One week after the Democratic National Convention had adjourned in tatters, the Illinois Republican Party held a nominating convention of its own. The convention, in Decatur, was controlled from the start by Abraham Lincoln’s battle-tested political lieutenants—David Davis, Norman Judd, “Long John” Wentworth, Ward Hill Lamon, John M. Palmer, Richard Yates, Joseph Medill, and others. Its primary purpose was to select a candidate for governor, but its larger—if necessarily hidden—agenda was to endorse a candidate for president. For appearances’ sake, Lincoln could not be seen openly politicking for such an endorsement. He remained resolutely in the background, tending to his law practice in Springfield, although he did take the time to caution Lyman Trumbull, who was supporting U.S. Supreme Court justice John McLean, to “write no letters which can possibly be distorted into opposition, or quasi opposition to me.” Somewhat uncharacteristically, Lincoln included a veiled threat with the message. Should Trumbull continue working for McLean, he said, Lincoln’s “peculiar friends” might take offense. Trumbull, who was up for reelection, took the hint and kept his mouth shut. As for his own prospects, Lincoln said with studied modesty that his only concern was “to be placed anywhere, or nowhere, as may appear most likely to advance our cause.”1
Behind the scenes, however, Lincoln and his troops were carefully laying the groundwork for a much more ambitious role. Judd, as a member of the Republican National Committee, had managed to convince his fellow committeemen to hold the presidential nominating convention in Chicago, an excellent “neutral site,” he said, since Illinois had no clear-cut favorite for the nomination—yet. That was about to change. As delegates began assembling in Decatur, local activist Richard J. Oglesby, another Lincoln supporter, had an inspiration. To really catch on with voters, he said, a candidate needed a memorable nickname. “Old Abe” carried potentially negative connotations; besides being undignified, it called attention to its owner’s less-than-prepossessing appearance, and it sounded vaguely Jewish as well. Somehow tracking down Lincoln’s elderly cousin, John Hanks, Oglesby laid hands on a couple fence rails that Lincoln conceivably could have split as a young man. On the opening day of the convention, Oglesby arranged for Hanks and another man to lug the rails down the center aisle of the meeting hall. A sign proclaimed “Abraham Lincoln/The Rail Candidate/For President 1860,” and pointed out helpfully, if erroneously, that the rails had been split by Lincoln and his cousin Thomas Hanks (it was John Hanks who did the splitting), and that Lincoln’s father was the first pioneer of Macon County, Illinois (he was not). Factual errors aside, the stunt was a great success. Lincoln, who could not have been completely happy to have his rough-hewn past brought up again at such a pivotal moment in his career, nevertheless played along gamely with the gag, allowing that while he could not vouch for the rails’ authenticity, “he had mauled many better ones since he had grown to manhood.”2
Although not as evocative, perhaps, as “Old Hickory” or “Tippecanoe,” Lincoln’s new nickname, “the Rail-splitter,” would follow him for the rest of his political career. With its deliberate echoes of hardscrabble frontier life, it appealed to the common folk who had settled Illinois and the rest of the Old Northwest, and its image of self-reliant white workmen embodied the free-labor movement that was sweeping the North as a rebuke to black slavery in the South. Further investigation showed that the rails in question actually had been split by one Bill Strickland, a blind man who was safely confined to the Macon County poorhouse, but by then the image had taken hold. The Chicago Herald joked that by the age of eighteen Lincoln was splitting an average of 76,000 rails per day; an Indiana newspaper estimated that one could construct a fence of Lincoln-split fence rails that would stretch all the way from the North Pole to the South Pole. By the time of the convention, “Honest Old Abe” was vowing, in one account, to split 3 million rails before nightfall. “I’ve only got two hundred thousand rails to split before sundown,” he told visitors. “I kin do it if you’ll let me alone.” Although amused by the stunt, the Rail-splitter’s law partner was not fooled by the high jinks. “I began to think I could smell a very large mouse,” Herndon remembered, “and this whole thing was a cunningly devised thing of knowing ones, to make Mr. Lincoln President.”3
While convention delegates were cheering their semifictitious new champion, Lincoln and his brain trust painstakingly handpicked delegates for the national convention and rammed through a resolution requiring the Illinois delegation, voting as a bloc, “to use all honorable means to secure his [Lincoln’s] nomination.” It was imperative to stop the first-ballot nomination of William Seward, and control of the Illinois delegation was a crucial factor in that effort. As always, Lincoln was undeluded about his personal appeal. “I suppose I am not the first choice of a very great many,” he explained to one campaign supporter. “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.” To his friend Edward Baker, editor of the Illinois State Journal, he did impart one brief canister blast at Seward: “I agree with Seward in his ‘Irrepressible Conflict,’” wrote Lincoln, “but I do not endorse his ‘Higher Law’ doctrine.” A break with the South might well be coming—he had been predicting as much for years—and Lincoln wanted to make sure that the full power of the Constitution was on his side. Ever the realist, he had no patience with, or else saw no need for, an airy appeal to higher conscience or divine laws. The Constitution, as it was, was good enough for him.4
