FORTY THOUSAND VISITORS descended upon Chicago in the middle of May 1860, drawn by the festive excitement surrounding the Republican National Convention. Dozens of trains, mechanical marvels of the age, carried the delegates and supporters of America’s youngest political party to America’s fastest-growing city. All along the routes, as trains roared past the Niagara, up across the majestic Ohio River, and troubled the air of the western frontier, crowds gathered at every bunting-draped station, sounding their enthusiasm for the Republican cause with brass bands and volleys of cannon fire. Even at crossroads, reporters observed, “small groups were assembled to lend their countenances to the occasion, and from farm houses the ladies waved their kerchiefs, and farmers in the fields swung their hats.”
Of all the trains bound for Chicago, none attracted more attention than the one that began its journey at the Suspension Bridge in Buffalo, New York, and swept to Chicago in an astonishing record time of sixteen hours. The unprecedented speed of the massive train was said to amaze every passenger. A reporter recalled that “when ‘a mile a minute’ was accomplished, the ‘boldest held his breath,’ and the timid ones trembled in their boots.” Every seat was occupied: in addition to delegates, the train carried dozens of newspapermen, professional applauders, henchmen, office seekers, and prizefighters hired “to keep the peace,” recalled one young passenger, “for in those hot days men’s opinions often cost them broken heads.” Amenities included a carload of “such refreshments,” one reporter noted, “as lead inevitably to the conclusion that the majority of delegates are among the opponents” of temperance laws.
With boosterish pride, young Chicago was determined to show its best face to the world during the convention. Chicago’s growth in previous decades had been “almost ridiculous,” a contemporary magazine suggested. Indeed, “growth is much too slow a word,” an English visitor marveled to describe the explosion Chicago had experienced since an 1830 guidebook depicted “a military post and fur station,” with wolves prowling the streets at night, and a meager population of twelve families who would bunk together in the town’s well-defended fort for safety each winter. Thirty years later, Chicago boasted a population of more than a hundred thousand, and the distinction of being “the first grain market in the world,” surpassing not only Odessa, “the great grain market of Russia, but all of Europe.” It had supplanted St. Louis as the chief marketplace for the vast herds of cattle that grazed the northwest prairies, and had become “the first lumber-market in the world.” Newcomers to the bustling city were dazzled by its “miles of wharves crowded with shipping…long lines of stately warehouses,” and “crowds of men busy in the active pursuit of trade.” Only recently, its streets had been raised from the mud and water by a bold decision to elevate every building and roadway to a level of twelve feet above Lake Michigan.
“Our city has been chosen, here to throw to the winds the broad banner of Republicanism,” the Press and Tribune proclaimed, “and here to name the leader who shall lead all our hosts to victory.” Lavish preparations were made to give the arriving trains a reception to remember. Chicagoans who lived on Michigan Avenue were asked to illuminate their houses. “A most magically beautiful effect was the result,” one reporter noted, “the lights flashing back from and multiplied countlessly in the waters of the Lake shore basin.” Thousands of spectators lined the shore of the lake, and as the trains moved along the pier, “half minute guns were fired by the Chicago Light Artillery, and rockets shot off from the foot of Jackson Street.” No one present, the reporter observed, would forget the effect of “artillery pealing, the flight of the rockets, the gleaming windows from the entire residence front of our city, the vast depot edifice filled with the eager crowd.”
Hotels and boardinghouse proprietors had spent weeks sprucing up their establishments; private citizens were asked to open their homes; and restaurants promised hearty meals at low prices. The most popular luncheon in town included a glass of four-year-old ale and a ham sandwich for ten cents. As packed trains continued to steam into the thronged city, the number of eager Republican visitors on Chicago’s streets climbed to forty thousand.
“I thought the city was crowded yesterday,” one amazed reporter exclaimed on the day before the convention was set to open, “but it was as loose and comfortable as a last year’s shoe beside the wedging and packing of today. The streets are full, and appear very like conduits leading off the overflowings of the hotels, where huge crowds are constantly pouring out as if they were spouted up from below in some popular eruption.”
Even billiard rooms were enlisted to accommodate the staggering crowds. At a certain hour each evening, the games were brought to an abrupt halt as mattresses were laid across the tables to create beds for the sleepy visitors. Looking in on one such establishment at midnight, a reporter saw 130 people stretched out on billiard tables “with a zest, from the fatigues of the day, that would have excited the sympathy of the most unfeeling bosom.”
“The city is thronged with Republicans,” wrote the Chicago Evening Journal. “Republicans from the woods of Maine and the green valleys of all New England; Republicans from the Golden Gate and the old plantation, Republicans from everywhere. What seems a brilliant festival is but the rallying for a battle. It is an army with banners!” Amid “this murmur of the multitude, thought reverts to a time long past,” the Journal reminded readers, “when a single car and one small chamber could have conveyed them all,” when the antislavery principle that “now blossoms white over the land was deemed the vision of enthusiasts, ridiculed, shunned and condemned.”
By 1860, the Republican Party had clearly become the dominant force in Northern politics. Its growth and momentum had absorbed two parties, the Whigs and the Know Nothings, and ruptured a third—the Democratic Party. If this new party could carry three of the four conservative Northern states it had lost in 1856—Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey—it could win the presidency. These battleground states lay along the southern tier of the North; they all bordered on slave states; they would play a decisive role in choosing a nominee.
