The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XV
The frequent allusions in Mr. Lincoln's speeches to threats of secession on the part of the South, in the event of the success of the republican party, have already shown the reader that secession had become a matter of consideration and discussion among those interested in the perpetuation and nationalization of slavery. It was evident that the southern leaders were preparing the minds of their people for some desperate step, and that many of them desired, rather than deprecated, the election of a republican president. Many of them openly said that they should prefer the election of Mr. Seward or Mr. Lincoln to the election of Mr. Douglas, because then they should know exactly what they were to meet. The reason thus given was undoubtedly a fraud. They found themselves in desperate circumstances. All their schemes for the extension of slavery and the reinforcement of the slave power had miscarried. Kansas and California were lost to them. There was no hope for them in Nebraska or any of the new territories. The hope of acquiring Cuba was gone, and the fillibustering operations of Walker which they had patronized were failures. They knew of but one remedy--that which the great mischief-maker of South Carolina had pointed out to them many years before, viz: secession. It is doubtful whether they preferred secession to predominance in the nation, but, basing their policy on the doctrine of "state rights," their aim was to secede, and either to insist on a permanent separation, or by secession to coerce the government into the practical acknowledgment of their claims. There is no doubt that it was the policy of the shrewdest of the slavery propagandists so to manage their party as to secure the election of a republican president. Overpowered in the nation, and hopeless of the future, they looked only for a plausible pretext for precipitating the execution of their scheme; and this could only be found in the election of a president professedly a foe to the extension of slavery.
"The Knights of the Golden Circle" were a band of secret conspirators organized in the interest of treason. The popular political leaders rose to the highest degrees in this order, and knew the whole plot, while the masses, many of whom had no real sympathy with secession, were kept in the dark, ready to be forced into measures that were in cunning and careful preparation. The Christian church of the whole South was the willing slave of this cabal. Preachers proclaimed the divine right of slavery and the doctrines of sedition from the pulpit. The press was an obedient instrument in their hands. There were traitors and plotters in the national government, industriously preparing the way for secession, and sapping the power of the government to prevent it. Mr. Cobb was squandering the national finances. Mr. Floyd, the secretary of war, was filling all the southern arsenals with arms at the expense of the government, and sending loyal officers to distant posts; and, although a northern man was at the head of the navy department, it was subsequently found, when ships were wanted, that they were very far from where they were wanted. These southern men, thus plotting, only waited for a pretext for springing their plot upon the people, and of course were not reluctant to make a pretext when opportunity offered.
This was the condition of affairs in the spring of 1860, a year which was to see a new president elected. Everybody felt that a severe political storm was ahead, though comparatively few, either at the North or the South, knew what its character would be. The South blindly followed its leaders, without perfectly knowing whither it was to be led. The North had become accustomed to threats of dissolution of the Union, and did not believe that those then rife would be better fulfilled than those which had preceded them. No one at the North, unless it may have been a few sympathetic politicians, had any faith in the earnestness of the pro-slavery schemers. The disruption of the government was regarded as an impossibility; and the Union-loving Yankee would not believe that there were any who would push their professed enmity to any practical exhibition.
Mr. Lincoln had scarcely returned to his home before the Democratic National Convention assembled at Charleston. This convention occurred on the twenty-third of April, and collected to itself all the plotters against the Union. That they met the northern members of the democratic party with any expectation to unite with them in a platform and the selection of a candidate, is not probable. Mr. Douglas, with his popular sovereignty, and Dred Scott decision, and "don't care" policy, offered them the only ground of Union. All saw this, and all were for or against Douglas. Douglas was the pivot of the convention. Everything turned on him. The northern men felt that nothing less than Douglas, who had fought the Lecompton fraud and the administration, and had been compelled to some concessions to freedom in order to win his seat in the senate, would do for them, while the South was determined to take no man who was not fairly and squarely a pro-slavery man, with a clean record, and to subscribe to no platform that did not accord to them fully the rights they claimed. The South would have only a "sound man," and would fight this time only "on principle." If it could not have honest victory, it wanted defeat. No "unfriendly legislation" should exclude slavery from the territories. They must have their property protected. Mr. Yancey was present as the leader of the "fire-eaters," and could probably have foretold the explosion of the convention. There is no doubt that he intended nothing else than this, and the convention did explode, and the old democratic party that had proved invincible on so many battle-fields was rent in twain. The southern members, by a large majority, withdrew and formed a "Constitutional Convention." The regular convention remained in session, and after fifty-seven unsuccessful ballotings, in which Mr. Douglas came near a nomination, they gave it up, and adjourned to meet in Baltimore on the eighteenth day of June, or two days after the appointed date of the Republican Convention at Chicago. The Constitutional Convention transacted no important business, and made no nomination, but adjourned to meet in Richmond on the second Monday in June.