While his old rival was maneuvering skillfully back home in Illinois, a distraught and distracted Stephen Douglas was dealing with the fallout from the Charleston debacle. Although he had remained calm—at least outwardly—during the long days and nights of the convention, Douglas had resumed drinking heavily, much to the chagrin of his wife and advisers. The day after the convention adjourned, California senator Milton Latham called on Douglas and found him drunkenly denouncing the “pack of bloodhounds” that was nipping at his heels. In the Senate, he could scarcely sit still, fidgeting in his chair, tattooing the armrests with his stubby fingers, and looking generally “as if he was trying to bite a pin in two.” Soon he faced yet another attack from his seemingly indefatigable southern enemies in the chamber. Once again Jefferson Davis was the chief tormentor, demanding a final vote on the federal slave code and denouncing Douglas for “appropriat[ing] to himself exclusively all that belongs to a doctrine which he did not originate.” “I never pretended that I originated it,” Douglas said, referring to popular sovereignty. “But if one man is not the peculiar guardian of it, it is very evident that one man is the object of attack in regard to it.” The debate degenerated from there, with Davis slamming Douglas for his “swelling manner” and “egregious vanity,” and Douglas protesting that Davis was “following a mere phantom in trying to get a recognition of the right of Congress to intervene for the protection of slavery in the territories when the people do not want it.”5
In the course of his three-hour response to Davis, Douglas became ill, his voice reduced to a hoarse whisper, and fellow senator George Pugh had to finish his remarks for him. What Douglas was trying to say was that the slavery code plank had already been rejected at the Charleston convention, and further insistence on government intervention would “bring the two sections into hostile array, render a conflict inevitable, and force them either to a collision or a separation.” That was more or less what Davis had in mind. Still, he resented Douglas’s insinuation that he did not love the Union, the Mississippian boomed, charging that Douglas was the true cause of the intersectional strife. The South would have no more to do with the party’s “rickety, double-constructed platform,” Davis said, then immediately contradicted himself by adding, “As for myself, I would sooner have an honest man on any sort of rickety platform than to have a man I did not trust on the best platform which could be made.”6
Pale, grim-faced, and in obvious discomfort, Douglas shot back: “In regard to the Senator’s declaration that he will grant no quarter to squatter sovereignty, I can only say to him that it will remain to the victor to grant quarter, or to grant mercy. I ask none.” He withdrew from the floor and immediately took to his bed, gripped by another severe attack of bronchitis. Advice poured in from all sides. “Do not under any circumstances be drawn into a debate which will degenerate below the dignity of your position,” William Richardson implored. “For God’s sake don’t peril interests not only dear to you but to your friends and the country when you have nothing to gain, but everything to lose.” He needn’t have bothered. Douglas was too ill to return to the Senate; he missed the final vote in which the congressional slave code was adopted, 36–19. Concerned that he might have to endure another operation on his throat, Douglas suffered an unexpected emotional blow when his eight-month-old daughter Ellen suddenly sickened and died in early May. Like Hamlet, he was discovering that “when troubles come, they come not singly, but in battalions.”7
A rare bright spot came when former Georgia congressman Alexander Stephens wrote to Douglas, reassuring him that the majority of the southern people would stand behind the 1856 platform. At less than 100 pounds, “Little Aleck,” stunted and tubercular, was perhaps the only man in politics smaller than Douglas, but he carried real weight among southern moderates. He had been a Douglas ally in Congress, and he pledged now not to accept the top spot on any ticket deposing the Little Giant. A second positive sign—or one that the Douglas camp chose to interpret as positive—was the rather quixotic gathering of old-line Whigs and irredentist Know-Nothings that met in Baltimore on May 9 to form the new Constitutional Union Party. Widely derided as the “Old Gentlemen’s Party” for the comparative gray-beardedness of its presidential and vice presidential nominees, former Tennessee senator John Bell (sixty-three) and Massachusetts statesman Edward Everett (sixty-six), the Unionists hoped to peel off enough votes in the Upper South and Lower North to deny either the Democratic or Republican nominee a victory in the Electoral College. The election then would be thrown into the House of Representatives, where a true compromise candidate might be elected—possibly even Bell himself. Douglas’s people saw the ad hoc new party as potentially helpful to their cause, feeling that it would draw more votes from the Republicans than the Democrats. That remained to be seen. An out-and-out abolitionist such as Seward might provoke widespread conservative opposition in the doubtful states, cutting into the Republican vote and giving Douglas an opportunity to snatch up the leavings. A moderate candidate—if the Republicans could find one—would make such a division of spoils that much more difficult. Bell’s party, immediately dubbed the Do-Nothings by opponents, announced a carefully punchless campaign platform: “The Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws.” Quite intentionally, the platform said nothing at all about slavery.8
In a spirit of determined optimism, Lincoln’s campaign team descended on Chicago in mid-May. Their mood, if not necessarily their preference, was mirrored by other conventioneers. At only their second national convention, the 466 Republican delegates were filled with a burgeoning sense of possibilities. The Democratic disaster at Charleston had underscored the gaping divisions within the opposition, divisions that the ongoing wrangles in the Senate between Douglas and his southern rivals did nothing to conceal. Suddenly, the White House seemed entirely within reach. The task before the delegates was to choose the most readily electable candidate, while retaining the moral high ground that their opposition to slavery gave them, at least in their own minds. Sensing victory, some 40,000 Republican visitors descended on Chicago for the convention, arriving by train or boat on the shores of Lake Michigan, where they were greeted by welcoming volleys of cannon fire unloosed