Causes of Lincoln’s Nomination to the Presidency—His Lectures in New York, &c.—The first Nomination and the Fence Rails—The Nomination at Chicago—Elected President—Office-seekers and Appointments—Lincoln’s Impartiality—The South determined to Secede—Fears for Lincoln’s Life.

It is an almost invariable law of stern equity in the United States, as it must be in all true republics, that the citizen who has distinguished himself by great services must not expect really great rewards. The celebrity which he has gained seems, in a commonwealth, where all are ambitious of distinction, to be sufficient recompense. It is true that at times some overwhelming favourite, generally a military hero, is made an exception; but there are few very ambitious civilians who do not realise that a prophet is without great honour in his own country. Other instances may occur where aspiring men have carefully concealed their hopes, and of such was Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps his case is best stated by Lamon, who declares that he had all the requisites of an available candidate for the Presidency, chiefly because he had not been sufficiently prominent in national politics to excite the jealousies of powerful rivals. In order to defeat one another, these rivals will put forward some comparatively unknown man, and thus Lincoln was greatly indebted to the jealousy with which Horace Greeley, a New York politician, regarded his rival, W. H. Seward. Lincoln’s abilities were very great, “but he knew that becoming modesty in a great man was about as needful as anything else.” Therefore, when his friend Pickett suggested that he might aspire to the Chief Magistracy, he replied, “I do not think I am fit for the Presidency.”

But he had friends who thought differently, and in the winter of 1859, Jackson Grimshaw, Mr. Hatch, the Secretary of State, and Messrs. Bushnell, Judd, and Peck, held a meeting, and, after a little persuasion, induced Lincoln to allow them to put him forward as a candidate for the great office. In October, 1859, Lincoln received an invitation from a committee of citizens to give a lecture in New York.27 He was much pleased with this intimation that he was well known in “the East,” and wrote out with great care a political address, which, when delivered, was warmly praised by the newspapers, one of which, the “Tribune,” edited by Horace Greeley, declared that no man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience. The subject of the discourse was most logical, vigorous, and masterly comment upon an assertion which Judge Douglas had made, to the effect that the framers of the Constitution had understood and approved of slavery. No better vindication of the rights of the Republican party to be considered as expressing and carrying out in all respects the opinions of Washington and of the framers of the Constitution, was ever set forth. From New York he went to New England, lecturing in many cities, and everywhere verifying what was said of him in the “Manchester Mirror,” that he spoke with great fairness, candour, and with wonderful interest. “He did not abuse the South, the Administration, or the Democrats. He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable, yet he wins your attention and good-will from the start. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen, and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his arguments—not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into his train of belief persons who were opposed to him. For the first half-hour his opponents would agree with every word he uttered, and from that point he began to lead them off, little by little, until it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold.”

Lincoln was now approaching with great rapidity the summit of his wishes. On May 9th and 10th the Republican State Convention met at Springfield for the purpose of nominating a candidate for the Presidency, and it is said that Lincoln did not appear to have had any idea that any business relative to himself was to be transacted. For it is unquestionable that, while very ambitious, he was at the same time remarkably modest. When he went to lecture in New York, and the press reporters asked him for “slips,” or copies of his speech, he was astonished, not feeling sure whether the newspapers would care to publish it. At this Convention, he was “sitting on his heels” in a back part of the room, and the Governor of Illinois, as soon as the meeting was organised, rose and said—“I am informed that a distinguished citizen of Illinois, and one whom Illinois will ever delight to honour, is present, and I wish to move that this body invite him to a seat on the stand.” And, pausing, he exclaimed, “Abraham Lincoln.” There was tremendous applause, and the mob seizing Lincoln, raised him in their arms, and bore him, sturdily resisting, to the platform. A gentleman who was present said—“I then thought him one of the most diffident and worst-plagued men I ever saw.” The next proceeding was most amusing and characteristic, it being the entrance of “Old John Hanks,” with two fence-rails bearing the inscription—Two Rails from a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks in the Sangamon bottom in the year 1830. The end was that Lincoln was the declared candidate of his state for the Presidency.

But there were other candidates from other states, and at the great Convention in Chicago, on May 16th, there was as fierce intriguing and as much shrewdness shown as ever attended the election of a Pope. After publishing the “platform,” or declaration of the principles of the Republican party—which was in the main a stern denunciation of all further extension of slavery—with a declaration in favour of protection, the rights of foreign citizens, and a Pacific railroad, the Convention proceeded to the main business. It was soon apparent that the real strife lay between W. H. Seward, of New York, and Abraham Lincoln. It would avail little to expose all the influences of trickery and enmity resorted to by the friends of either candidate on this occasion—suffice it to say that, eventually, Lincoln received the nomination, which was the prelude to the most eventful election ever witnessed in America. What followed has been well described by Lamon.

