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, sle
ep 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.