every thirty seconds by members of the Chicago Light Artillery at the foot of Jackson Street. Hotels, boardinghouses, and saloons swelled with new arrivals, and even local pool rooms were pressed into service to accommodate the crowds, their felt-topped playing tables cushioned with mattresses for the weary throng. Civic-minded citizens had raised $5,000 to construct a temporary wooden structure on the corner of Lake and Market streets where the convention would meet. With a 10,000-seat capacity, the “Wigwam”—so called because the chiefs of the Republican Party would gather there—was said to be the largest auditorium in the country. It had a huge rectangular floor, 180-by 100-feet, and a spacious balcony running along three sides. Chicago women had softened the surroundings by wreathing rosettes and evergreens through the uprights and hanging red, white, and blue bunting from the rafters. A giant gilded eagle frowned down from the podium.9
The day before the convention opened, the Chicago Press and Tribune ran a three-column editorial headlined “The Winning Man, Abraham Lincoln.” It was the work of Norman Judd, whom Lincoln had asked personally to “help me a little in this matter, in your end of the vineyard.” Despite Judd’s determined press agentry, Seward remained the preconvention favorite, the one politician who had most forcefully and frequently articulated the antislavery cause in Congress. Seward also hailed from New York, which had the largest number of electoral votes. But he had certain serious weaknesses as well. To begin with, he was opposed within his own state by reformers such as William Cullen Bryant and Horace Greeley, who complained loudly about his close links to the flamboyant and corrupt political wheeler-dealer Thurlow Weed. Seward was also weakest in precisely those states the Republicans needed to carry to win what was universally expected to be a close election—Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois. Stephen Douglas, if he managed to nail down the Democratic nomination, was historically formidable there, and even old John Bell might siphon off precious votes with his appeal to tradition-minded Whigs. Worse yet, Seward’s unwavering and uncompromising espousal of an “irresistible conflict” made many people nervous. It was one thing to draw a distinction between pro-and antislavery positions in Congress; but a president would have to find a way to govern the entire country—assuming there was still a country left to govern in 1861.10
Besides Seward, there was a notable lack of first-tier candidates. Fellow abolitionist Salmon P. Chase of Ohio also faced in-state opposition, and he was scarcely less conciliatory than Seward when it came to the South. Edward Bates of Missouri was too conservative for radical antislavery proponents, and his link to the Know-Nothings fatally weakened him with the large German population within his own state. Pennsylvania’s colorless Senator Simon Cameron had little to recommend him other than his place of residence, and Supreme Court justice John McLean was even older than Bell and Everett. That left Lincoln, although few delegates realized it yet. He was sound enough in his opposition to slavery to appeal to the abolitionists, but moderate enough—at least in theory—to reach Republican conservatives who did not want to confront the South. Above all, Lincoln had fought Douglas and the Democrats within Illinois for more than a quarter of a century, and even though he had lost the 1858 senatorial race, he had made a far better showing than many people had expected. With the crescent of states in the Old Northwest shaping up to be the major battleground of the election, Kentucky-born, Indiana-reared, Illinois-based Lincoln was well positioned to contend for those rustic votes, one hand-split fence rail at a time.
That, at any rate, was what Lincoln’s managers were busy telling convention delegates. Establishing their headquarters at the Tremont House, rotund Judge David Davis and his assistants fanned out to spread the gospel of Abraham Lincoln and his manifest “availability.” Their most pressing task was to prevent a first-ballot stampede to Seward, whose wealthy New York backers had dispatched a thirteen-car trainload of boisterous supporters to Chicago to encourage just such a rush. Lincoln’s people countered by persuading Illinois railroads to provide free rides to the convention site for Lincoln backers. To further offset Seward’s numbers, Jesse Fell, secretary of the Republican State Central Committee (and the man who first had put the presidential bug in Lincoln’s ear), had his office print thousands of counterfeit admission tickets to the Wigwam. When Seward’s delegates tried to enter the hall, many of them were turned away. Others were seated intentionally as far away from the front as possible, while the crowd was salted with Lincoln “shouters” whose leather-lunged hurrahs could drown out the distant cheers for Seward. (One renowned stentorian, Methodist minister Edward Ames, was said to be able to shout all the way across Lake Michigan.)11
It would take more than stump-shouting preachers to stop Seward, of course, and Davis and his helpers worked ceaselessly to broker deals with other delegations. The biggest plum was Pennsylvania, whose forty-eight convention votes were halfheartedly committed to Cameron, a veteran wire-puller credited with the immortal definition of an honest politician as “a man who, when he’s bought, stays bought.” After the convention opened on May 16, Davis met with Cameron in his room at the Tremont House. Lincoln, already alarmed by a message from backer Charles H. Ray that “a pledge or two may be necessary when the pinch comes,” sent firm orders to Davis to “make no contracts that will bind me.” Davis shrugged them off. “Lincoln ain’t here and don’t know what we have to meet,” Davis said, “so we will go ahead, as if we hadn’t heard from him, and he must ratify it.” It is unclear whether Davis made a concrete promise to Cameron of a cabinet post in return for delivering Pennsylvania’s delegation, or merely told him that he would recommend Cameron for the job. But ten months later Cameron would find himself sitting behind the secretary’s desk at the War Department, from which position he would oversee the mismanagement—willful or not—of hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of faulty equipment and weapons before Lincoln could stop him. For the time being, Davis came bustling down the hotel stairs and told Joseph Medill, “Damned if we haven’t got them,” meaning either the Pennsylvanians or Seward. Some of the delegates took time off from their horse-trading to attend the opening night of a new play at McVickers Theater, a few doors down from the Wigwam. It was a broadly acted drawing-room comedy about the collision of the New World and the Old, entitled Our American Cousin. Widely popular, it would play across the country for the next several years, concluding its run in Washington, D.C., at Ford’s Theatre in the spring of 1865.12