“All that day, and all the day previous, Mr. Lincoln was at Springfield, trying to behave as usual, but watching, with nervous anxiety, the proceedings of the Convention as they were reported by telegraph. On both days he played a great deal at fives in a ball-alley. It is probable that he took this physical mode of working off or keeping down the excitement that threatened to possess him. About nine o’clock in the morning, Mr. Lincoln came to the office of Lincoln and Herndon. Mr. Baker entered, with a telegram which said the names of the candidates had been announced, and that Mr. Lincoln’s had been received with more applause than any other. When the news of the first ballot came over the wire, it was apparent to all present that Mr. Lincoln thought it very favourable. He believed if Mr. Seward failed to get the nomination, or to come very near it, on the first ballot, he would fail altogether. Presently, news of the second ballot arrived, and then Mr. Lincoln showed by his manner that he considered the contest no longer doubtful. ‘I’ve got him,’ said he. When the decisive despatch at length arrived, there was great commotion. Mr. Lincoln seemed to be calm, but a close observer could detect in his countenance the indications of deep emotion. In the meantime, cheers for Lincoln swelled up from the streets, and began to be heard through the town. Some one remarked, ‘Mr. Lincoln, I suppose now we will soon have a book containing your life.’ ‘There is not much,’ he replied, ‘in my past life about which to write a book, as it seems to me.’ Having received the hearty congratulations of the company in the office, he descended to the street, where he was immediately surrounded by Irish and American citizens; and, so long as he was willing to receive it, there was great hand-shaking and felicitating. ‘Gentlemen,’ said the great man, with a happy twinkle in his eye, ‘you had better come up and shake my hand while you can; honours elevate some men, you know.’ But he soon bethought him of a person who was of more importance to him than all this crowd. Looking towards his house, he said—‘Well, gentlemen, there is a little short woman at our house who is probably more interested in this despatch than I am; and, if you will excuse me, I will take it up and let her see it.’”

The division caused by Douglas in the Democratic party to further his own personal ambition, utterly destroyed its power for a long time. The result was a division—one convention nominating Judge Douglas for the Presidency, with Mr. Johnson, of Georgia, as Vice-President; and the other, John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, with Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for the second office. Still another party, the Constitutional Union party, nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, for President and Vice-President. Thus there were four rival armies in the political field, soon to be merged into two in real strife. On Nov. 6th, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States, receiving 1,857,610 votes; Douglas had 1,291,574; Breckinridge, 850,082; Bell, 646,124. Of all the votes really cast, there was a majority of 930,170 against Lincoln—a fact which was afterwards continually urged by the Southern party, which called him the Minority President. But when the electors who are chosen to elect the President met, they gave Lincoln 180 votes; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 30; while Douglas, who might, beyond question, have been the successful candidate had he been less crafty, received only 12. The strife between him and Lincoln had been like that between the giant and the hero in the Norse mythology, wherein the two gave to each other riddles, on the successful answers to which their lives depended. Judge Douglas strove to entrap Lincoln with a long series of questions which were easily eluded, but one was demanded of the questioner himself, and the answer he gave to it proved his destruction.

The immediate result of Lincoln’s election was such a rush of hungry politicians seeking office as had never before been witnessed. As every appointment in the United States, from the smallest post-office to a Secretaryship, is in the direct gift of the President, the newly-elected found himself attacked by thousands of place-hunters, ready to prove that they were the most deserving men in the world for reward; and if they did not, as “Artemus Ward” declares, come down the chimneys of the White House to interview him, they at least besieged him with such pertinacity, and made him so thoroughly wretched, that he is said to have at last replied to one man who insisted that it was really to his exertions that the President owed his election—“If that be so, I wonder you are not ashamed to look me in the face for getting me into such an abominable situation.”

From his own good nature, and from a sincere desire to really deserve his popular name of Honest Old Abe, Lincoln determined to appoint the best men to office, irrespective of party. Hoping against hope to preserve the Union, he would have given place in his Cabinet to Southern Democrats as well as to Northern Republicans. But as soon as it was understood that he was elected, and that the country would have a President opposed to the extension of slavery, the South began to prepare to leave the Union, and for war. It was in vain that Lincoln and the great majority of his party made it clear as possible that, rather than see the country destroyed by war and by disunion, they would leave slavery as it was. This did not suit the views of the “rule-or-ruin” party of the South; and as secession from the Federal Union became a fixed fact, their entire press and all their politicians declared that their object was not merely to build up a Southern Confederacy, but to legislate so as to destroy the industry of the North, and break the old Union into a thousand conflicting independent governments. Therefore, Lincoln, in intending to offer seats in the Cabinet to Alexander H. Stephens, James Guthrie, of Kentucky, and John A. Gilmer, of North Carolina, made—if sincere—a great mistake, though one in every way creditable to his heart and his courtesy. The truth was, that the South had for four years unanimously determined to secede, and was actually seceding; while the North, which had gone beyond the extreme limits of endurance and of justice itself to conciliate the South, could not believe that fellow-countrymen and brothers seriously intended war. For it was predetermined and announced by the Southern press that, unless the Federal Government would make concessions beyond all reason, and put itself in the position of a disgraced and conquered state, there must be war.

As the terrible darkness began to gather, and the storm-signals to appear, Lincoln sought for temporary relief in visiting his stepmother and other old friends and relatives in Coles County. The meeting with her whom he had always regarded as his mother was very touching; it was the more affecting because she, to whom he was the dearest on earth, was under an impression, which time rendered prophetic, that he would, as President, be assassinated. This anticipation spread among his friends, who vied with one another in gloomy suggestions of many forms of murder—while one very zealous prophet, who had fixed on poison as the means by which Lincoln would die, urged him to take as a cook from home “one among his own female friends.”