of 1860, presidential hopefuls emerged, parties maneuvered, demagogues exhorted, and white Alabamians grew anxious. The rise of the Republican Party in the North and the popularity of its antislavery platform were creating quite an uproar in the slaveholding South. Should a Republican win the presidential election that fall, white Alabamians feared he would imperil the region’s most profitable institution. And a Republican president seemed increasingly possible.
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Becoming Alabama:
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