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 th
e 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. Th
ough 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.