IN THE EARLY HOURS of Wednesday, May 16, the streets surrounding the newly built convention hall swarmed with excited citizens “who crowded around the doors and windows, congregated upon the bridge, sat on the curb stones, and, in fine, used every available inch of standing room.” When the big doors of the Wigwam—“so called,” it was said, “because the chiefs of the Republican party were to meet there”—were finally opened to the assembled multitude, thousands of ticket holders raced forward to fill the center seats and the more exclusive side galleries, where gentlemen were allowed only if accompanied by a lady. Desperate men had scoured the streets for women—schoolgirls, washerwomen, painted ladies—anyone wearing a skirt and willing to be their date for the afternoon. Within minutes, every seat and nook of the Wigwam was occupied as ten thousand party members waited expectantly for the proceedings to begin.
Exactly at noon, New York’s governor Edwin Morgan, chairman of the Republican National Committee, lowered his gavel, and the convention officially began. In his opening address, Morgan told the cheering crowd that “no body of men of equal number was ever clothed with greater responsibility than those now within the hearing of my voice…. Let methen invoke you to act in a spirit of harmony, that by the dignity, the wisdom and the patriotism displayed here you may be enabled to enlist the hearts of the people, and to strengthen them in [their] faith.”
The work of the convention began. In the course of the first two days, credential battles were settled, and an inclusive platform, keyed to Northern interests, was enthusiastically adopted. While opposition to the extension of slavery remained as central as it had been in 1856, the 1860 platform also called for a Homestead Act, a protective tariff, a railroad to the Pacific, protection for naturalized citizens, and government support for harbor and river improvements—a far broader range of issues designed to attract a larger base.
After much debate, the delegates rejected a provision requiring a two-thirds vote to secure the nomination. Their decision that a simple majority was sufficient to nominate appeared to be a victory for Seward. Coming into Chicago as the best known of all the contenders, he already had nearly a majority of pledges. “The great body of ardent Republicans all over the country,” James Pike observed, “desired to elevate to the Presidency the man who had begun so early and had labored so long in behalf of their cardinal doctrines.” Indeed, when business came to a close at the end of the second day, a move was made to proceed directly to the presidential balloting. Had votes been cast at that moment, many believe, Seward would have emerged the victor. Instead, the secretary of the convention informed the delegates that the papers necessary for keeping the tally had not yet been prepared, and they adjourned until ten o’clock the next morning.
For those concerned that Seward was too radical on slavery and too liberal on immigration to win battleground states—Indiana, Illinois, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania—the central question was whether the opposition could be unified behind one man. A Committee of Twelve was formed by the prominent representatives of the four critical states to see if a consensus could be reached. By 10 p.m., twelve hours before the balloting was set to begin, no one had been agreed upon. “The time had been consumed in talking,” a member of the opposition committee lamented, as each delegation argued stubbornly for its favorite son.
Shortly before midnight, Horace Greeley visited the committee to see if any agreement had been reached. Having surprised Weed by gaining entrance to the convention by representing Oregon as a proxy, Greeley planned to promote Bates and defeat Seward. Disappointed to learn that no agreement had been reached, Greeley sent a telegraph to the Tribune, concluding that since the opposition “cannot concentrate on any candidate,” Seward “will be nominated.” Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati Commercial telegraphed the same message to his paper at the same time, reporting that “every one of the forty thousand men in attendance upon the Chicago Convention will testify that at midnight of Thursday–Friday night, the universal impression was that Seward’s success was certain.” In the rooms shared by the New York delegation, great cheers were heard. “Three hundred bottles of champagne are said to have been cracked,” reported Halstead; “it flowed freely as water.”
Still, the night was young, the battle only just begun.
AS THE HOURS PASSED, Weed must have sensed growing opposition among politicians in the conservative battleground states, many of whom feared that supporting Seward’s candidacy would hurt their own chances in state elections. However, he never altered his original strategy: before each delegation, he simply asserted that in this perilous time, Seward was, without question, the best man for the job. His love and devotion to his friend of more than thirty years blinded him to the inner dynamics at work since the convention began, the serious doubts that were surfacing about Seward’s availability, which meant, bluntly, his ability to win.
“Four years ago we went to Philadelphia to name our candidate,” Weed told one delegation after another, “and we made one of the most inexcusable blunders…. We nominated a man who had no qualification for the position of Chief Magistrate…. We were defeated as we probably deserved to be…. We are facing a crisis; there are troublous times ahead of us…. What this country will demand as its chief executive for the next four years is a man of the highest order of executive ability, a man of real statesmanlike qualities, well known to the Country, and of large experience in national affairs. No other class of men ought to be considered at this time. We think we have in Mr. Seward just the qualities the Country will need…. We expect to nominate him…and to go before the Country full of courage and confidence.”
No sooner did Weed leave each chamber than Horace Greeley came in and addressed the delegates: “I suppose they are telling you that Seward is the be all and the end all of our existence as a party, our great statesman, our profound philosopher, our pillar of cloud by day, our pillar of fire by night, but I want to tell you boys that in spite of all this you couldn’t elect Seward if you could nominate him. You must remember as things stand today we are a sectional party. We have no strength outside the North, practically we must have the entire North with us if we hope to win…. He cannot carry New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, or Iowa, and I will bring to you representative men from each of these states who will confirm what I say.” Greeley proceeded to do just that, one delegate recalled, introducing Governor Samuel Kirkwood of Iowa, and gubernatorial candidates Andrew Curtin and Henry Lane of Pennsylvania and Indiana, “each of whom confirmed what Greeley had said.”
