ong antagonisms. One of the earliest symptoms
among the delegates at Chicago was the existence of a strong
undercurrent of opposition to his nomination. This opposition was as
yet latent, and scattered here and there among many State delegations,
but very intense, silently watching its opportunity, and ready to
combine upon any of the other candidates. The opposition soon made a
discovery: that of all the names mentioned, Lincoln's was the only one
offering any chance for such a combination. It needed only the
slightest comparison of notes to show that Dayton had no strength save
the New Jersey vote; Chase little outside of the Ohio delegation;
Cameron none but that of Pennsylvania, and that Bates had only his
Missouri friends and a few in border slave-States, which could cast no
electoral vote for the Republicans. The policy of the anti-Seward
delegates was therefore quickly developed--to use Lincoln's popularity
as a means to defeat Seward.

The credit of the nomination is claimed by many men, and by several
delegations, but every such claim is wholly fictitious. Lincoln was
chosen not by personal intrigue, but through political necessity. The
Republican party was a purely defensive organization; the South had
created the crisis which the new party was compelled to overcome. The
ascendency of the free-States, not the personal fortunes of Seward,
hung in the balance. Political victory at the ballot-box or a
transformation of the institutions of government was the immediate
alternative before the free-States.

Victory could be secured only by help of the electoral votes of New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois. It was therefore a simple
problem: What candidate could carry these States? None could answer
this question so well as their own delegates, and these, when
interrogated, still further reduced the problem by the reply that
Seward certainly could not. These four States lay on the border land
next to the South and to slavery. Institutions inevitably mold public
sentiment; and a certain tenderness towards the "property" of
neighbors and friends infected their people. They shrunk from the
reproach of being "abolitionized." They would vote for a conservative
Republican; but Seward and radicalism and "higher law" would bring
them inevitable defeat.

[Sidenote] N.Y. "Tribune," May 18, 1860.

Who, then, could carry these doubtful and pivotal States? This second
branch of the question also found its ready