Weed’s operation was reinforced with thirteen cars packed with two thousand Seward “irrepressibles” from New York that pulled into the Chicago station “singing songs not found in hymn-books.” Murat Halstead, who arrived with the contingent, wrote, “The number of private bottles on our train last night was something surprising. . . . I do not feel competent to state the precise proportions of those who are drunk, and those who are sober.”
The New York boosters marched around the streets led by the tall figure of Tom Hyer, the first recognized heavyweight champion boxer, who won his title in a 101-round match in 1841, and although he last held the title in 1851 he was the biggest celebrity at the convention. There was a political reason beyond his pugilistic fame that Weed brought Hyer as the drum major of the Seward parades in Chicago. He was the hero of the nativist gangs of New York, had been a street thug for Seward’s sworn enemies, and an enforcer for the Know Nothings. His presence was Weed’s symbolic way of signaling to those from states with swing Know Nothing voters that Seward was acceptable. Hyer was spotted towering in any crowd. He had adopted the dress of a dandy complete a silk top hat. (In February 1861, he attended a reception at Astor House in honor of President-elect Lincoln.)
The New York crowd intended to create a clamorous momentum for Seward had the reverse effect of reminding those wary of Weed of their reservations. James G. Blaine, a member of the Maine legislature and the protégé of Senator William Pitt Fessenden, wrote him “that the Seward force is on the ground and assumes an air of dictation which is at once unwarranted and offensive, and which I think will create a reaction before Wednesday.” Before the convention began, Blaine observed, “I do not myself believe that he will be nominated, though a great many here think otherwise. If he is not, I will adhere to the opinion I expressed to you in Portland, that the game lies between Lincoln and yourself—Chase, McLean, Banks, and Bates stand no chance.”
The head of the Connecticut delegation, Gideon Welles, a former Democrat and Free Soiler who was the editor of the Hartford Press, wrote, “It was the misfortune of Mr. Seward that he was associated with and the candidate of the most offensive lobby combination of that date. He was not accused or suspected of receiving pecuniary benefit himself from the practices of that class of jobbing party lobbyists, but he was thought to be indifferent if not assenting to their practices, and was their candidate. . . . But there was a large element—the result showed a very decided majority—of the Republicans averse to any nomination or movement which would tend to transfer Albany intrigues to Washington, and introduce the debasing practices on the Hudson into our national politics.”
Weed invited Henry S. Lane of Indiana to dinner, where, according to Mrs. Lane, who was present, he pleaded with him to direct Indiana to vote for Seward, “saying they would send enough money from New York to ensure his election for Governor.” Mrs. Lane later wrote, “His proposal was indignantly rejected.”
Then Weed sent Senator Preston King of New York to meet with William Butler to make him an offer he thought he could not refuse. King brought with him a man named “Mr. Street.” “Mr. Street,” Butler wrote Lincoln on May 15, “soon entered into what he termed a confidential conversation.” He said he was “authorized to say if Illinois would consent to have Mr. Lincoln’s name placed on the ticket in connection with Mr. Seward, that an arrangement could be made” to pass $100,000, “placed in the proper hands,” to “carry Illinois and Indiana.” Butler told him that “under no circumstances could your name be used in a second place.” He added, “I am a little afraid of this element.” Weed offered similar sums to other delegations and to other vice president possibilities. He approached Simon Cameron through Alexander Cummings, editor of the Philadelphia Bulletin. “The flood of Seward money promised for Pennsylvania was not without efficacy,” wrote Halstead. “The phrase used was, that Seward’s friends ‘would spend oceans of money.’ ”
Orville Browning arrived later in Chicago than the other old Lincoln friends, on Tuesday, May 15. Formally pledged to Lincoln, he was still pining for Bates. “Oh, if Lincoln would withdraw, as he should do, we could nominate that great statesman, Edward Bates, of Missouri,” he told Thomas J. Pickett, editor of the Rock Island Register, who was an Illinois delegate and ardent Lincoln man. “But as it is,” Browning said, “of course Seward will be nominated.” “I saw Browning at Chicago: he was first for Bates,” recalled David Davis. “I told him there was no earthly chance for him—Bates.” Davis immediately put Browning to work for Lincoln. He brought Browning with him to give speeches on Lincoln’s superior “availability” to the Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts delegations. The natural Bates leader in Illinois became the Old Whig testifying for Lincoln as the only candidate who could carry Illinois.
