Republicans drew further cheer from more immediate political developments, as the Democrats, meeting in April at their own convention in Charleston, appeared to take a large stride toward self-destruction. The capital of secessionism was not a propitious venue in which to apply balm to the wounds, still raw, inflicted by the Douglas-Buchanan quarrel. Battle lines were drawn over the party’s platform, with the southern-rights men demanding federal protection of slavery in the territories, and Douglasites standing by popular sovereignty and the rulings of the Supreme Court. Their version of the platform rejected, William L. Yancey of Alabama and several other delegates from the Deep South withdrew. Unable to agree on a presidential candidate, the convention adjourned on May 3.
Republican strategists were determined to guard against complacency. Few considered their opponents a spent force, even after Charleston. If, as Edward Pierce believed, “[t]here was a fair chance . . . that the Democrats would rally and unite,” then Douglas would be the likely leader.29 If, on the other hand, the party remained split, Douglas would certainly be a candidate, and his divorce from southern radicals would strengthen him with northern voters. Either way, Republicans needed a presidential candidate who would not be politically dwarfed by comparisons with the Little Giant. The party also had to have confidence that its presidential nominee could win in every one of the battleground, or “doubtful,” states. This was a need made all the more pertinent by the banding together in Baltimore, just a week before the Chicago convention, of the residual elements of old-line Whiggery and the American party. Calling themselves the Constitutional Union party, and standing on a general Unionist platform, they nominated the border-state politician John Bell as president and the urbane Edward Everett of Massachusetts as his running mate. Their full vote-pulling power remained an imponderable, but their special appeal would undoubtedly lie with those conservative voters in the lower North—the southernmost tier of free states—who had held out against Frémont in 1856.
Lincoln was just one of a clutch of possible nominees whose names decorated editorial columns on the eve of the convention. A double-page lithograph in Harper’s Weekly carried Brady’s portrait of him, along with representations of ten other hopefuls. Seward took pride of place, as befitted his national standing and status as the party’s front-runner. In recent months the senator from New York had worked hard to strengthen his chances by softening his reputation for radicalism. In earlier speeches he had used phrases which (in the case of “the higher law”) seemed to put the promptings of conscience before constitutional obligation and which (when he was discussing “the irrepressible conflict”) seemed to invite a violent, frontal assault on the South. In fact, Seward was no ideologue; rather, he and his skillful manager, Thurlow Weed, were supremely practical politicians. To reassure the moderate center of the party, he spoke in the Senate at the end of February, disavowing sectionalism, breathing an emollient Unionism, and repudiating John Brown. But party strategists remained unclear about Seward’s ability to capture the battleground states of the lower North, an uncertainty reinforced by the strength there of former Know-Nothings: nativists had not stopped castigating Seward as the traitor to Protestantism who, as governor of New York, had supported Roman Catholics’ campaign for a share of public funds for their parochial schools. A further question mark hung over how far Seward would be damaged by his association with Weed’s notorious political machine.30
Seward’s perceived weaknesses gave grounds for hope to his chief rivals, most notably Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, John McLean, and Simon Cameron. Yet each of these was open to equally powerful objections. Chase’s position on the Fugitive Slave Law made him even more of a radical than Seward, with all that that implied for contesting the battleground states. Nor was he helped by his reputation as a free-trader and a friend of the foreign-born. Openly too ambitious for his own good, he lacked an organization and overestimated his support, which was not solid even in his own state of Ohio. Bates, a cultured, conservative former Whig lawyer from the slave state of Missouri, enjoyed the backing of Greeley’s Tribune and of several tacticians in the lower North, where it was thought he could swing the vote. But he was less benefited by his dependable Unionism than he was weakened by his open identification with nativism, his accommodation to the slaveholding institutions amongst which he had always lived, and his very belated conversion to the Republicans. A western leader caustically remarked, “I go in for electing; but why go in to the bowels of Niggerdom for a candidate?”31