Other meetings were taking place that night as well. In Seward’s headquarters, campaign manager Thurlow Weed addressed the wavering delegations. “Four years ago we went to Philadelphia to name our candidate,” he warned them, “and we made one of the most inexcusable blunders. We nominated a man who had no qualification for the position of Chief Magistrate [John C. Frémont]. We were defeated as we probably deserved to be. What this country will demand as its chief executive for the next four years is a man of the highest order of executive ability, a man of real statesmanlike qualities, well known to the country, and of large experience in national affairs. No other class of men ought to be considered at this time. We think we have in Mr. Seward just the qualities the country will need.” New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley respectfully disagreed. Warning delegates that Seward could not carry Indiana, Iowa, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania, Greeley admonished: “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.” A rumor circulated that the Republican gubernatorial candidates in the doubtful states of Indiana, Illinois, and Pennsylvania would all resign if Seward were nominated. Greeley was “a damned old ass,” said one Seward delegate—understandably, given the circumstances.13
By the time the convention was ready to receive nominations, Lincoln’s men had wrapped up the unanimous first-ballot votes of Illinois and Indiana, whose chairman, Caleb Smith, was a former Whig who had served in Congress with Lincoln, as well as second-ballot pledges from Pennsylvania and New Jersey—the four lower northern states that had gone Democratic in 1856. A Republican who could carry those four states, along with the other northern states that Frémont had won four years earlier, could be elected president. It was a powerful argument for Lincoln.
There was a palpable air of excitement as convention marshals opened the doors of the Wigwam on the morning of May 18. Seward’s supporters, 1,000 strong, assembled at the Richmond House and marched four abreast to the auditorium behind their scarlet-and-white, epaulette-wearing band. By the time they arrived, bogus Lincoln delegates had taken many of their seats. It was standing room only inside the Wigwam; men were jammed three-deep into every crevice of the hall. After a brief floor fight over the makeup of the Maryland delegation, convention chairman George Ashmun of Massachusetts entertained nominations for president. In short order, Seward, Lincoln, Cameron, Chase, Bates, McLean, and New Jersey favorite-son candidate William L. Dayton were nominated. Cincinnati Commercial journalist Murat Halstead, who had just endured the Democratic conflagration in Charleston and the Constitutional Union minuet in Baltimore, was on hand to observe the Republicans in action. “The only names that produced tremendous applause were those of Seward and Lincoln,” he noted. Supporters of both men competed for dominance. “The shouting was absolutely frantic, shrill and wild,” wrote Halstead. “No Comanches, no panthers ever struck a higher note, or gave screams with more infernal intensity.” Hats flew through the air, handkerchiefs waved wildly, and Indiana delegate Henry Lane, a hard-core Lincoln man, leaped onto a table, swinging his hat and cane like an acrobat. “Abe Lincoln has it by the sound!” shouted one man above the din.14
Not yet. Seward led the first ballot with 1731/2 votes, far short of the 233 needed for nomination. Lincoln was second with 102 votes; the rest trailed far behind. In the New England states, where Seward was thought to be strongest, Lincoln managed to win 19 votes, undoubtedly a reflection of his recent speaking tour there. Anxious Seward supporters called for an immediate second ballot. Slowly but unmistakably, votes peeled away from the New Yorker, 48 in one blow from Cameron’s Pennsylvania. The totals now stood at Seward 1841/2, Lincoln 181. The wily Halstead stopped tallying anyone’s votes but Lincoln’s. At the end of the third ballot, Lincoln had 2311/2 votes—just one and a half shy of the nomination. Ohio delegate David K. Cartter of Cleveland jumped to his feet. A large, dark-haired man disfigured by smallpox and afflicted with a stutter, Cartter seized his one moment of reflected glory. “I rise (eh), Mr. Chairman (eh), to announce the change of four votes of Ohio from Mr. Chase to Mr. Lincoln” was how Halstead rendered it. There was a moment of silence, a collective intake of breath, and then “there was a noise in the Wigwam like the rush of a great wind in the van of a storm—and in another breath, the storm was there. There were thousands cheering with the energy of insanity.” Someone shouted to an observer on the roof: “Fire the salute! Abe Lincoln is nominated!”15
Back home in Springfield, the new Republican nominee had spent an understandably restless morning, playing “fives,” a sort of rudimentary handball, in the vacant lot next to the office of the Illinois State Journal. Unable to relax, he had paced over to the law office of James C. Conkling, the husband of Mary Lincoln’s best friend, Mercy Ann Levering, who had just returned from Chicago with the latest scuttlebutt. It was Conkling’s considered opinion that Seward could not be nominated—Lincoln would win. Stretched out on Conkling’s sofa, Lincoln received the favorable report noncommittally. “Well, Conkling, I believe I will go back to my office and practice law,” he said. Restlessly, Lincoln wandered over to his office, then to the telegraph office, and finally back to the Journal office. At length, a messenger rushed in and handed him a telegram. “Lincoln opened it,” a witness said, “and a sudden pallor came over his features. He gazed upon it intently nearly three minutes.” The telegram read: “TO LINCOLN YOU ARE NOMINATED.” “Well, we’ve got it,” Lincoln said, then added a characteristic joke: “Gentlemen, you had better come up and shake my hand while you can—honors elevate some men.” He left immediately to tell the “little woman at our house” the news.16