“I know my people well,” Pennsylvania’s Henry Lane argued. “In the south half of my State a good proportion of my people have come from Slave States…. They will not tolerate slavery in Indiana or in our free territories but they will not oppose it where it is…. They are afraid Seward would be influenced by that abolition element of the East and make war on slavery where it is.”
Greeley’s spearheading of the anti-Seward forces was all the more credible because few were aware of his estrangement from Seward. Delegates accepted his arguments as those of a friend who simply feared Seward would not bring their party the presidency. “While professing so high a regard for Mr. Seward,” one reporter later recognized, “there was rankling in the bosom of Greeley a hatred of the great statesman as bitter as that ever entertained by the most implacable of his political enemies. The feeling had been pent up for years, gathering strength and fury for an occasion when a final explosion could be had with effect. The occasion was afforded at Chicago. The match was lit—the combustible material was ignited, the explosion came…. Horace Greeley had his revenge.”
Nor was Seward the only target of the late-night gatherings. Gustave Koerner, the leader of the German-Americans—an important component of the Republican constituency in the West—had never forgiven Bates for supporting Fillmore’s Know Nothing Party in 1856. In his memoirs, Koerner described rushing into a crowded meeting of delegates from Pennsylvania and Indiana. Frank Blair was just finishing an eloquent speech for Bates when Koerner took the floor. “In all candor,” he said, “if Bates [is] nominated,” even if he were to win his home state of Missouri, which was doubtful, “the German Republicans in the other States would never vote for him; I for one would not, and I would advise my countrymen to the same effect.”
Bates was further handicapped by the fact that he never really represented the middle of the party, however much the Blairs and Greeley tried to position him there. He was much too conservative for liberal Republicans, who might welcome him into their party but would never accord him chief command of an army in which he had never officially enlisted. At the same time, the letter he had written to prove his credentials to the Republicans had diminished the previous enthusiasm of conservatives and former Know Nothings.
Nor was all going well for Salmon Chase. Besides Seward, Chase was the most renowned Republican aspirant. Though more zealously committed to the black man than Seward, Chase was not hampered by Seward’s radical reputation; his words had not become emblazoned on the banner of the antislavery movement. In contrast to Seward’s reputation as a liberal spender, which hurt in battleground states, he was an economic conservative. And, unlike Seward, he had never openly attacked the Know Nothings.
Moreover, as the third largest delegation at the convention, Ohio wielded substantial power. “If united,” observed Halstead, “it would have a formidable influence and might throw the casting votes between candidates, holding the balance of power between the East and the West.” But Ohio would not unite behind Chase, as some delegates held out for Ben Wade or Judge McLean. The many enemies Chase had made and failed to conciliate over the years came back to haunt him at this critical juncture. Any hope of persuading McLean to turn over his votes had been lost long before as a consequence of his manipulations to gain his Senate seat. Chase, McLean remarked, “is selfish, beyond any other man. And I know from the bargain he has made in being elected to the Senate, he is ready to make any bargain to promote his interest.”
“There was no unity of action, no determination of purpose,” one Chase supporter later lamented; there was “a weakness in the spinal column in the Ohio delegation at Chicago, most pitiable to behold.” Ohio’s inability to settle firmly on Chase, another delegate told him, proved catastrophic. “If the Ohio delegation had been true…you would have been nominated…. I mingled freely with many of the delegations—they stood ready as a second choice…to give you their votes—would have done so if Ohio had…[been] relied upon.”
Nor had Chase learned from his mistakes four years earlier. Once again, he failed to appoint a set of trusted managers who could guide his campaign, answer objections, cajole wavering delegates, and, at the right moment, make promises to buoy supporters and strengthen wills. “There are lots of good feeling afloat here for you,” one of Chase’s friends told him, “but there is no set of men in earnest for you…I think the hardest kind of death to die is that occasioned by indecisive, or lukewarm friends.”
MEANWHILE, THROUGHOUT this night of a thousand knives, the opposition to Seward grew more vociferous, even frantic. “Men gather in little groups,” observed Halstead, “and with their arms about each other, and chatter and whisper as if the fate of the country depended upon their immediate delivery of the mighty political secrets with which their imaginations are big.” Rumors multiplied with each passing hour; “things of incalculable moment are communicated to you confidentially, at intervals of five minutes.”
The rumor was deliberately circulated “that the Republican candidates for governor in Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania would resign if Seward were nominated.” No one challenged Seward’s ability; no one questioned his credentials as statesman of the party. He was opposed simply because it was thought he would damage the prospects of the Republican Party and hurt Republican candidates in local elections. Still, Halstead admiringly observed: “Amid all these cries of distress, the Sewardites are true as steel to their champion, and they will cling to ‘Old Irrepressible,’ as they call him, until the last gun is fired and the big bell rings.”
All along, the main question among the gathering ranks of the “stop Seward” movement had been whether the opposition would be able to concentrate its strength on a single alternative, or be crippled by its own divisions.
For this eventuality, Lincoln had long prepared. Though he understood he could not positively count on the unanimous support of any delegation beyond Illinois, he knew he had earned widespread respect and admiration throughout the North. “You know how it is in Ohio,” he wrote a friend from the Buckeye State two weeks before the convention. “I am certainly not the first choice there; and yet I have not heard that any one makes any positive objection to me. It is just so everywhere so far as I can perceive. Everywhere, except in Illinois, and possibly Indiana, one or another is prefered to me, but there is no positive objection.”