Justice McLean of the United States Supreme Court was a more attractive proposition: although a conservative, he had been seriously considered for the Republican presidential nomination in 1856 and had since issued a dissenting judgment in the Dred Scott case. His chances in the “doubtful” states were good. But because he was seventy-five, his age became a persisting concern: “I will not go into the cemetery or catacomb,” Fitz-Henry Warren, an Iowa Republican, declared. “The candidate must be alive and able to walk at least from the parlor into the dining room.”32 Cameron’s strength derived from his connections as a U.S. senator and a wealthy political boss in a strategically critical state, Pennsylvania. However, his reputation for corruption and lack of scruple, and his doubtful pedigree as a former Democrat and Know-Nothing, blighted his appeal and prevented his building significant support outside his home state.33
By contrast with these better-known aspirants, Lincoln looked far less likely to antagonize the party’s critical interest groups. There was enough in his brand of moderate Republicanism to accommodate the aspirations and concerns of a broad range of opinion. Conservative Republicans took heart from his loyalty to the values of Clayite Whiggery, his reverence for the Union, his constitutional respect for the Fugitive Slave Law and southerners’ property rights, his disavowal of higher-law doctrine, and his avoidance of the moral strictures on southern sinfulness which characterized so much abolitionist rhetoric. Yet Lincoln was also well placed to reach out to the more radical elements in his party, several of whom, including Giddings, had confidence in him. His House Divided speech and later speeches told of resolution in confronting the slave power, ending the spread of slavery, and eventually choking it to death. Though not ready to use federal power to attack slavery directly, preferring instead to wait on events, he—as the historian Eric Foner has noted—“shared the radicals’ sublime confidence that they were on the side of history.”34 Like them, he spoke a language of moral revulsion and, along with other moderates, ensured that in 1860 the party found its center of gravity closer to the radical than the conservative position.
Equally, Lincoln had cleverly positioned himself to be acceptable to both the foreign-born and the nativists. Convinced that principle and pragmatism demanded the party embrace the sizable immigrant population of the Northwest, especially the German-Americans, Lincoln had joined in 1859 with Gustave Koerner, Norman Judd, and other leading Illinois Republicans to repudiate the Massachusetts naturalization law. Notably, he wrote to Theodore Canisius, the publisher of the Illinois Staats-Anzeiger: “Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them. I have some little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed condition of the negro; and I should be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands, and speaking different languages from myself.” Shortly afterward, when the Staats-Anzeiger was about to fold, Lincoln secretly bought it, leaving Canisius as the contracted editor provided he championed the Republicans.35 By the eve of the Chicago convention, Lincoln enjoyed the support of a range of German-American leaders, both within and beyond Illinois. Unlike Seward, however, he had not earned the enmity of the nativists. He had taken care, at the height of Know-Nothing fervor in the mid-1850s, not to lambaste them publicly, keeping his criticisms private.
Lincoln offered the party a useful blend of freshness and proven ability. He had reputation enough to be kno
wn as a highly effective opponent of Douglas and popular sovereignty, but his relative unfamiliarity on the national stage would allow campaign image-makers to fashion him into a Republican “type”—a westerner, rail splitter, and incorruptible man of the people. His lack of experience in national and executive office counted for less than his record of electoral success. As the various summaries of his life stressed, he had never been “beaten by the people” since his one and only defeat, as a candidate for the state legislature in 1832; only self-sacrificial magnanimity had thwarted his Senate bid in 1855, as had unequal electoral apportionment in 1858.36
Lincoln used the weeks before the national convention quietly to impress members of the out-of-state delegations. In the main he and his advisers negotiated shrewdly. They knew that for Lincoln to be promoted in status from favorite son to the “stop-Seward” candidate, around whom the battleground states could realistically unite, he had to be able to show real support outside Illinois. Taking encouragement from friendly correspondents in Ohio and Indiana, Lincoln delicately and confidentially set out his strategy. “My name is new in the field; and I suppose I am not the first choice of a very great many,” he conceded in late March. “Our policy, then, is 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.” A month later, he could tell Richard M. Corwine, a Republican lawyer from Ohio: “Everywhere, except in Illinois, and possibly Indiana, one or another is prefered to me, but there is no positive objection.”37 Throughout he carefully said nothing to the personal detriment of other candidates, yet he was quick to note their respective electoral weaknesses and was far from squeamish in sanctioning early discussions between his advisers and unpledged delegates on arrival in Chicago.
