At the Lincoln & Herndon office Baker, of the Illinois State Journal, came in with telegrams announcing that the names of the candidates had been placed in nomination and that Lincoln’s was received with great enthusiasm. Shortly afterward, a new telegram announced the result of the first ballot: Seward 173½ Lincoln 102; Bates 48; Cameron 50½; Chase 49. The other votes were widely scattered; 233 were needed for a choice. Giving no indication of his feelings, Lincoln went over to the telegraph office, where a report on the second ballot was just coming in: Seward now had 184½ votes; Lincoln, largely as a result of a switch in the Pennsylvania vote, rose to 181 votes; and all the other candidates lost strength. Lincoln then awaited the results of the third ballot in the Journal office. As he had anticipated, this was the last ballot. Seward retained most of his strength, but nearly all the other delegates flocked to Lincoln, with a total of 231½ votes—one and a half votes short of a majority. At this point David K. Cartter rose to switch four Ohio votes from Chase to Lincoln, and other delegations promptly followed, giving him a total of 364, out of a possible 466, votes. The Seward men then moved to make the nomination unanimous.
“I knew this would come when I saw the second ballot,” Lincoln remarked as he accepted the congratulations of his fellow townsmen. Emerging from the Journal office, he said jokingly to the ball players who broke off their game to congratulate him: “Gentlemen, you had better come up and shake my hand while you can—honors elevate some men.” Then he headed for home, explaining: “Well Gentlemen there is a little woman at our house who is probably more interested in this dispatch than I am.”
When the news of his nomination became official, along with a report that the convention had balanced the ticket by naming a former Democrat, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, for Vice President, Lincoln felt under some pressure to go to Chicago, where he could bask in his triumph, allow the Republican delegates a chance to meet their candidate, and soothe the disgruntled Seward element in the party, but his advisers unanimously urged him to stay in Springfield. “Dont come here for God’s sake,” Davis wired succinctly, adding, “Write no letters and make no promises till you see me.”
That was the policy that Lincoln followed. On May 19 a delegation from the convention, headed by George Ashmun of Massachusetts, came to his house in Springfield to notify him of his nomination. Initially the interview was very stiff. Only a few of the delegates had ever seen their candidate before, and they were startled by his appearance. Lincoln was tense because he and Mary had just had a quarrel over whether liquor should be served to the visitors—as it certainly would have been at her father’s mansion in Kentucky. But Lincoln knew the strength of the temperance movement and insisted on offering only ice water. As he explained a little later, “Having kept house sixteen years, and having never held the ‘cup’ to the lips of my friends then, my judgment was that I should not, in my new position, change my habit in this respect.” After Ashmun read the notice of his nomination, he responded cautiously that he needed more time fully to consider the platform—and in fact did not formally accept until four days later. To keep the meeting from being a fiasco, Lincoln resorted to a gambit he was frequently to employ in the White House. Singling out the lanky Pennsylvania delegate, William D. Kelley, he asked how tall he was.
“Six feet three,” was the answer.
“I beat you,” chuckled Lincoln. “I am six feet four without my high-heeled boots.”
“Pennsylvania bows to Illinois,” Kelley responded in a courtly fashion. “I am glad that we have found a candidate for the Presidency whom we can look up to.”
As the visitors began to relax, they moved into the adjoining parlor to meet Mrs. Lincoln. She was such a charming conversationalist, in the Southern style, that Ashmun reported, “I shall be proud, as an American citizen, when the day brings her to grace the White House.”
Most of Lincoln’s encounters in the months between his nomination and the election were equally content-free. Now that he was a celebrity, everybody wanted to see him, and the number of visitors became too great to be handled at the house on Eighth and Jackson Streets, especially after Willie fell ill with scarlet fever. Gladly Lincoln accepted the invitation of Governor John Wood to use his office in the state capitol. He worked there daily during the summer. Nicolay, who was paid $75 a month from a fund contributed by ten of Lincoln’s wealthy Springfield friends, served as his secretary and assistant.
Most of Lincoln’s correspondence was of the usual but necessary inconsequential sort expected of public men. He had to make gracious acknowledgment of the hundreds of letters of congratulations he received. There were so many applications for autographs that he prepared a standard reply: “You request an autograph, and here it is. Yours truly A. Lincoln.” He had politely to acknowledge election as honorary member of the Washington Agricultural Literary Society of the Farm School in Pennsylvania (later Pennsylvania State College) and to accept a “Chair of State,” made of thirty-four different kinds of wood, each representing a state of the Union. Knox College, which had been the home of one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, conferred on him the LL.D. degree, with the implication, as Browning joked, that he should thereafter “consider yourself a ‘scholar,’ as well as a ‘gentleman,’ and deport yourself accordingly.”