To reach his goal of becoming everyone’s second choice, Lincoln was careful not to disparage any other candidate. Nor was it in his nature to do so. His committed team of workers—including Judge David Davis, Leonard Swett, Norman Judd, and Stephen Logan—understood this, resolving from the start “to antagonize no one.” They did not need to, for Greeley and candidates for governor in the doubtful states had that task well in hand. Nor, as Kenneth Stampp writes, did they need to win support based upon Lincoln’s “relative ability compared with other candidates…. Their appeal was based on availability and expediency; they urged the delegates to nominate the man who could win.”
“No men ever worked as our boys did,” Swett later claimed. “I did not, the whole week I was there, sleep two hours a night.” Although some of Lincoln’s men had political ambitions of their own, Henry Whitney observed, “Most of them worked con amore, chiefly from love of the man, his lofty moral tone, his pure political morality.” Working in his “typically methodical way,” Davis designated specific tasks to each member of his team. Maine’s Leonard Swett was charged with making inroads in the Maine delegation. Samuel Parks, a native Vermonter, was dispatched to the delegation of the Green Mountain State. In the spring elections in New England, the Republicans had suffered setbacks, leading Lincoln to observe that the election result would be seen as “a drawback upon the prospects of Gov. Seward,” opening the door for one of his rivals. Stephen Logan and Richard Yates were given Kentucky, while Ward Lamon was assigned his home state of Virginia. In each of these states, the Lincoln men worked to pick off individual delegates to keep Seward from sweeping the field on the first ballot.
“It all worked to a charm,” boasted Swett. “The first State approached was Indiana.” Even before the convention had opened, Lincoln got word that “the whole of Indiana might not be difficult to get” and had urged Davis to concentrate on the Hoosier State. Though Indiana contained twenty thousand or more former Know Nothings who likely preferred Bates, the Indiana politicians were fearful that Bates was not strong enough to challenge Seward for the nomination. And if Seward headed the ticket, gubernational candidate Henry Lane never tired of warning, the radical image he projected and his unpopularity with the Know Nothings would jeopardize the entire state ticket.
Claims have been made that Davis made a deal with Indiana’s chairman, Caleb Smith, to bring him into the cabinet in return for Indiana’s vote. No deal was needed, however; Smith had admired Lincoln since their days in Congress and had agreed, even before the balloting, to second Lincoln’s nomination. The Indiana delegates’ decision to back Lincoln on the first ballot was more likely a practical decision based on the best interests of their own state.
By securing Indiana’s pledge, the Lincoln men gained a decided advantage in the Committee of Twelve, which had remained deadlocked at midnight in its attempts to agree on a common candidate to oppose Seward—prompting Greeley and Halstead to predict a Seward victory. As the committee members continued to talk in the early-morning hours, someone proposed a straw vote to determine the opposition candidate with the greatest strength. In this impromptu poll, since Lincoln already had the support of both Illinois and Indiana, two of the four key states, he emerged as the strongest candidate. According to one committee member, “Mr. Dudley of New Jersey then proposed that for the general good of the party,” Pennsylvania should give up its favorite son after the first ballot, as would New Jersey. The proposition was generally agreed upon, but Pennsylvania required further negotiations to ratify the agreement.
According to Henry Whitney, Davis had previously sent a telegram to Lincoln informing him that if Cameron were promised a space in the cabinet, Pennsylvania might be procured. Lincoln scribbled his answer in the margin of a newspaper, which an emissary carried to the convention. “Make no contracts that will bind me.” When the message arrived, Whitney writes, “Everybody was mad, of course. Here were men working night and day to place him on the highest mountain peak of fame, and he pulling back all he knew how. What was to be done? The bluff Dubois said: ‘Damn Lincoln!’ The polished Swett said, in mellifluous accents: ‘I am very sure if Lincoln was aware of the necessities…’ The critical Logan expectorated viciously, and said: ‘The main difficulty with Lincoln is…’ Herndon ventured: ‘Now, friend, I’ll answer that.’ But Davis cut the Gordian knot by brushing all aside with: ‘Lincoln ain’t here, and don’t know what we have to meet, so we will go ahead, as if we hadn’t heard from him, and he must ratify it.’”
Moreover, Davis undoubtedly understood that other candidates were making pledges of their own. The Blairs had supposedly promised Cassius Clay the post of secretary of war if he would endorse Bates. And doubtless Weed could promise not only cabinet posts but the “oceans of money” he had accumulated for the Republican cause. Nonetheless, Davis’s biographer concludes that no direct pledge was ever made to Cameron. Davis promised only that he would “get every member of the Illinois delegation to recommend Cameron’s appointment,” which the Cameron men mistook for a guaranteed pledge.
Whether or not explicit deals were made, the Lincoln men worked hard to convince Cameron’s contingent that Pennsylvania would be treated generously if Lincoln received their votes. “My assurance to them,” Swett later wrote Lincoln, was that despite the fact that Pennsylvania had not supported Lincoln from the start, “they should be placed upon the same footing as if originally they had been your friends. Now, of course, it is unpleasant for me to write all this stuff and for you to read it. Of course I have never feared you would unintentionally do anything unfair towards these men. I only write to suggest the very delicate situation I am placed towards them so that you might cultivate them as much as possible.”
By adding the votes of Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, three of the four doubtful states, to those of Illinois, Davis and Swett had achieved what many considered impossible: they had made possible the nomination of Abraham Lincoln.