Lincoln itched to be at the convention, but knew it was improper to attend. He was, he said, “almost too much of a candidate to go, and not quite enough to stay at home.”38 His fate would be out of his hands, but he could depend on a devoted team of delegates. They were led by the massive and formidable David Davis. Made up of Lincoln’s long-standing professional friends and political associates, including Judd, Palmer, Fell, Ozias M. Hatch, Jesse K. Dubois, Swett, and Herndon, the group set aside their personal feuds and over five or six days worked themselves to exhaustion. Seward, they judged, could rely firmly on the support of over 150 of the convention’s 450 or so voting delegates. Yet they not only stopped the well-placed front-runner but secured the crown for their own man. It was a brilliant and by no means inevitable achievement, the result in part of contingent circumstances but also of the Republican leadership’s rational calculation of the party’s best electoral interests.
First, the convention’s location gave Lincoln a distinct advantage. The national committee had met in the previous December and at Judd’s disingenuous prompting had chosen Chicago, deeming it a neutral site which would favor neither Seward nor any of the other prominent contenders. The burgeoning young city, a railroad hub and center of the grain trade, was confidently Republican. Lincoln clubs had been active for weeks, and the Press and Tribune (though not Wentworth’s Democrat) was emphatic for Lincoln. During the week of the convention the city’s 100,000 inhabitants played host to tens of thousands of visitors, mainly Lincoln’s supporters ferried in at the excursion rate that Judd had negotiated. Lincolnites would pack the specially constructed gigantic wooden Wigwam on the day of nomination.
Second, the tactics adopted by Lincoln’s men served him admirably. Davis’s team were determined to antagonize no one in their tailored conversations with various state delegations. They extolled their friend’s positive attributes: his character and abilities, his romantic progress from humble origins, his potential as a candidate, and his fixed but unthreatening commitment to nonextension. The legend later developed that Davis and his men supplemented this sweet-talking with offers of government positions and even cabinet posts in exchange for pledges. This may have been true in the case of the Pennsylvania delegates after the first ballot: in response to the demand that Cameron be made secretary of the treasury, Davis made an offer, but one which was vague enough to be true to the letter of Lincoln’s express instruction: “Make no contracts that will bind me.”39 In the main, though, Lincoln’s men had no need to resort to bribes. Rather, they appealed to the hard electoral logic which made Lincoln the party’s most astute choice.
In baldly asserting that Seward was too dangerous for the battleground states they simply joined a larger chorus which included Greeley, who masked his personal grudge against a former ally by insistent appeals to pragmatism, and Henry S. Lane of Indiana and Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania, both of them gubernatorial candidates in states where Republicans had yet to occupy the governor’s mansion. Former Democrats also worked keenly to block Seward’s nomination. The virus of doubt began to affect even delegates from New England, where Seward was assumed to be strong. Their anxieties were encouraged by Gideon Welles of Connecticut and Hannibal Hamlin, who insisted that his Maine cadre at Chicago secure a candidate who could carry the lower North.
If not Seward, then who? Certainly not Chase, whose radicalism made him just as unattractive to the doubtful states. There the likeliest options had for some time seemed to be Bates and McLean, their names more recently joined by Lincoln’s. Only three of these four states had favorite sons who would enjoy their delegations’ support on the first ballot at least: these were Cameron of Pennsylvania, Dayton of New Jersey, and Lincoln of Illinois. Indiana lacked a home candidate: its votes on the first ballot would thus be crucial. Davis and Dubois met some of the Indiana delegates promptly on arrival. They pushed at an open door, helped by the influential Caleb B. Smith, Lincoln’s close Indiana friend from their days as Whig congressmen in 1848. Two days before the convention’s formal opening, the Indiana delegation declared that it would vote unanimously for Lincoln on the first ballot. Its numbers, when added to Illinois’s, would put Lincoln well ahead of Bates and McLean.40
Davis’s strategy was falling into place. “Our programme,” Swett later explained, “was to give Lincoln 100 votes on the first ballot, with a certain increase afterwards, so that in the doubtful Convention our fortunes might seem to be rising, and thus catch the doubtful.” The next step was to secure from the other two battleground states the promise of support on the second ballot. On the eve of voting, Davis, Caleb Smith, and a few others met with a similar number from Pennsylvania and New Jersey to agree on a candidate. Though factionalism between the Curtin-McClure and the Cameron elements delayed Pennsylvania’s final endorsement until the next morning, a clearheaded determination to stop Seward carried the day, helped by a vague pledge about a job for Cameron.41
The groundwork laid, the Illinois delegates gathered in the Wigwam on the morning of Friday, May 18. Much has been made of the care with which Judd and others stage-managed the occasion to Lincoln’s advantage. Seating the delegations so that the New Yorkers and other Sewardites were sealed off from the swing voters certainly did no harm. Nor did packing the audience with local Lincolnites and engaging the stentorian Dr. Ames of Chicago (whose voice was reputed to carry across Lake Michigan on a clear day) to lead the Lincoln yell. If impulsive action had been needed to overcome doubts about Lincoln’s nomination, then the Wigwam’s high-decibel solidarity behind their favorite Illinoisan would surely have provided it. But fundamentally it was rational political logic, not manufactured excitement, that drove Lincoln’s cause to its successful climax.