Much of Lincoln’s time was occupied in attempting to satisfy the enormous public curiosity about a candidate whose career was not widely known outside his own state. There was uncertainty about his first name, and he had to assure even Ashmun that he was “Abraham,” rather than “Abram.” Photographers flocked to Springfield to take his picture. The most successful was Alexander Hesler of Chicago, whose sharply defined prints gave, as Lincoln said, “a very fair representation of my homely face”; they showed Lincoln at the height of his powers and captured, as no other photographs ever did, the peculiar curve of his lower lip, the mole on his right cheek, and the distinctive way he held his head. But most photographers found it hard to take a good picture of the candidate whose face in repose showed such harsh lines that it looked like a mask, and their cameras could not catch the light that flashed in his eyes and the smile that animated his face when he was conversing or telling a story. Several artists also came to Springfield to paint his portrait, and Lincoln uncomplainingly sat for them. To combat the general impression in the East that Lincoln was a very ugly man, Judge John M. Read of Pennsylvania commissioned John Henry Brown to paint a miniature that would be “good-looking whether the original would justify it or not.” The distinguished artist Thomas Hicks completed a romantic portrait, which Lincoln said would “give the people of the East... a correct idea of how I look at home I think the picture has a somewhat pleasanter expression than I usually have, but that, perhaps, is not an objection.”
Along with Lincoln’s portrait, people clamored for facts about his life. Requests for biographical information became so numerous that Lincoln drafted a form reply for Nicolay to send out: “Applications of this class are so numerous that it is simply impossible for him to attend to them.” Hardly was the Chicago convention over before campaign biographies of Lincoln and Hamlin were announced. Probably the earliest to be published was the anonymous Life, Speeches and Public Services of Abram [sic] Lincoln, Together with a Sketch of the Life of Hannibal Hamlin, issued, in “The Wigwam Edition,” by Rudd & Carleton in New York by June 2. Others quickly followed. The most significant, because of its authorship, was by William Dean Howells, which relied in considerable part on interviews that his research assistant, James Quay Howard, conducted in Springfield. Howard himself published another biography. Of greater lasting merit was a Life of Lincoln, by John Locke Scripps, an editor of the Chicago Press and Tribune, which was based on an extensive autobiographical sketch that Lincoln gave him. In all perhaps 100,000 to 200,000 of such campaign biographies were distributed.
Part of Lincoln’s time was spent in attempting damage control of rumors about his record. Opponents whispered that he was a deist and a duelist. Stories of his stand
on the Mexican War were resurrected, with charges that he failed to vote for supplies to the American army in the field. He was charged with slandering the memory of Thomas Jefferson by accusing him of “puling about liberty, equality, and the degrading curse of slavery” while selling off his own children into slavery. A report surfaced that Lincoln had attended a Know Nothing lodge in Quincy. All these Lincoln painstakingly refuted in private letters, cautioning his correspondents not to get him involved in controversy. “Our adversaries think they can gain a point, if they could force me to openly deny this charge,” he explained to one. “For this reason, it must not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the charge.”
Forbidden by the unanimous advice of his friends from taking any public role in the canvass, Lincoln followed the campaign closely. After June, when the Democratic party split, with the Northern wing of the party nominating Douglas and the Southerners nominating John C. Breckinridge, he had little doubt that the Republicans would win the presidential election if the discordant and rival elements that composed the party could work together. He spent much time attempting to conciliate the rival factions in Pennsylvania, headed by Senator Cameron and Andrew G. Curtin, the Republican candidate for governor. Because that state was so crucial, he tried to impress on both the soundness of his record on the tariff, going so far as to send a collection.of snippets from his addresses during the 1840s showing that he favored protection. Aware that Seward’s followers were disgruntled because of his defeat in Chicago, Lincoln sent word to New Yorkers through David Davis that he “neither is nor will be... committed to any man, clique, or faction; and that... it will be his pleasure ... to deal fairly with all.” Again and again, he pledged that if elected his slogan would be “Justice and fairness to all.” In welcoming visitors to Springfield and in writing letters, he firmly refused to make any distinction between Republicans who had supported his candidacy before Chicago and those who had favored other candidates. “I go not back of the convention,” he explained to Carl Schurz, who had backed Seward, “to make distinctions among its’ members.” “You distinguish between yourself and my original friends,” he told Schuyler Colfax, the glib young Indiana politician who had supported Bates; that was “a distinction which, by your leave, I propose to forget.”
Despite all the visitors and all the correspondence, Lincoln found life as a presidential candidate confining. He rarely went to the law office these days, and when Herndon dropped in on his partner in the state capitol, he found his partner “bored—bored badly,’ and exclaimed to Trumbull, “Good gracious, I would not have his place and be bored as he is.”
Lincoln’s one public appearance during the campaign was at a giant rally in Springfield in August, where he expected simply to see the people and to allow himself to be seen. Entreated to address the crowd, he reiterated his policy: “It has been my purpose, since I have been placed in my present position, to make no speeches.” So enthusiastic was his reception that, when he got ready to leave, the crowd at the fairgrounds surrounded his carriage, broke through the top, and came near to smothering him. He escaped only when a friend backed his horse next to the carriage, pulled Lincoln out, “slipped him over the horses tail on to the saddle [and] led the horse to town.”