AS THE DAY of the balloting dawned, the Seward men, confident of victory, gathered at the Richmond House for a celebratory march to the convention hall. “A thousand strong,” Murat Halstead observed, and accompanied by a “magnificent band, which was brilliantly uniformed—epaulets shining on their shoulders,” they prolonged “their march a little too far.” Upon reaching the Wigwam, they were dismayed to find that some of their number could not get in—Lincoln’s partisans had manufactured duplicate tickets the evening before and had filed into the hall as soon as the doors opened.
Recognizing that “it was part of the Seward plan to carry the Convention” by bringing more supporters to Chicago than any other candidate, Lincoln’s managers had mustered friends and supporters from all over the state. The nominations became the initial test of strength. New York’s William Evarts was the first to rise, asking the convention to place Seward’s name in nomination. His words were met “by a deafening shout.” The applause was “loud and long,” as supporters continued to stand, waving handkerchiefs in frenzied excitement. Lincoln’s man, Leonard Swett, confessed that the level of enthusiasm “appalled us a little.”
Nonetheless, Lincoln’s contingent was ready when Norman Judd placed the name of Illinois’s favorite son in nomination. “If Mr. Seward’s name drew forth thunders of applause,” one reporter noted, “what can be said of the enthusiastic reception of [Lincoln’s] name…. The audience, like a wild colt with [a] bit between his teeth, rose above all cry of order, and again and again the irrepressible applause broke forth and resounded far and wide.” To Seward’s supporters, this “tremendous applause” was “the first distinct impression in Lincoln’s favor.” Though Chase and Bates were also nominated to loud applause, the responses were “cold when compared” to the receptions for Seward and Lincoln.
When the seconding nominations proceeded, the “trial of lungs” intensified. Determined to win the battle, Seward’s adherents rallied when Austin Blair of Michigan rose to second his nomination. “The shouting was absolutely frantic,” Halstead reported. “No Comanches, no panthers ever struck a higher note, or gave screams with more infernal intensity.” Once again, the Lincoln men rose to the challenge. When Indiana’s Caleb Smith seconded Lincoln’s nomination, “five thousand people at once” jumped to their feet, Leonard Swett reported. “A thousand steam whistles, ten acres of hotel gongs…might have mingled in the scene unnoticed.” A voice rose from the crowd: “Abe Lincoln has it by the sound, let us ballot!” The efforts of Lincoln’s men to corral more supporters had paid off. “This was not the most deliberate way of nominating a President,” Swett later confessed, but “it had its weight.”
The convention finally settled down and the balloting began. Two hundred thirty-three votes would decide the Republican presidential nomination. The roll call opened with the New England states, which had been considered solidly for Seward. In fact, a surprising number of votes went for Lincoln, as well as a scattering for Chase. Lincoln’s journey through New England after the Cooper Union speech had apparently won over a number of delegates. As expected, New York gave its full 70 votes to Seward, allowing him to leap far ahead. The Seward men relaxed until Virginia, which had also been considered solid for Seward, split its 22 votes between Seward and Lincoln. Chase had assumed that Ohio, which came next, would give him its full 46 votes, but the delegation was divided in its vote, giving 34 to Chase and the remaining 12 to Lincoln and McLean. Perhaps the greatest surprise was Indiana, which Bates had assumed was his territory; instead, Lincoln gathered all 26 votes. “This solid vote was a startler,” reported Halstead, “and the keen little eyes of Henry S. Lane glittered as it was given.”
At the end of the first ballot, the tally stood: Seward 173½ Lincoln 102; Chase 49; Bates 48. The Bates managers were downhearted to realize, as the historian Marvin Cain writes, that “no pivotal state had gone for Bates, and the sought-after votes of the Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota and Ohio delegations had not been delivered.” Disappointment was equally evident in the faces of the Chase men, for they were keenly aware that the division within the Ohio delegation was probably fatal. Lincoln’s camp was exhilarated, for with his total of 102 votes, Lincoln had emerged as the clear-cut alternative to Seward. Although taken aback by the unexpected defections, Weed still hoped that Seward would win on the second ballot. The 48 votes Cameron had supposedly promised from Pennsylvania would put Seward within striking distance of the victory number of 233.
The second ballot revealed a crucial shift in Lincoln’s favor. In New England he picked up 17 more votes, while Delaware switched its 6 votes from Bates to Lincoln. Then came the biggest surprise of all, “startling the vast auditorium like a clap of thunder”: Pennsylvania announced 44 votes for Lincoln, boosting his total to 181, only 3½ votes behind Seward’s new total of 184½. Chase and Bates both lost ground on the second ballot, essentially removing them from contention. The race had narrowed to Seward and Lincoln.
Tension in the Wigwam mounted. The spectators sat on the edge of their seats as the third ballot began. Lincoln gained 4 additional votes from Massachusetts and 4 from Pennsylvania, also adding 15 votes from Ohio. His total reached 231½, only 1½ votes shy of victory. “There was a pause,” Halstead recorded. “In about ten ticks of a watch,” David K. Cartter of Ohio stood and announced the switch of 4 votes from Chase to Lincoln. “A profound stillness fell upon the Wigwam,” one eyewitness wrote. Then the Lincoln supporters “rose to their feet applauding rapturously, the ladies waving their handkerchiefs, the men waving and throwing up their hats by thousands, cheering again and again.”
For the Sewardites, the defeat was devastating. “Great men wept like boys,” one New Yorker observed, “faces drawn, white and aged as if ten years had passed in that one night of struggle.” Everyone looked to Thurlow Weed, but there was no solace he could give. The work of his lifetime had ended in defeat, and he, too, could not restrain his tears. His failure to serve his country by making his good friend president, Weed later acknowledged, was “the great disappointment of his life.”