While Weed was promising large piles of cash, Davis received word that the New Jersey delegation was being swept with the suggestion from the Seward campaign that Lincoln should be the number two on the ticket in order to deflate his prospects. “Palmer,” Davis instructed John M. Palmer, “you must go with me at once to see the New Jersey delegation.” Palmer, a former Democrat, told the key New Jersey delegate, a judge that Davis knew, “ ’Sir, you may nominate Mr. Lincoln for Vice-President if you please. But I want you to understand that there are 40,000 Democrats in Illinois who will support this ticket if you give them an opportunity. We are not Whigs, and we never expect to be Whigs. We will never consent to support two old Whigs on this ticket. We are willing to vote for Mr. Lincoln with a Democrat on the ticket, but we will not consent to vote for two Whigs.” “Will they do as Palmer says?” the judge asked Davis. “Oh,” he replied, “oh, Judge, you can’t account for the conduct of these old Locofocos,” referring to them with the old derogatory name Whigs gave to Jacksonian Democrats. “Certainly. There are 40,000 of them, and, as Palmer says, not one of them will vote for two Whigs.” Palmer waited until he and Davis returned to the Tremont House to tell him, “Davis, you are an infernal rascal.” “Judge Davis said nothing, but chuckled as if he had greatly enjoyed the joke,” Palmer recalled. “This incident is illustrative of the kind of work we had to do. We were compelled to resort to this argument—that the old Democrats then ready to affiliate with the Republican party would not tolerate two Whigs on the ticket—in order to break up the movement to nominate Lincoln for Vice-President. The Seward men recognized in Lincoln their most formidable rival, and that was why they wished to get him out of the way by giving him second place on the ticket.”
“We are quiet but moving heaven and earth,” Davis and Dubois wired Lincoln the day before the convention opened. “Nothing will beat us but old fogy politicians. The heart of the delegates are with us.” Butler wrote Lincoln with some intelligence: “[Thaddeus] Stevens of Pennsylvania says with Mr. Seward Pennsylvania is lost. [W]ith Mr. Lincoln or Mr. McLean they can carry it by 20,000. Stevens is instructed for Cameron but frankly says it will not do. I must stop everything. All is confusion & noise. I will keep you advised as well as I can.”
The proceedings began on Wednesday, May 16, in a brick and wooden structure that could hold at least ten thousand people and was topped on its arch with letters reading: “REPUBLICAN WIGWAM.” It was the largest indoor space in the country, built in short order for the event itself, considered a marvel, an example of the will and muscle of Chicago. “Around the front of the gallery,” reported the Press and Tribune, “are the coats of arms of the States, and between them wreathes of evergreen. The pillars and supports have been painted white, and wreathed with evergreens, and from each to each have been twined draperies in red, white and blue, with artificial flowers and miniature national flags. The pillars supporting roof, which form a continuous row along the front of the platform, bear, on the side to the audience, busts of distinguished men, supported by figures of Atlas. . . . The brick wall at the rear has been painted and divided into arched panels, in which are colossal statuary paintings. Over the center of the state is suspended a large gilt eagle.” Above the
stage hung a star-studded banner with two blanks: “For President—For Vice-President—.”
Just past noon, Norman Judd, on behalf of the host committee, presented the chairman, George Ashmun, a former Whig congressman from Massachusetts, with a gavel made from an oak plank of Commodore Perry’s ship and inlaid with ivory and silver. Judd gave a little speech reciting the vessel’s motto—“Don’t give up the ship”—and Perry’s famous utterance—“We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” As Judd gazed out on the sea of delegates he could see them seated under their state banners. “I superintended the arrangements of the seats,” he later explained. He put New York on the right, with “New England, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and all the strong Seward States around her. On the other side I put Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, and Missouri, and grouped around these the delegates from the border States, and all the small doubtful delegations. The advantage of the arrangement was, that when the active excitement and canvassing in the Convention came on, the Seward men couldn’t get over among the doubtful delegations at all to log-roll with them, being absolutely hemmed in by their own followers who were not likely to be swerved from their set preference for Seward.” He had anticipated a hard-fought, multiple ballot nomination and insured that Seward’s forces would be landlocked, unable to bargain and cajole on the convention floor.