All across Springfield cannons boomed, church bells tolled, people cheered and danced in the streets. That night, a torchlight parade wound its way to the familiar wooden home at the corner of Eighth and Jackson. Appearing at his front door, the Republican nominee for president said modestly 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.” He would have invited everyone inside to celebrate, Lincoln said, if only he had enough room. “We will give you a larger house on the fourth of next March,” someone shouted. The next day, an official delegation from Chicago arrived to formally notify Lincoln of his nomination. He offered the men ice water—he had decided not to break his sixteen-year ban on serving alcohol in his home, much to Mary’s evident distaste. Convention chairman Ashmun read the notice to Lincoln who, careful lawyer that he was, asked for more time to go over the document. An awkward silence ensued. Lincoln broke it by picking out the tallest man in the group, Pennsylvania delegate William D. Kelley, and asking his height. “Six feet three,” said Kelley. “I beat you,” laughed Lincoln. “I am six feet four without my high-heeled boots.” “Pennsylvania bows to Illinois,” Kelley said suavely. “I am glad that we have found a candidate for the presidency whom we can look up to.” Going out the door, a still-glowing Kelley whispered to fellow delegate Carl Schurz: “Well, we might have done a more brilliant thing, but we could hardly have done a better thing.”17
In Washington, Lincoln’s oldest rival agreed with that assessment. From his contacts in Chicago, Stephen Douglas had received the news of Lincoln’s nomination sooner than anyone. When he announced the news to his Senate colleagues, a great cheer arose from the Republican side of the aisle. Some of his own friends were equally pleased, saying that Lincoln could be beaten easily, but Douglas knew better. Lincoln, he said, was the best debater he had ever faced, and they could expect “a devil of a fight” in the general election—assuming that Douglas could still win his party’s nomination, and that it would still be worth something if he did. Douglas spent the next month arm wrestling with southern ultras and Buchanan administration fixers who were attempting to erode his base of support. Former president Franklin Pierce was a particular target. Jefferson Davis, who had been his secretary of war, importuned Pierce to enter the race, saying that he would “as soon have a Free-Soiler as our little grog-drinking, electioneering demagogue.” Pierce had no particular love for Douglas, whose Kansas-Nebraska Act had effectively undermined his presidency, but he would not consent to have his name placed in nomination in Baltimore—even his hometown paper, the Concord Patriot, was supporting the Little Giant. In Connecticut, a Douglas supporter haughtily turned down a job offer from Buchanan’s people, denouncing them as “a class of puppies who are barking at trees they cannot climb.” Massive public meetings in support of Douglas were held in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City, the latter at the site of Lincoln’s recent triumph, the Cooper Union.18
In the South, Douglas sought to solidify his support with moderates, while at the same time backing new slates of delegates to replace the ultras who had bolted the convention at Charleston. Influential North Carolina moderate W. H. Holden switched his support to Douglas with a frank assessment of the current situation: “The choice is now between Douglas and defeat and sectional dissolution,” he said. “God forbid that the madness of the North and our own blindness, prejudice and folly should ever compel us to this step. I voted fifty-seven times against Douglas at Charleston. I expect to vote for him at Baltimore.” At a meeting in Columbia, Tennessee, the chairman of the Volunteer State delegation tore into “honest, deranged Jeff Davis” and “that damned, corrupt, dishonest Slidell,” and promised to support Douglas if he was the party’s nominee. Douglas was encouraged by the show of support, telling prominent financial backer August Belmont, “All we have to do is to stand by the delegates appointed by the people in the seceding states in the place of the disunionists.”19
Unfortunately for Douglas, it would not be that simple. Nine southern senators and ten congressmen signed an open letter urging the wayward delegates to reassemble in Baltimore and work together to draft a suitable new platform, whether or not Douglas stood atop it in the end. Louisiana senator Judah Benjamin, not one of the signers, announced defiantly that he and other ultras would go to Baltimore with “unaltered instructions and a firm determination” to force the Douglas Democrats into submission. “Mr. Benjamin is mistaken,” retorted Ohio senator George Pugh, “if he supposes that the men who stood there at Charleston for two weeks in that atmosphere voting down your resolutions again and again, and voting for Stephen A. Douglas, are going to be tired when it comes to Baltimore, which is a much more agreeable atmosphere for them.” Pugh’s statement reflected the determined attitude that the ubiquitous Murat Halstead observed among Douglas’s supporters as they reassembled in Baltimore in mid-June. “The friends of Mr. Douglas,” he wrote, “assumed an arrogance of tone that precluded the hope of amicable adjustment of difficulties.” It would be better for the country, said one Douglas supporter, “to get rid of Yancey, Davis, and Co. They are a curse to us and the Republic and should go with Arnold and Burr.”20