All across the chamber, representatives rose, clamoring to change their votes so that Lincoln could achieve a unanimous victory. Their emotional tone revealed that the defeated Seward still had a great hold on their hearts. When Michigan shifted its votes to Lincoln, Austin Blair confessed that his state was laying down “her first, best loved candidate…with some bleeding of the heart, with some quivering in the veins; but she does not fear that the fame of Seward will suffer,” for his story will be “written, and read, and beloved long after the temporary excitement of this day has passed away, and when Presidents are themselves forgotten.” In similar fashion, Carl Schurz of Wisconsin predicted that Seward’s ambition would be fulfilled “with the success of the cause which was the dream of his youth,” and that his name would “remain in history, an instance of the highest merit uncrowned with the highest honor.”
The most poignant moment came when New York’s chairman, William Evarts, stood up. “Mounting a table, with grief manifest in his countenance, his hands clenched nervously,” he delivered a powerful tribute to Seward: “Gentlemen, it was from Governor Seward that most of us learned to love Republican principles and the Republican party.” He finally requested that New York shift its votes to Lincoln. So moving was his speech, one reporter noted, that “the spectator could not fail to be impressed with the idea that a man who could have such a friend must be a noble man indeed.”
Once the vote was made unanimous, the celebration began in earnest. A man stationed on the roof of the Wigwam shouted the news of Lincoln’s nomination, along with that of Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for vice president, to the thousands waiting on the street. Cannons were fired and “between 20,000 and 30,000 outside were yelling and shouting at once.” The festivities continued through the night. “The Press and Tribune building,” one of the paper’s reporters wrote, “was illuminated from ‘turret to foundation,’ by the brilliant glare of a thousand lights which blazed from windows and doors.” Shouldering the symbolic fence rails that Lincoln had supposedly split, Republicans paraded through the streets to the music of a dozen bands.
SEWARD RECEIVED THE NEWS of his loss while sitting with friends in his country garden at Auburn. A rider on a swift horse had waited at the telegraph office to dash through the crowded streets the moment a telegram arrived. When the totals of the first ballot came in, the messenger had galloped to Seward’s house and handed the telegram to him. When the news of Seward’s large lead was repeated to guests at his house and to the crowds on the street, great cheers went up. When the totals of the second ballot came in, Seward retained his optimism. “I shall be nominated on the next ballot,” he predicted to the boisterous audience on the lawn, and a great cheer resounded from the streets. Long, anxious moments followed. When no further news arrived, Seward “rightly [judged] that…there was no news that friends would love to bring.” Finally, the unwelcome telegram announcing Lincoln’s nomination on the third ballot arrived. Seward turned “as pale as ashes.” He understood at once, as did his supporters, his son Fred would remember, “that it was no ordinary political defeat, to be retrieved in some subsequent campaign. It was…final and irrevocable.”
“The sad tidings crept through the vast concourse,” one reporter noted. “The flags were furled, the cannon was rolled away, and Cayuga county went home with a clouded brow.” Later that night, writing in his diary in Washington, Charles Francis Adams could not stop thinking of his defeated friend, “of his sanguine expectations, of his long services, of his large and comprehensive philosophy, and of his great ambition—all now merged for a time in a deep abyss of disappointment. He has too much of alloy in his composition to rise above it. Few men can.”
Yet “he took the blow as a champion should,” his biographer notes, putting on “a brave front before his family and the world.” In her diary, sixteen-year-old Fanny Seward noted simply that “Father told Mother and I in three words, Abraham Lincoln nominated. His friends feel much distress—he alone has a smile—he takes it with philosophical and unselfish coolness.” Informed that the editor of the local evening paper could find no one in the disconsolate town willing to write and comment on the news announcing Lincoln and Hamlin’s nominations, Seward took up his own pen. “No truer or firmer defenders of the Republican faith could have been found in the Union,” he graciously stated, “than the distinguished and esteemed citizens on whom the honors of the nomination have fallen.”
Before he retired that night, Seward wrote to Weed: “You have my unbounded gratitude for this last, as for the whole life of efforts in my behalf. I wish that I was sure that your sense of the disappointment is as light as my own.” A week later, in a public letter, Seward pledged his support to the Republican ticket and said he hoped his friends who had “labored so long” by his side would not allow their “sense of disappointment…to hinder or delay…the progress of that cause.”
Beneath his graceful facade, Seward was angry, hurt, and humiliated. “It was only some months later,” the biographer Glyndon Van Deusen writes, “when the shock had worn off and hope of a sort had revived, that he could say half ruefully, half whimsically, how fortunate it was that he did not keep a diary, for if he had there would be a record of all his cursing and swearing” when the news arrived.
If Seward managed to project a willed equanimity, Chase could not hide his bitterness at his defeat, nor his fury at the Ohio delegation that had failed to support him unanimously. “When I remember what New York did for Seward, what Illinois did for Lincoln and what Missouri did for Bates,” Chase told a friend, “and remember also that neither of these gentlemen ever spent a fourth part—if indeed a tithe of the time labor and means for the Republican Party in their respective states that I have spent for our party in Ohio; & then reflect on the action of the Ohio delegation in Chicago towards me; I confess I have little heart to write or think about it…. I must say that had [Senator Ben Wade] received the same expression from Ohio which was given to me, and had I been in his place, I would have suffered my arm to be wrenched from my body, before I would have allowed my name to be brought into competition with his.”