The Wigwam, site of the Republican convention, 1860
On Thursday morning, May 17, the Seward men wearing their Seward badges massed four abreast behind sporting man Tom Hyer and a brass band playing the popular tune “O Isn’t He a Darling?” to tramp in impressive soldierly display through downtown to the Wigwam. “The Pennsylvanians declare, if Seward were nominated, they would be immediately ruined,” reported Halstead. “New Jerseyites say the same thing. The Indianians are of the same opinion. They look heart-broken at the suggestion that Seward has the inside track, and throw up their hands in despair. . . . Illinois agonizes at the mention of the name of Seward, and says he is to them the sting of political death. Amid all these cries of distress, the Sewardites are true as steel to their champion, and they will cling to ‘Old Irrepressible,’ as they call him, until the last gun is fired and the big bell rings.”
The bell began to toll for Bates with the passage of the platform. Carl Schurz and George Schneider cosponsored an anti-nativist resolution: “The Republican party is opposed to any change in our naturalization laws, or any State legislation, by which the rights of citizenship heretofore accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired, and is in favor of giving a full and sufficient protection to all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.” The only fireworks over the platform came from the omission of the opening lines of the Declaration of Independence, which had appeared in the 1856 platform, prompting a threatened walkout by Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio, who had been working against Seward, but were added out of respect for his leonine presence and embarrassment over the words’ exclusion, and the document was approved unanimously. “A herd of buffaloes or lions could not have made a more tremendous roaring,” wrote Halstead.
Throughout the day, the Seward forces had repulsed a series of procedural motions for anything but a majority vote on the nominee. At noon, a hurried caucus convened at the Cameron Hotel in the rooms of representatives of the four “doubtful states,” which were panicked about Seward’s imminent nomination. Andrew Reeder, of Pennsylvania, the fugitive territorial governor of Kansas, presided as chairman of the meeting. Thomas H. Dudley, the state chairman for New Jersey, proposed to Judd that a working group of three delegates from each of the states try to settle on one candidate. The Committee of Twelve included David Davis and Caleb Smith of Indiana, who was for Lincoln.
“So confident were the Seward men, when the platform was adopted, of their ability to nominate their great leader, that they urged an immediate ballot, and would have had it if the clerks had not reported that they were unprovided with tally-sheets,” Halstead reported. An unknown voice shouted, “This convention adjourn until ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” The convention adjourned with the Seward men in “high feather,” without a “particle of doubt of his nomination in the morning.” That evening Weed laid out a banquet at the Richmond House with three hundred bottles of champagne, bands, and Tom Hyer.
Davis and the Illinois men, gathered in their headquarters at the Tremont House, received an urgent message from Lincoln. Down in Springfield, Edward L. Baker, editor of the Illinois State Journal, had become alarmed at an article in the Missouri Democrat, which was pro-Bates, that stated Lincoln was as radical as Seward. Lincoln wrote on the margin of the paper, “I agree with Seward in his ‘Irrepressible Conflict,’ but I do not endorse his ‘Higher Law’ doctrine.” He added a line against making hard and fast deals, perhaps in reaction against Ray’s self-important letter three days earlier urging him to invest Ray and the others with the power to cut such deals: “Make no contracts that will bind me.”
Lincoln placed the newspaper with his handwritten notes into Baker’s hand and sent him at once on the train to Chicago. When the messenger appeared at the Tremont House, he was not warmly greeted. “Damn Lincoln!” said Jesse Dubois. Leonard Swett said, “I am very sure if Lincoln was aware of the necessities—” “Lincoln ain’t here,” said Davis with finality, “and don’t know what we have to meet, so we will go ahead, as if we hadn’t heard from him, and he must ratify it!” Herndon, who was there, too, wrote that Lincoln did not “appreciate the gravity of the situation,” and Davis “went ahead with his negotiations.”