On the first ballot Seward led, as expected, but there were straws in the wind. Instead of sweeping New England, which should have been a bastion of his strength, he yielded New Hampshire to Lincoln, who also took votes in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Seward also did less well than expected in the slave states of Virginia and Kentucky, where Lincoln won a majority. The New Yorker’s 1731⁄2 votes, 60 short of what was needed, put him clearly ahead. But in taking the entire Indiana and Illinois vote, and winning more than a scattering elsewhere, Linco
ln reached a total of 102, over twice the strength of any one of the other anti-Seward candidates: Cameron (501⁄2), Chase (49), Bates (48), and McLean (12). A second round of balloting promptly followed. Lincoln continued to advance in New England. When Vermont gave him its entire ten votes, the Sewardites “started as if an Orsini bomb had exploded.”42 More dramatic still, Pennsylvania withdrew Cameron’s name and gave most of its vote to Lincoln, who also made gains in Ohio and Iowa. By the end of this round, Seward had advanced only modestly, to 1841⁄2; Lincoln stood just three and half votes behind; Chase and Bates fell further back.
Lincoln himself had spent the early part of the day playing fives, a favorite ball game, and then moved between the telegraph office, his law office, and the office of the Illinois State Journal. After the first two ballots he could see the way the tide was running. Eventually news arrived of the third and final ballot. Seward’s support had held steady, but Lincoln, picking up conservative votes in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, had passed the threshold of 233, thanks to four votes from Chase’s Ohio, and Seward’s men had then moved to make the vote unanimous. Lincoln, one of his companions that morning recalled, reacted “with apparent coolness,” but “a close observer Could detect Strong emotions within.” He jestingly told well-wishers to shake his hand while they had the chance, since “honors elevate some men.” He set off home, saying: “Well gentlemen there is a little woman at our house who is probably more interested in this dispatch than I am.”43
Lincoln’s supporters in Chicago showed rather less self-control. His exhausted managers wept. An Iowan, Charles C. Nourse, shrieked in rapture: “We have nominated the best man in the country for President and beaten that New York crowd of wire pullers. Why shouldn’t we shout? . . . Whoop!” Still, high emotion notwithstanding, the delegates’ choice of candidate had been driven by rational consideration of electoral need—as, indeed, was their subsequent nomination for the vice presidency of Hannibal Hamlin, who, as a New Englander and ex-Democrat, would balance a ticket headed by a westerner and former Whig. America’s new mass democratic forms had put a premium on the electable, or “available,” candidate. A sequence of nominations (Harrison, Polk, Taylor, Pierce, and Frémont) in every presidential race since 1840 had shown that national political standing and proven executive ability came in a poor second to supposed electoral “availability.” Eighteen sixty was not the first time that the actions of a nominating convention prompted surprise bordering on disbelief within Washington’s political circles. In Chicago, however, once Republican delegates had concluded that Seward was too risky a choice, there was no such incredulity. Lincoln emerged, as the radical Edward Pierce explained, as “the only candidate truly reliable who would not, like Seward and Chase, encounter conservative prejudices.”44
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power Page 16