The Charleston people were delighted with the results of the quarrel. The ladies, only a dozen of whom had been in attendance upon the regular convention, turned out and filled the hall of the seceders. All the smiles of all the beauty of Charleston were bestowed upon Mr. Yancey and his followers. They undoubtedly regarded this disruption of the party as insuring the pretext for disunion for which they so ardently wished.
The democratic host, as they retired in broken columns from Charleston, were jostled on the road by the members of another convention, on their way to Baltimore--the "National Constitutional Union Convention"--made up largely of old whigs who still dreamed that the party of their early love was in existence--that it was not dead, but sleeping. They met on the ninth of May--delegates from ten free states and eleven slave states. There is this to be said of this body of men--that they were in the main really anxious to save the Union, and that they had a juster appreciation of the dangers of the Union than the republicans, who were fond of ridiculing their fears. They passed a "conservative" resolution, declaring that they had no principles except "The Constitution of the country, the Union of the states, and the enforcement of the laws." The convention nominated John Bell of Tennessee for president, and Edward Everett of Massachusetts for vice-president, the former of whom, when secession came, went over to the disunionists, and the latter or whom devoted all his great influence and powers to the maintenance of the government, becoming at last a member of the republican party and the recipient of its honors.
Before entering upon an account of the Chicago Convention, it will be best to state, in brief, the result of the democratic split at Charleston. The Richmond Convention met and adjourned to await the doings of the Baltimore Convention, the members generally going to Baltimore. There they joined in an independent convention, making all the mischief possible, and nominating for president John C. Breckinridge, then vice-president of the United States, and since a Major General in the rebel army. The regular convention nominated Mr. Douglas, though he had begged them to sacrifice him rather than the party. The party, however, was already sacrificed; and he had had no small hand in the slaughter. The antagonism between the southern and northern sections of the democracy was irreconcilable. It was impossible for the two to agree upon a platform or a man who would carry either section of the country. Mr. Lincoln had his joke and his "little story" over the disruption of the democracy. He once knew, he said, a sound churchman of the name of Brown, who was the member of a very sober and pious committee having in charge the erection of a bridge over a dangerous and rapid river. Several architects failed, and at last Brown said he had a friend named Jones who had built several bridges, and could undoubtedly build that one. So Mr. Jones was called in. "Can you build this bridge?" inquired the committee. "Yes," replied Jones, "or any other. I could build a bridge to h--l if necessary." The committee were shocked, and Brown felt called upon to defend his friend. "I know Jones so well," said he, "and he is so honest a man, and so good an architect, that if he states soberly and positively that he can build a bridge to--to--the infernal regions, why, I believe it; but I feel bound to say that I have my doubts about the abutment on the other side." "So," said Mr. Lincoln, "when politicians told me that the northern and southern wings of the democracy could be harmonized, why, I believed them, of course, but I always had my doubts about the abutment on the other side."
Though the result of the Baltimore Convention was unknown at Chicago, it was foreseen, and it was believed that victory would come to the republican party with any respectable nominee. When the friends of Douglas left Baltimore, they left it with none but bitter feelings for those who had destroyed their party, and brought certain defeat to the man to whom they were strongly devoted. They felt that Mr. Douglas had deserved better treatment at the hands of the South than he had received, and saw, in the disruption of their party, the defeat of all their hopes.
The Republican Convention at Chicago assembled on the sixteenth of June. There was an immense crowd in attendance, casting into the shade entirely the assemblages at Charleston and Baltimore. Every hotel was crammed from basement to attic, even in that city of multitudinous and capacious hotels. It was calculated that fifteen hundred persons slept in the Tremont House alone. A huge building was erected for the sessions of the convention, which was called "The Wigwam;" and even this could not contain more than a fraction of the twenty-five thousand strangers who had assembled in the city, as delegates and interested observers.