Lane of Indiana and Curtin of Pennsylvania were both committed to Lincoln. The rumor was rife that if Seward was nominated, they would not campaign for the ticket. “Henry S. Lane, candidate in Indiana, did say something of the kind,” reported Halstead. “He asserted hundreds of times that the nomination of Seward would be death to him, and that he might in that case just as well give up the canvass.” The Indiana delegation was working hand in glove with Davis. But the Pennsylvania one was split between Curtin and Cameron, who were enemies. Cameron had defeated Curtin for the U.S. Senate seat in 1855, in a “desperate factional battle” that “left wounds which were yet fresh and inspired the bitterest hostility,” recalled Alexander K. McClure, Curtin’s campaign manager. After dinner on the 17th, the Indiana and Pennsylvania delegations met at the Cook County Court House to try to work out a common position. It was not a closed meeting and the room was filled with other delegates and Chicagoans.
“The Bates men, having learned of this meeting, appeared there in force, and [Frank] Blair had already commenced making a speech for Bates when word was sent to our headquarters of what was going on,” recalled Gustave Koerner. Davis instantly dispatched Koerner and Browning to the scene. When Koerner announced he had come to speak for Lincoln “the cheers almost shook the court house.” He pointed out that Bates had presided at the convention in 1856 that nominated Fillmore and was supported by the Know Nothings and had backed the Know Nothings in local St. Louis elections. “I would tell this meeting in all candor that if Bates was nominated, the German Republicans in the other States would never vote for him; I for one would not, and I would advise my countrymen to the same effect.” Browning, “from a Whig Standpoint,” stepped up to credential Lincoln as an Old Whig who ought to receive Old Whig votes, but “had always opposed Native Americanism. This would secure him the foreign Republican vote all over the country.” Koerner wrote, “The delegates then held a secret session, and we soon learned that Indiana would go for Lincoln at the start, and that a large majority of the Pennsylvanians had agreed to vote for him for their second choice.”
At the same time, the Committee of Twelve was meeting in the rooms of David Wilmot of Pennsylvania. Most of the New Jersey delegation was still backing its favorite son, William Dayton, who had been the nominee for vice president in 1856. After four hours of indecision, Horace Greeley popped in, learned that there was no resolution, and sent a telegram to his pa
per: “Chicago, Thursday, May 17—11:40 P.M.—My conclusion, from all that I can gather to-night, is, that the opposition to Gov. Seward cannot concentrate on any candidate, and that he will be nominated. H. G.”
But once Greeley left, the crisis point was reached. The men went around the room to reveal their counts if their favorite sons were to drop out. Lincoln was clearly the strongest candidate. Dudley of New Jersey proposed that his delegation would end its support for Dayton and vote for Lincoln on the second ballot if Pennsylvania would do the same. The Pennsylvanians agreed in principle. According to Dudley, they also agreed to offer the vice presidency to Congressman Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, who had been a Know Nothing and was David Davis’s first cousin; but in the morning, he refused the honor.
Even later that night, Davis, Swett, and a few other trusted Lincoln men met at the Tremont House with a negotiating team of Pennsylvanians led by a friend of Cameron’s, Judge Joseph Casey. Casey put his cards on the table at the start—secretary of the treasury. Whatever the language, he left the room certain he had an understanding. Casey wrote Cameron: “It was only done after everything was arranged carefully and unconditionally in reference to Yourself—to our satisfaction—and we drove the anti-Cameron men from this state into it.” Swett would later insist that “no pledges have been made, no mortgages executed.” After the meeting, in the Tremont lobby, Davis told the editors of the Chicago Press and Tribune, “Damned if we haven’t got them.” Asked how he had “got them,” he replied, “By paying their price.” He sent a telegram to Lincoln, “Am very hopeful. Don’t be excited. Nearly dead with fatigue. Telegraph or write here very little.”
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