Chapter VIII
Times That Tried Men's Souls
HALSEY and Palo'mine had won the great Kentucky Sweepstake in the first week of May 1860, and a few days later the Republican Convention at Chicago, on May 16, to be exact, nominated Abraham Lincoln to be their candidate for the Presidency of the United States.
Just what that may have had to do with the life of Halsey and Palo'mine may not at first appear, but it was a factor in their lives as we shall see later.
The political pot which had been simmering freely before the nomination of Lincoln, began to boil feverishly with that event. There were statesmen in Dixie who said openly that if he were elected the southern states would secede from the Union. But how much of this was just bluff and how