Edward Bates, Judge McLean, Benjamin F. Wade, N.P. Banks, Abraham Lincoln, Simon Cameron, and William H. Seward, all had their partisans among outsiders and insiders; but it became evident very early that the contest was really between Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln. The chiefs of the party were all present, excepting, perhaps, those who imagined that they might possibly be made the recipients of the convention's favors.
Hon. George Ashmun of Massachusetts was elected to preside over the deliberations of the occasion. Canvassing, talking, prophesying, betting, declaiming, were actively in progress everywhere. On the morning of the seventeenth, Mr. Seward's friends made a demonstration in his favor, in the form of a procession, following a band of music and wearing badges. As they passed the Tremont House, they were greeted with tremendous cheers, the band playing "O, isn't he a darling?" Antagonisms were developed in every quarter. Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Indiana declared that if Mr. Seward should be nominated they could do nothing; Douglas would beat them ten to one. Illinois, devoted to Mr. Lincoln, joined in the cry, but the New Yorkers scouted the idea that Mr. Seward could not sweep with victory every northern state. The Lincoln men were quite as busy as the friends of Mr. Seward, and less noisy. Mr. Greeley telegraphed to the New York Tribune, on the evening of the seventeenth: "My conclusion, from all that I can gather, is, that the opposition to Governor Seward cannot concentrate on any candidate, and that he will be nominated;" and this, it must be remembered, was not in accordance with Mr. Greeley's wishes.
The platform upon which the party proposed to conduct the campaign was adopted on the second day. The action upon this showed that the party had not quite come to the standard of Mr. Lincoln, moderate as he had been. Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, one of the old enemies of slavery and the slave power, wished to introduce into the platform that part of the Declaration of Independence which asserts, as self-evident truths, "that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and that governments are instituted among men to secure the enjoyment of these rights; but objections were made. The old man walked grieved and disgusted out of the wigwam, amid the protestations of the crowd. Mr. George W. Curtis, a New York delegate, made an appeal to the convention that was irresistible, and the declaration went in, and all felt the stronger and better for it. The utterances of Mr. Lincoln have already given us the substance of this platform. It contravened no right of slavery in the states, under the Constitution, denounced the subserviency of Mr. Buchanan's administration to a sectional interest and the dogma that the Constitution carried slavery into the territories and protected it there, declared that the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom, and that a sound policy requires a protective tariff, &c., &c. It was the platform of the old whig party, repeated in most particulars, except that, in the matter of slavery, it introduced, not widely modified, the old platform of the "free soilers." The platform was adopted amid demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm. An eye witness of the scene[1] says: "all the thousands of men in that enormous wigwam commenced swinging their hats, amd cheering with intense enthusiasm; and the other thousands of ladies waved their handkerchiefs and clapped their hands. The roar that went up from that mass of ten thousand human beings is indescribable. Such a spectacle as was presented for some minutes has never before been witnessed at a convention. A herd of buffaloes or lions could not have made a more tremendous roaring."
The Seward men still carried a confident air on the third day. They had reason to do so. Their candidate was in many respects the greatest man in the party. He was a statesman of acknowledged eminence, and had been for many years the leading representative of the principles upon which the republican party stood. They were strong, too, in the convention; and they were sure to secure upon the first ballot more votes for their candidate than could be summoned to the support of any other man.
On the assembling of the convention, everybody was anxious to get at the decisive work, and, as a preliminary, the various candidates in the field were formally nominated by their friends. Mr. Evarts of New York nominated Mr. Seward, and Mr. Judd of Illinois named Abraham Lincoln. Afterwards, Mr. Dayton of New Jersey, Mr. Cameron of Pennsylvania, Mr. Chase of Ohio, Edward Bates of Missouri, and John McLean of Ohio, were formally nominated; but no enthusiasm was awakened by the mention of any names except those of Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln. Caleb B. Smith of Indiana seconded the nomination of Mr. Lincoln, as did also Mr. Delano of Ohio, while Carl Schurz of Wisconsin and Mr. Blair of Michigan seconded the nomination of Mr. Seward. It was certain that one of these two men would be nominated. On every pronunciation of their names, their respective partisans raised their shouts, vieing with each other in the strength of their applause. The excitement of this mass of men at that time cannot be measured by those not there, or by men in their sober senses.