Occasionally Lincoln thought of taking a more active role in the campaign, imitating Douglas, who was flouting precedent and making stump speeches in behalf of his candidacy. When Seward, who recovered from his momentary pique, went on a barnstorming tour of the West for the Republican ticket, Lincoln momentarily thought of going to Chicago to meet him, but friends persuaded him that he must not appear to be following the chariot wheels of the senator’s triumphant procession. He remained at home, but when Seward passed through Springfield, the two men had a brief chat. Restive, Lincoln even considered, improbably enough, accepting an invitation to speak at a horse show in Springfield, Massachusetts, perhaps because the trip would allow him to visit Robert, who had just been admitted to Harvard College. But his friends convinced him that such a trip would be viewed as “evidence of Republican alarm,” and he dropped the idea.
Necessarily, then, Lincoln was largely isolated from the hurly-burly of the campaign. He had little to do with the gigantic rallies Republicans held in most Northern cities, with the innumerable processions of young Republican “Wide-Awakes” clad in black oilcloth capes and caps, bearing rails surmounted by torches. He could only watch the exhibitions put on by Republican paramilitary groups, like the Zouave company recruited and drilled by his young friend Elmer Ellsworth, who was supposed to be reading law in the Lincoln & Herndon office. Such “parades, and shows, and monster meetings,” Lincoln confessed, were not much to his liking anyway; it was the “dry, and irksome labor” of organizing precincts and getting out the voters that determined elections.
Impatiently Lincoln awaited the returns from the October state elections, especially in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. The news of Republican victories in all three states confirmed the brilliance of the party campaign strategy. The returns—which would be closely paralleled in the general election a month later—showed that the Republicans by disavowing immigration restrictions had succeeded in holding on to a fair share of the foreign-born vote, especially among younger, Protestant voters. More important, they demonstrated that in nominating Lincoln, who had taken pains not to attack the Know Nothings publicly, the party was able to win most of the voters who had supported Fillmore in 1856. And, finally, they proved that, despite Lincoln’s personal lack of interest, the Wide-Awake clubs, with their frequent meetings, organized drills, and processions, stimulated immense enthusiasm on the part of younger voters, many of whom cast their first ballots in this election. It was appropriate for the victory to be celebrated by a parade of the Springfield Wide-Awakes to Lincoln’s house, where, standing on the doorstep surrounded by friends, he bowed silent acknowledgment of their applause. The next day he wrote Seward: “It now really looks as if the Government is about to fall into our hands. Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana have surpassed all expectation.”
Now all that was needed was to avoid any missteps during the remaining weeks before the general election on November 6. Silence was his best policy, because any new statement, or restatement, of his views would lead to “new misrepresentations” by opponents. To one worried adviser he gave assurance: “Allow me to beg that you will not live in much apprehension of my precipitating a letter upon the public.”
On election day Herndon went to Lincoln’s office in the state capitol and urged his partner to vote. Initially reluctant, Lincoln was persuaded that his ballot might be important in the state elections, and he cut off the top of the sheet, listing the presidential electors, so that he would not be voting for himself. Then, accompanied by Herndon and escorted on one side by Lamon and on the other by Ellsworth, he went to the polls. Republicans yelled and shouted as he approached and again after he cast his ballot. Even Democrats, who were proud of their local celebrity, respectfully raised their hats.
That evening Lincoln joined fellow Republicans who crowded the capitol to hear the returns, relayed from the telegraph office. Illinois went Republican, then Indiana, and the ticket did well in the other Western states. But there was still no news from the critical Eastern states, and Lincoln, Dubois, Hatch, and one or two others walked over to the telegraph office. Not until after ten o’clock did reports come in of Republican victories in Pennsylvania. While they were awaiting the news from New York, the party was invited to Watson’s Saloon, where the Republican ladies who had taken it over for the night were serving supper. When Lincoln entered the room, the women greeted him: “How do you do, Mr. President!” After eating, Lincoln stayed on at the telegraph office until about two o’clock, when the news that his party had carried New York made his election certain. “I went home, but not to get much sleep,” he remembered, “for I then felt as I never had before, the responsibility that was upon me.”
It was days before the exact measure of his victor
y could be determined. When the final tally was made, the Republican ticket received 1,866,452 votes to 1,376,957 for Douglas, 849,781 for Breckinridge, and 588,879 for Bell. With less than 40 percent of the popular vote, the Lincoln and Hamlin ticket won 180 votes in the electoral college to 72 for Breckinridge, 39 for Bell, and 12 for Douglas. The Republican ticket carried all but one of the free states and divided that one—New Jersey—with Douglas. Douglas, despite his large popular vote, won only the Missouri and part of the New Jersey electoral vote. Bell’s strength was in the states of the upper South—Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Breckinridge won in all the other slave states. It was ominous that Lincoln and Hamlin received not a single vote in ten of the Southern states.
In the days before the election, as Republican victory seemed increasingly likely, Lincoln’s basic pessimism reemerged as he began fully to realize that a campaign initially undertaken primarily for local political reasons was going to place him in the White House. Just a few days before the election he remarked to a New York caller: “I declare to you this morning, General, that for personal considerations I would rather have a full term in the Senate—a place in which I would feel more consciously able to discharge the duties required, and where there is more chance to make a reputation, and less danger of losing it—than four years of the presidency.”
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