For years, Chase was racked by the thought that had Ohio remained loyal, he would have won the nomination. Even in a congratulatory letter to Lincoln, he could not refrain from citing his own situation. Supposing that the “adhesion of the Illinois delegation” yielded Lincoln “a higher gratification” even than “the nomination itself,” Chase confessed that the perfidy of his own delegation was unbearable. “In this…I am quite sure you must participate,” he sounded Lincoln, “for I err greatly in my estimate of your magnanimity, if you do not condemn as I do the conduct of delegates, from whatever state, who disregard…the clearly expressed preference of their own State Convention.” Lincoln responded graciously without taking the bait.
Carl Schurz contemplated Chase’s torment in the dark hours following the nomination. “While the victory of Mr. Lincoln was being announced to the outside world,” he wrote, “my thoughts involuntarily turned to Chase, who, I imagined, sat in a quiet office room at Columbus with a telegraph near by clicking the news from Chicago…. Not even his own State had given him its full strength. No doubt he had hoped, and hoped, and hoped against hope…and now came this disastrous, crushing, humiliating defeat. I saw that magnificent man before me, writing with the agony of his disappointment, and I sympathized with him most profoundly.”
As the news of Chase’s defeat filtered into the streets of Columbus, the dray readied to haul the cannon to the corner of Third and State streets, to announce his victory with a roar of thunder, was used instead to honor Lincoln’s nomination. After the short “melancholy ceremony” was concluded, the dray hauled the cannon back to its shed, and the city went to sleep.
Bates accepted defeat with the composure that had marked his character from the outset. “As for me, I was surprised, I own, but not at all mortified, at the result at Chicago,” he wrote Greeley. “I had no claim—literally none—upon the Republicans as a party, and no right to expect their party honors; and I shall cherish, with enduring gratitude, the recollection of the generous confidence with which many of their very best men have honored me. So far from feeling beaten and depressed, I have cause rather for joy and exultation; for, by the good opinion of certain eminent Republicans, I have gained much in standing and reputation before the country—more, I think, than any mere private man I have ever known.”
In his private journal, however, Bates admitted to a sense of irritation. “Some of my friends who attended the Convention assure me that the nomination of Mr. Lincoln took every body by surprise: That it was brought about by accident or trick, by which my pledged friends had to vote against me…. The thing was well planned and boldly executed. A few Germans—Schurz of Wisconsin and Koerner of Illinois, with their truculent boldness, scared the timid men of Indiana into submission. Koerner went before the Indiana Delegation and assured them that if Bates were nominated, the Germans would bolt!”
The platform, he continued, “is exclusive and defiant, not attracting but repelling assistance from without…. It lugs in the lofty generalities of the Declaration of Independence, for no practical object that I can see, but needlessly exposing the party to the specious charge of favoring negro equality…. I think they will soon be convinced, if they are not already, that they have committed a fatal blunder—They have denationalized their Party; weakened it in the free states, and destroyed its hopeful beginnings in the border slave states.”
While the melancholy spirit of defeated expectations settled upon the streets of Auburn, Columbus, and St. Louis, Springfield was euphoric. The legendary moment when Lincoln learned of his nomination has spawned many versions over the years. Some claim Lincoln was standing in a shop, purchasing some items that Mary had requested, when cheers were heard from the telegraph office, followed by the shouts of a boy rushing through the crowd: “Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Lincoln, you are nominated.” Others maintain that he was talking with friends in the office of the Illinois State Journal when he received the news. Handed the scrap of paper that reported his victory, he “looked at it long and silently, not heeding the noisy exultation of all around.” Shaking hands with everyone in the room, he remarked quietly, “I knew this would come when I saw the second ballot.” Leaving the Journal office, Lincoln plunged into a crowd of well-wishers on the street. “My friends,” he said, “I am glad to receive your congratulations, and as there is a little woman down on Eighth street who will be glad to hear the news, you must excuse me until I inform her.” When he reached his home, Ida Tarbell reports, he found that Mary “already knew that the honor which for twenty years and more she had believed and stoutly declared her husband deserved…at last had come.”
The tumult in Springfield that evening was recorded by a young journalist, John Hay, who would later become Lincoln’s aide. He reported that “the hearty western populace burst forth in the wildest manifestations of joy…Lincoln banners, decked in every style of rude splendor, fluttered in the high west wind.” The church bells tolled. Thousands assembled in the rotunda of the Capitol for a festive celebration replete with victory speeches. When the meeting adjourned, the happy throngs converged on Lincoln’s house. His appearance at the door was “the signal for immense cheering.” Modestly, Lincoln insisted that “he did not suppose the honor of such a visit was intended particularly for himself as a private citizen but rather as the representative to a great party.”
FOR GENERATIONS, people have weighed and debated the factors that led to Lincoln’s surprising victory. Many have agreed with the verdict of Murat Halstead, who wrote that “the fact of the Convention was the defeat of Seward rather than the nomination of Lincoln.” Seward himself seemed to accept this analysis. When asked years later why Lincoln had won, he said: “The leader of a political party in a country like ours is so exposed that his enemies become as numerous and formidable as his friends.” Abraham Lincoln, by contrast, “comparatively unknown, had not to contend with the animosities generally marshaled against a leader.”
There is truth to this argument, but it tells only part of the story, for the question remains: why was Lincoln the beneficiary of Seward’s downfall rather than Chase or Bates?