The ballot came. Maine gave nearly half her vote for Lincoln; New Hampshire, seven of her ten for Lincoln. Massachusetts was divided. New York voted solid for Mr. Seward, giving him her seventy votes. Virginia, which was expected also to vote solid for Mr. Seward, gave fourteen of her twenty-two votes for Lincoln. Indiana gave her twenty-six votes for Lincoln without a break. Thus the balloting went on, amid the most intense excitement, until the whole number of four hundred and sixty-five votes was cast. It was necessary to a choice that one candidate should have two hundred and thirty-three. William H. Seward had one hundred and seventy-three and a half, Abraham Lincoln one hundred and two, Edward Bates forty-eight, Simon Cameron fifty and a half, Salmon P. Chase forty-nine. The remaining forty-two votes were divided among John McLean, Benjamin F. Wade, William L. Dayton, John M. Reed, Jacob Collamer, Charles Sumner and John C. Fremont,--Reed, Sumner and Fremont having one each.
On the second ballot, the first gain for Lincoln was from New Hampshire. Then Vermont followed with her vote, which she had previously given to her senator, Mr. Collamer, as compliment. Pennsylvania came next to his support, with the votes she had given to Cameron. On the whole ballot, he gained seventy-nine votes, and received one hundred and eighty-one; while Mr. Seward received one hundred and eighty-four and a half votes, having gained eleven. The announcement of the votes given to Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln was received by deafening applause by their respective partisans. Then came the third ballot. All felt that it was likely to be the decisive one, and the friends of Mr. Seward trembled for the result. Hundreds of pencils were in operation, and before the result was announced it was whispered through the immense and excited mass of people that Abraham Lincoln had received two hundred and thirty-one and a half votes, only lacking one vote and a half of an election. Mr. Cartter of Ohio was up in an instant, to announce the change of four votes of Ohio from Mr. Chase to Mr. Lincoln. That finished the work. The excitement had culminated. After a moment's pause, like the sudden and breathless stillness that precedes the hurricane, the storm of wild, uncontrollable and almost insane enthusiasm descended. The scene surpassed description. During all the ballotings, a man had been standing upon the roof, communicating the results to the outsiders, who, in surging masses, far outnumbered those who were packed into the wigwam. To this man one of the secretaries shouted: "Fire the salute! Abe Lincoln is nominated!" Then, as the cheering inside died away, the roar began on the outside, and swelled up from the excited masses like the noise of many waters. This the insiders heard, and to it they replied. Thus deep called to deep with such a frenzy of sympathetic enthusiasm that even the thundering salute of cannon was unheard by many upon the platform.
When the multitudes became too tired to cheer more, the business of the convention proceeded. Half a dozen men were on their feet announcing the change of votes of their states, swelling Mr. Lincoln's majority. Missouri, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Virginia, California, Texas, District of Columbia, Kansas, Nebraska and Oregon insisted on casting unanimous votes for Mr. Lincoln, before the vote was declared. While these changes were going on, a photograph of the nominee was brought in and exhibited to the convention. When the vote was declared, Mr. Evarts, on behalf of the New York delegation, expressed his grief that Mr. Seward had not been nominated, and then moved that the nomination of Mr. Lincoln should be made unanimous. John A. Andrew of Massachusetts and Carl Schurz of Wisconsin seconded the motion, and it was carried. Before the nomination of a vice-president, the convention adjourned for dinner. It is reported that such had been the excitement during the morning session that men who never tasted intoxicating liquors staggered like drunken men, on coming into the open air. The nervous tension had been so great that, when it subsided, they were as flaccid and feeble as if they had but recently risen from a fever.
The excitement in the city only began as it subsided in the convention. Mr. Lincoln was the favorite of Chicago and of Illinois--he was the people's idol. Men shouted and sang, and did all sorts of foolish things in the incontinence of their joy. After dinner the convention met again, and for the last time. The simple business was the completion of the ticket by the nomination of a candidate for vice-president; and the result was the selection of Hannibal Hamlin of Maine.
