If Frémont won the presidency by carrying a solid North, warned Democrats, the Union would crumble. As Buchanan himself put it, “the Black Republicans must be . . . boldly assailed as disunionists, and this charge must be re-iterated again and again.”24 Southerners helped along the cause by threatening to secede if the Republicans won. “The election of Frémont,” declared Robert Toombs, “would be the end of the Union, and ought to be.”