In that less-than-conciliatory attitude, the Democratic delegates reconvened at 10:00 a.m. on June 18 inside Baltimore’s Front Street Theater. Trainloads of Douglas supporters thronged the city, far outnumbering the southern ultras who, by coincidence, had reserved rooms in the same hotel as the pro-Douglas Illinois delegation. Former Massachusetts congressman Caleb Cushing, serving again as convention chairman, immediately reasserted his uselessness, refusing to rule on the admissibility of the seceding delegations. For three long, tense days the credentials committee debated the issue, while special trains sped Douglas loyalists back and forth from Baltimore to Washington for nervous midnight skull sessions. Meanwhile, Baltimore’s finest, decked out in broad coats and crinolines, dutifully trooped into the visitor’s gallery two or three times each day, only to witness the convention immediately recess again. Alabama fire-eater William Yancey, who had single-handedly disrupted the Charleston convention, was back on the scene and looking for trouble. The northern Democrats, he jeered, were like ostriches, “hiding their heads in the sand of popular sovereignty, all unaware that their great, ugly, ragged, abolition body was exposed.” As he had done previously, Yancey played to the crowd outside the convention hall, giving fiery, impromptu street-corner speeches designed to keep everyone on edge.21
On the morning of the fourth day, in a piece of political theater that was almost too perfect a metaphor to believe, the stage platform on which the delegates were sitting suddenly gave way, sending 150 startled New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians tumbling through the floor. “New York and Pennsylvania have gone down together,” said a wag. New York delegate Isaiah Rynders, one of the fallen, clambered out of the wreckage and announced cheerfully, “Mr. President, the platform has not broken down—only one plank got loose.” When someone requested another recess to allow workers to repair the floor, Rynders added the sardonic hope that they should “at the same time repair the injury done to the Democratic Party.”22
An hour later the floor, if not the party, was repaired, and the convention filed in to hear the credentials committee ruling. The majority report, favored by Douglas, readmitted most of the straying southern delegates, but drew the line at the Alabama delegation, which would have permitted Yancey to stroll victoriously into the hall. A minority report called for the admission of all the seceding delegates, on the questionable grounds that they had not permanently walked out of the nominating process—only that part being conducted in Charleston. Complicating matters even more, the hall was jammed with spectators who had gained entry with bogus tickets. Argumentative as ever, Massachusetts delegate Benjamin Butler complained that “he had not come five hundred miles to attend a mass meeting” and demanded that the floor be cleared at once. The convention adjourned in disarray. Congressman William Montgomery of Pennsylvania, leaving the hall, sniped at fellow delegate Josiah Randall, calling him a “poor old man,” at which point Randall’s son dashed up and punched Montgomery in the face. Bleeding profusely, Montgomery shook off the blow and knocked the much-smaller man to the ground before onlookers separated them.23
The next day, June 22, the convention reassembled to vote on the committee reports. After the minority report was decisively rejected, 150–1001/2, the delegates approved the majority report piecemeal. Tennessee delegate J. D. C. Atkins, a consistent voice of moderation, rose to request that the proceedings not be delayed any further. He was met with a mixture of “applause and hisses,” Halstead noted. After another brief recess, Georgia delegate W. B. Gaulden, a slave trader from Savannah, made a rambling speech on the virtues of slavery, which he said had “done more to advance the prosperity and intelligence of the white race, and of the human race, than all else together.” Defining himself proudly as “a slave breeder” and “a nigger man,” Gaulden invited the delegates to visit his plantation, where “I will show them as fine a lot of Negroes, and the pure African, too, as they can find anywhere. And I will show them as handsome a set of little children as there can be seen, and any quantity of them, too.” This was too much for other members of his own delegation, who publicly censured Gaulden for bringing “mortification and disgust to the delegation from Georgia.” On that note, a Douglas delegate moved that they begin the nominations, but Cushing studiously ignored him. Instead, he turned to Virginia delegate chairman Charles W. Russell, who had been monotonously chanting “Mr. President!” over and over for several minutes.24
Russell had worked hard to keep the Virginia delegation from bolting the Charleston convention, he said, but now he and his fellow delegates had come to believe that it was “inconsistent with their convictions of duty” to participate any further in the proceedings. He declined to say what those convictions were, noting merely that the delegates were answerable only to “the Democracy of Virginia”—it was unclear whether he meant the party or the state. Twenty-five of the thirty Virginia delegates then rose and left the theater, followed immediately by sixteen delegates from North Carolina, nineteen from Tennessee, nine from Maryland, and all seventeen from the Pacific Coast states of California and Oregon. In properly theatrical fashion, California delegate Austin Smith of San Francisco favored the crowd with a florid valediction full of “melancholy faces,” “lacerated hearts,” “grinning assassins,” and much “bleeding and weeping over the downfall and destruction of the Democratic Party.” Smith’s performance concluded the evening’s dramatics, and the convention adjourned for the night.25
Back in Washington, Douglas had been expecting the worst. Two days earlier, he had sent a confidential letter to William Richardson, once again the leader of his efforts, offering to withdraw in favor of “some other Non-intervention and Union-loving Democrat,” possibly Alexander Stephens. But Richardson, infuriated by the refusal of southern delegates to compromise on either the platform or the candidate, pocketed the letter and refused even to admit that he had received it. Douglas sent a follow-up telegram to Dean Richmond, chairman of the New York delegation, repeating his offer and inviting Richmond to pick another candidate. There was no one else. Having invested so much time, money, and emotion in the effort to nominate Douglas, the northerners and midwesterners who dominated the convention were unwilling, if not indeed unable, to imagine switching to someone else. As the not unsym-pathetic Halstead observed, Douglas “had raised a greater tempest than he had imagined. He had stirred up the storm but could not control the whirlwind.”26