The defeat of Mr. Seward was a sad blow to his friends. They had presented to the convention one of the prominent statesmen of the nation; and he had undoubtedly been slaughtered to satisfy the clamor for "availability." The country at large did not know Mr. Lincoln in any capacity except that of a political debater; and many sections had no familiarity with his reputation, even in this character. Mr. Seward, on the contrary, had been in public life for thirty years; and his name and fame were as common and as well established in the regard of the nation, as the name and fame of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster had been. He was a man of great accomplishments, of wide experience, of large influence and surpassing ability--recognized as such abroad as well as at home. Their disappointment is not to be wondered at, or blamed. Mr. Lincoln had not been proved. His capacity for public affairs had yet to be demonstrated; and he had been nominated over the head of Mr. Seward partly for this reason--the reason that he was a new man, and had no public record. If events have proved that the choice between these two men was a fortunate one, they can hardly have proved that it was a wise one--that it was the result of an intelligent and honest choice between the two men. It is pleasant to remember that Mr. Lincoln, when elected to the presidency, called to the first place in his cabinet the man whom the convention had set aside, and that the country had the advantage of his wise counsels throughout the darkest period and most difficult passage of its history.
As has been stated, the city of Chicago was wild with delight. One hundred guns were fired from the top of the Tremont House. Decorated and illuminated rails were around the newspaper offices. All the bars and drinking halls were crowded with men who were either worn out with excitement or mad with delight. From Chicago the news spread over the country, and the cannon's throat responded to the click of the telegraph from Maine to the Mississippi. The outgoing trains that night found bonfires blazing at every village, and excited crowds assembled to cheer the retiring delegates, most of whom were either too weak or too hoarse to respond.
In the little city of Springfield, in the heart of Illinois, two hundred miles from where those exciting events were in progress, sat Abraham Lincoln, in close and constant telegraphic communication with his friends in Chicago. He was apprised of the results of every ballot, and, with his home friends, sat in the Journal office receiving and commenting upon the dispatches. It was one of the decisive moments of his life--a moment on which hung his fate as a public man--his place in history. He fully appreciated the momentous results of the convention to himself and the nation, and foresaw the nature of the great struggle which his nomination and election would inaugurate. A moment, and he knew that he would either become the central man of a nation, or a cast-off politician whose ambition for the nation's highest honors would be forever blasted. At last, in the midst of intense and painful excitement, a messenger from the telegraph office entered with the decisive dispatch in his hand. Without handing it to any one, he took his way solemnly to the side of Mr. Lincoln, and said: "the convention has made a nomination, and Mr. Seward is--the second man on the list." Then he jumped upon the editorial table and shouted, "gentlemen, I propose three cheers for Abraham Lincoln, the next President of the United States;" and the call was boisterously responded to. He then handed the dispatch to Mr. Lincoln who read in silence, and then aloud, its contents. After the excitement had in a measure passed away from the little assembly, Mr. Lincoln rose, and remarking that there was "a little woman" on Eighth street who had some interest in the matter, pocketed the telegram and walked home.
As soon as the news reached Springfield, the citizens who had a personal affection for Mr. Lincoln which amounted almost to idolatry, responded with a hundred guns, and during the afternoon thronged his house to tender their congratulations and express their joy. In the evening, the State House was thrown open, and a most enthusiastic meeting held by the republicans. At its close, they marched in a body to the Lincoln mansion, and called for the nominee. Mr. Lincoln appeared, and after a brief, modest and hearty speech, invited as many as could get into the house to enter, the crowd responding that after the fourth of March they would give him a larger house. The people did not retire until a late hour, and then moved off reluctantly, leaving the excited household to their rest.
On the following day, which was Saturday, Mr. Ashmun, the president of the convention, at the head of a committee, visited Springfield to apprise Mr. Lincoln officially of his nomination. In order that the ceremony might be smoothly performed, the committee had an interview with Mr. Lincoln before the hour appointed for the formal call. They found him at a loss to know how to treat a present he had just received at the hands of some of his considerate Springfield friends. Knowing Mr. Lincoln's temperate or rather abstinent habits, and laboring under the impression that the visitors from Chicago would have wants beyond the power of cold water to satisfy, these friends had sent in sundry hampers of wines and liquors. These strange fluids troubled Mr. Lincoln; and he frankly confessed as much to the members of the committee. The chairman at once advised him to return the gift, and to offer no stimulants to his guests, as many would be present besides the committee. Thus relieved, he made ready for the reception of the company, according to his own ideas of hospitality. The evening came, and with it Mr. Ashmun and the committee and many others. Mr. Ashmun on being presented said:
"I have, sir, the honor, on behalf of the gentlemen who are present--a committee appointed by the republican convention recently assembled at Chicago--to discharge a most pleasant duty. We have come, sir, under a vote of instructions to that committee, to notify you that you have been selected by the convention of the republicans at Chicago for President of the United States. They instruct us, sir, to notify you of that selection; and that committee deem it not only respectful to yourself, but appropriate to the important matter which they have in hand, that they should come in person, and present to you the authentic evidence of the action of that convention; and, sir, without any phrase which shall either be personally plauditory to yourself, or which shall have any reference to the principles involved in the questions which are connected with your nomination, I desire to present to you the letter which has been prepared, and which informs you of your nomination, and with it the platform, resolutions and sentiments which the convention adopted. Sir, at your convenience, we shall be glad to receive from you such a response as it may be your pleasure to give us."