Some have pointed to luck, to the fact that Lincoln lived in a battleground state the Republicans needed to win, and to the fact that the convention was held in Chicago, where the strength of local support could add weight to his candidacy. “Had the Convention been held at any other place,” Koerner admitted, “Lincoln would not have been nominated.”
Others have argued that he was positioned perfectly in the center of the party. He was less radical than Seward or Chase, but less conservative than Bates. He was less offensive than Seward to the Know Nothings, but more acceptable than Bates to the German-Americans.
Still others have argued that Lincoln’s team in Chicago played the game better than anyone else, conceiving the best strategy and cleverly using the leverage of promises to the best advantage. Without doubt, the Lincoln men, under the skillful leadership of David Davis, performed brilliantly.
Chance, positioning, and managerial strategy—all played a role in Lincoln’s victory. Still, if we consider the comparative resources each contender brought to the race—their range of political skills, their emotional, intellectual, and moral qualities, their rhetorical abilities, and their determination and willingness to work hard—it is clear that when opportunity beckoned, Lincoln was the best prepared to answer the call. His nomination, finally, was the result of his character and his life experiences—these separated him from his rivals and provided him with advantages unrecognized at the time.
Having risen to power with fewer privileges than any of his rivals, Lincoln was more accustomed to rely upon himself to shape events. From beginning to end, he took the greatest control of the process leading up to the nomination. While Seward, at Weed’s suggestion, spent eight months wandering Europe and the Middle East to escape dissension at home, Lincoln earned the goodwill and respect of tens of thousands with a strenuous speaking tour that left a positive imprint on Republicans in five crucial Midwestern states. While Chase unwisely declined his invitation to speak at the lecture series in New York at Cooper Union, Lincoln accepted with alacrity, recognizing the critical importance of making a good impression in Seward’s home territory. In addition, Chase refused invitations to travel to New England and shore up his support. Ironically, despite repeated pledges in his diary to do anything necessary to achieve honor and fame, Chase showed a lack of resolution in the final weeks before the convention.
When ardent Republicans heard Lincoln speak, they knew that if their beloved Seward could not win, they had in the eloquent orator from Illinois a man of considerable capacity whom they could trust, one who would hold fast on the central issue that had forged the party—the fight against extending slavery into the territories. Though Lincoln had entered the antislavery struggle later than Seward or Chase, his speeches possessed unmatched power, conviction, clarity, and moral strength.
At the same time, his native caution and precision with language—he rarely said more than he was sure about, rarely pandered to his various audiences—gave Lincoln great advantages over his rivals, each of whom tried to reposition himself in the months before the convention. Seward disappointed liberal Republicans when he tried to soften his fiery rhetoric to placate moderates. Bates infuriated conservatives with his strongly worded public letter. And Chase fooled no one when he tried to shift his position on the tariff at the last moment. Lincoln remained consistent throughout.
Nor, as the Chicago Press and Tribune pointed out, was “his avoidance of extremes” simply “the result of ambition which measures words or regulates acts.” It was, more accurately, “the natural consequence of an equable nature and a mental constitution that is never off its balance.”
In his years of travel on the circuit through central Illinois, engaging people in taverns, on street corners, and in shops, Lincoln had developed a keen sense of what people felt, thought, needed, and wanted. Seward, too, had an instinctive feeling for people, but too many years in Washington had dulled those instincts. Like Lincoln, Chase had spent many months traveling throughout his home state, but his haughty demeanor prevented him from truly connecting with the farmers, clerks, and bartenders he met along the way. Bates, meanwhile, had isolated himself for so long from the hurly-burly of the political world that his once natural political savvy was diminished.
It was Lincoln’s political intuition, not blind luck, that secured the convention site in Chicago. To be sure, the fact that Lincoln was “comparatively unknown” aided Norman Judd in landing the venue in Illinois. However, it was part of Lincoln’s strategy to hold his name back as long as possible and to “give no offence to others—leave them in a mood to come to us, if they shall be compelled to give up their first love.” It was Lincoln who first suggested to Judd that it might be important to secure Chicago. And it was Lincoln who first pointed out to his managers that Indiana might be won. Indeed, his guidance and determination were evident at every step along the way to the nomination.
Lincoln, like Seward, had developed a cadre of lifelong friends who were willing to do anything in their power to ensure his nomination. But unlike Seward, he had not made enemies or aroused envy along the way. It is hard to imagine Lincoln letting Greeley’s resentment smolder for years as Seward did. On the contrary, he took pains to reestablish rapport with Judd and Trumbull after they had defeated him in his first run for the Senate. His ability to rise above defeat and create friendships with previous opponents was never shared by Chase, who was unable to forgive those who crossed him. And though Bates had a warm circle of friends in St. Louis, most of them were not politicians. His campaign at the convention was managed by a group of men who barely knew him. Without burning personal loyalty, they had simply picked him as a potential winner, dropping him with equal ease when the path to his nomination proved bumpy.
Finally, Lincoln’s profound and elevated sense of ambition—“an ambition,” Fehrenbacher observes, “notably free of pettiness, malice, and overindulgence,” shared little common ground with Chase’s blatant obsession with office, Seward’s tendency toward opportunism, or the ambivalent ambition that led Bates to withdraw from public office. Though Lincoln desired success as fiercely as any of his rivals, he did not allow his quest for office to consume the kindness and openheartedness with which he treated supporters and rivals alike, nor alter his steady commitment to the antislavery cause.
In the end, though the men who nominated Abraham Lincoln in Chicago may not have recognized all these qualities, they chose the best man for the supreme challenge looming over the nation.