The next morning, the whirlwind broke, or at any rate blew itself out. More states walked out of the convention, including the host state of Maryland and the border states of Kentucky and Delaware. Amid loud, mocking cheers, convention chairman Caleb Cushing also left; his place was taken by Ohio governor David Tod. The inimitable Butler, assuming leadership of the Massachusetts delegation, announced that he and his liberty-loving colleagues were leaving as well, since they had no intention of “sit[ting] in a convention where the African slave trade—which is piracy by the laws of my country—is approvingly advocated.” He had taken the precaution of having a “plug ugly” Boston prizefighter named Price watch his back while he made the announcement, but he need not have bothered. Judging by the cheers and handshakes that greeted his announcement, everyone was happy to see Butler go.27
With the pro-Douglas Tod now wielding the gavel, the convention turned at last to the matter of choosing a nominee. It was a foregone, forlorn conclusion. On the first ballot, Douglas received 1731/2 votes, out of a diminished total of 1911/2 cast. A second vote was taken, and Douglas’s strength increased to 1811/2. Despite the ruling at the Charleston convention that a candidate needed two-thirds of the total delegates to win the nomination, Douglas supporter Daniel Hoge of Virginia moved that since his man had received two-thirds of the vote of all the delegates remaining in the hall, he should simply be declared the nominee. Richardson pointed out that the Charleston convention was the only time in party history that the Democrats had adopted a two-thirds rule. There was precedent, if not necessarily unanimity, for Douglas’s nomination, and the hall erupted in a storm of cheers after Richardson’s speech. The new chairman called for quiet. “Gentlemen of the convention,” said Tod, “as your presiding officer I declare Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, by the unanimous vote of this convention, the nominee of the Democratic Party of the United States for president. And may God, in his infinite mercy, protect him, and with him this Union.” In a futile bow to the South, Alabama senator Benjamin Fitzpatrick was chosen as Douglas’s running mate, despite the fact that he had voted for the fugitive slave code in the Senate and generally had opposed the Little Giant on most other issues as well.28
While Douglas was belatedly receiving the prize he had worked toward all his life, his opponents met inside jam-packed Maryland Institute Hall in a spirit of contradictory self-congratulation. Cushing, backed by Butler and his pugilist bodyguard, reassumed the role of convention chairman. Halstead wandered over from the Front Street Theater to watch the proceedings. All the leading ultras were there, including Yancey and Robert Toombs, and Halstead noted that “I had not seen them look so happy during the sixteen weary days of the convention.” Yancey, in particular, “glowed with satisfaction.” In short order, the session nominated outgoing vice president John C. Breckinridge and Oregon senator Joseph Lane as its standard-bearers. Called on to say a few words in support of Breckinridge, Yancey took the opportunity to bury Douglas “where his friends placed him…beneath the grave of squatter sovereignty,” but went on at such wearisome length that he drove hundreds of delegates from the hall while Cushing fidgeted unhappily on stage alongside him. A planned seconding speech for Breckinridge was canceled for lack of time.29
That evening, both wings of the grievously wounded Democratic Party adjourned unceremoniously and left Baltimore behind them. Halstead shared a train car with some of the northwestern delegates, one of whom complained: “I have been vexed. After all the battles we have fought for the South—to be served in this manner—it is ungrateful and mean.” Southerners, he added, “had been ruling over niggers so long they thought they could rule white men just the same.” An Indiana delegate chimed in that he “was happy to tell the Seceders that the valley of the Wabash was worth more than all the country between the Potomac and the Rio Grande, niggers included.” A separate delegation of Douglas loyalists steamed into Washington by rail, carrying with them the somewhat sodden news of his nomination. At the bravely lighted headquarters in the National Hotel, they were joined by other supporters and marched over to Douglas’s home on I Street, where the obviously unwell senator met them with a brief address that contained more warning than warmth. “The Union,” he said, “is in great danger. It can only be saved by a strict adherence to popular sovereignty and the defeat of the interventionist extremes. Secession is disunion. Secession from the Democratic Party means secession from the federal Union. Can the seceders fail to perceive that their efforts to divide and defeat the Democratic Party, if successful, must lead directly to the secession of the southern states?”30
Two nights later, a similar delegation, this one complete with a brass band, serenaded Douglas’s next-door neighbor, Breckinridge, with a similar display of enthusiasm. It, too, was met with a decided lack of excitement from the honoree. “It sometimes happens that men are placed in a position where they are reluctant to act and exposure themselves to censure, if not execration,” said Breckinridge. “But we must be prepared for such occurrences in this life. All men can move forward with dignity and purpose, to pursue that course.” The Kentucky-born vice president, who had just been elected to the Senate from his home state, was not actually living in the mansion at the time (he would, in fact, never live there). Instead, he had been escorted to the empty residence by Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs for the sole purposes of making the point to his neighbor Douglas, if one needed to be made, that there were now two Democratic nominees in the race.31
