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"(CNN) If there were any doubts about how important South Carolina is to Rick Santorum's Republican nomination hopes, he erased them on Sunday.
     Speaking in ominous terms, Santorum urged a crowd at Stax Original Restaurant in Greenville to make their voices heard in the January 21 primary and vote for the one true 'Reagan conservative' in the race.
     'You have an opportunity in this election to speak very loudly,' he said. 'You are going to see this race coming into South Carolina with a lot on the line.'
     Santorum called the 2012 election 'the most critical election maybe since 1860' -- the election that presaged the Civil War -- and said the stakes could not be higher in November.
     In an implicit shot at GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney, Santorum said South Carolina must vote for a candidate who offers a 'bold stark contrast' to President Barack Obama."
— NEWS 4 Jax.com
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"Republican Newt Gingrich told a Georgia audience on Friday evening that the 2012 presidential election is the most consequential since the 1860 race that elected Abraham Lincoln to the White House and was soon followed by the Civil War.
     Addressing the Georgia Republican Party's convention, Gingrich said the nation is at a crossroads and that the re-election of Democratic President Barack Obama would lead to four more years of 'radical left-wing values' that would drive the nation to ruin."
— Associated Press (via MSNBC)
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"The United States presidential election of 1860 was a quadrennial election, held on November 6, 1860, for the office of President of the United States and the immediate impetus for the outbreak of the American Civil War. The nation had been divided throughout the 1850s on questions surrounding the expansion of slavery and the rights of slave owners.
     In 1860, these issues finally came to a head. As a result of conflicting regional interests, the Democratic Party broke into Northern and Southern factions, and a new Constitutional Union Party appeared. In the face of a divided and dispirited opposition, the Republican Party, dominant in the North, secured enough electoral votes to put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with very little support from the South. Within a few months of the election, seven Southern states, led by South Carolina, responded with declarations of secession, which was rejected as illegal by outgoing President James Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln. Four additional Southern states seceded after the Battle of Fort Sumter."
— Wikipedia
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