Mr. Lincoln listened to the address with sad gravity. There was in his heart no exultation--no elation0-only the pressure of a new and great responsibility. He paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then replied:
"Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: I tender to you, and through you to the republican national convention, and all the people represented in it, my profoundest thanks for the high honor done me, which you now formally announce. Deeply and even painfully sensible of the great responsibility which is inseparable from this high honor--a responsibility which I could almost wish had fallen upon some one of the far more eminent and experienced statesmen Whose distinguished names were before the convention--I shall, by your leave, consider more fully the resolutions of the convention denominated the platform, and, without any unnecessary or unreasonable delay, respond to you, Mr. Chairman, in writing, not doubting that the platform will be found satisfactory, and the nomination gratefully accepted. And now I will no longer defer the pleasure of taking you, and each of you, by the hand."
Judge Kelly of Pennsylvania, one of the committee, and a very tall man, looked at Mr. Lincoln, up and down, before it came his turn to take his hand, a scrutiny that had not escaped Mr. Lincoln's quick eye. So, when he took the hand of the Judge, he inquired: "what is your hight?" "six feet three," replied the Judge. "What is yours, Mr. Lincoln?" "Six feet four," responded Mr. Lincoln. "Then, sir," said the Judge, "Pennsylvania bows to Illinois. My dear man," he continued, "for years my heart has been aching for a president that I could look up to; and I've found him at last, in the land where we thought there were none but little giants."
The evening passed quickly away, and the committee retired with a very pleasant impression of the man in whose hands they had placed the standard of the party for a great and decisive campaign. Mr. Ashmun met the nominee as an old friend, with whom he had acted in Congress, when both were members of the old whig party; and the interview between them was one of peculiar interest. It is a strange coincidence that the man who received Mr. Lincoln's first spoken and written utterance as the standard bearer of the republican party, received the last word he ever wrote as President of the United States.
On the twenty-third of June, which occurred on the following week, Mr. Lincoln responded to the letter which Mr. Ashmun presented him as follows:
"Sir: I accept the nomination tendered me by the convention over which you presided, of which I am formally apprised in a letter of yourself and others, acting as a committee of the convention for that purpose. The declaration of principles and sentiments which accompanies your letter meets my approval, and it shall be my care not to violate it, or disregard it in any part. Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and with due regard to the views and feelings of all who were represented in the convention, to the rights of all the states and territories and people of the nation, to the inviolability of the Constitution and the perpetual union, harmony and prosperity of all, I am most happy to co-operate for the practical success of the principles declared by the convention. Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen,
"Abraham Lincoln.
"Hon. George Ashmun."
Thus was Abraham Lincoln placed before the nation as a candidate for the highest honor in its power to bestow. It had been a long and tedious passage to this point in his history. He was in the fifty-second year of his age. He had spent half of his years in what was litera11y a wilderness. Born in the humblest and remotest obscurity, subjected to the rudest toil in the meanest offices, gathering his acquisitions from the scantiest sources, achieving the development of his powers by means of his own institution, he had, with none of the tricks of the demagogue, with none of the aids of wealth and social influence, with none of the opportunities for exhibiting his powers which high official position bestows, against all the combinations of genius and eminence and interest, raised himself by force of manly excellence of heart and brain into national recognition, and had become the focal center of the affectionate interest and curious inquisition of thirty millions of people at home, and of multitudes throughout the civilized world.
Footnotes edit
- ↑ M. Halstead, author of "Caucuses of 1860." Columbus: Follett, Foster & Co.