Breckinridge’s last-minute entry into the presidential contest was a surprise to everyone—himself included. Earlier that month, he had met with a group of northern delegates led by Benjamin Butler, who were en route to Baltimore for the second convention. They sounded him out on the issues—not surprisingly, he was committed to the Union and the Constitution—and heard him denounce southern extremists who were threatening to secede if the Republican nominee, Abraham Lincoln, was elected in November. In Butler’s retelling, the northern bolters nominated Breckinridge more as a hedge against secession than a protest against Douglas. Perhaps, but that did not explain the instant support the vice president received from Davis, Toombs, and other ultras. In fact, they were playing a double game, opposing Douglas and the northern Democrats on the one hand, while strengthening the Republicans (and the option of secession) on the other. It is doubtful whether Breckinridge fully understood just how completely and cynically he was being used by the ultras, although Pennsylvania delegate George Nelson Smith warned him that “the nomination of the Seceders’ convention…will be fatal to the party and ruinous to you. I beseech you to consider well the step you are about to take. Evil will most assuredly follow acceptance.” “I trust I have the courage to lead a forlorn hope,” Breckinridge observed forlornly.32
A halfhearted attempt to reunite the party was put into motion by Jefferson Davis—of all people—who attempted to convince the three anti-Lincoln candidates to withdraw in favor of a fourth candidate, possibly former New York governor Horatio Seymour. In Davis’s account, written twenty years after the fact, Breckinridge and Bell readily agreed to drop out, but Douglas refused, calling the idea impractical and saying that he was “in the hands of my friends, and my friends will not accept such a scheme.” A second version, which sounds more like Douglas, had him telling Pennsylvania representative Edward McPherson, who had broached a similar scheme: “By God, sir, the election shall never go into the House; before it shall go into the House, I will throw it to Lincoln.” In an attempt, perhaps, to force his hand, fellow southerners successfully pressured Douglas’s running mate, Benjamin Fitzpatrick, to withdraw from the ticket, but this merely stiffened Douglas’s resolve. In place of Fitzpatrick, the Democratic National Committee selected another southerner, former Georgia senator and governor Herschel V. Johnson. It was a better choice, anyway. Not only was Johnson closer to Douglas on the issues, he was also a longtime friend of the Little Giant who had supported his presidential bids in 1852 and 1856—and would have done so in Baltimore as well, had he been allowed to take the place of a Charleston seceder. It was a case of addition by subtraction.33
After the conventions, the various nominees began organizing for the fight. Douglas retained his headquarters at the National Hotel, naming Louisiana congressman Miles Taylor, an old friend, as chairman of the campaign. Given the confused state of the Democratic Party, Taylor’s first task was to urge state organizations to give their “unequivocal support” to the Douglas-Johnson ticket. In Pennsylvania, where Breckinridge was popular, largely on the basis of being native son James Buchanan’s often-ignored vice president, voters were to be given a choice of voting for either him or Douglas, depending on which candidate was thought to have a better chance of winning. This arrangement infuriated Douglas, who warned: “Any compromise with the Secessionists would be ruinous. An amalgamation ticket with the bolters would disgust the people & give every Northern State to Lincoln.” Meanwhile, Breckinridge set up camp in the White House, where the president, despite his personal dislike for his old running mate, conferred frequently with Breckinridge’s managers—Jefferson Davis, John Slidell, and William Bigler. As always, Buchanan used the power of patronage to cudgel his opponents, removing several pro-Douglas men from government posts, although he was careful to leave Douglas’s father-in-law and brother-in-law in their “lucrative offices.”34
Despite lingering physical and emotional ills, Douglas began making plans for a campaign trip to New York and New England. An inveterate campaigner, he could not envision obeying the genteel tradition of a presidential candidate remaining aloof from the most important campaign of his life. Lincoln, who had been on the road, off and on, for the better part of a year, had no such qualms. He would remain in Springfield and let the campaign come to him. Moving into a small room in the state capitol provided for his use by Governor John Wood, Lincoln and his tireless new secretary, John G. Nicolay, occupied themselves with receiving visitors and opening—but not always answering—the blizzard of letters that arrived each day. New York Evening Post editor William Cullen Bryant advised Lincoln in no uncertain terms “to make no speeches, write no letters as a candidate, enter into no pledges, make no promises, nor even give any of those kind words which men are apt to interpret into promises.” Given his nearly three decades of political experience, Lincoln needed no such advice, but he took it anyway because it agreed with his own strategic vision. He broke character, so to speak, only once, when he wrote to his old friend Simeon Francis after the Baltimore convention: “I hesitate to say it, but it really appears now, as if the success of the Republican ticket is inevitable. We have no reason to doubt any of the states which voted for Frémont. Add to these, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, and the thing is done.” Another veteran politician shared his view, if not his optimism. Alexander Stephens surveyed his party’s dire political landscape. “The seceders intended from the beginning to rule or ruin,” Little Aleck observed bitterly. “Men will be cutting one another’s throats in a little while. In less than twelve months we shall be in a war, and that the bloodiest in history.” His prediction would prove all too accurate, on both counts.35