Lincoln's great skill and wisdom in his debate with Douglas
turned the eyes of the whole country upon him; and the force and
logic of his Cooper Institute speech convinced every one that in
him they had discovered a new national leader. He began to be
mentioned as a possible candidate for President in the election
which was to take place that fall to choose a successor to
President Buchanan. Indeed, quite a year earlier, an editor in
Illinois had written to him asking permission to announce him as
a candidate in his newspaper. At that time Lincoln had refused,
thanking him for the compliment, but adding modestly: "I must in
candor say that I do not think myself fit for the Presidency."
About Christmas time, 1859, however, a number of his stanchest
Illinois friends urged him to let them use his name, and he
consented, not so much in the hope of being chosen, as of perhaps
receiving the nomination for Vice-President, or at least of
making a show of strength that would aid him at some future time
to become senator. The man most talked about as the probable
Republican candidate for President was William H. Seward, who was
United States senator from New York, and had also been governor
of that State.

The political unrest continued. Slavery was still the most
absorbing topic, and it was upon their stand for or against
slavery that all the Presidential candidates were chosen. The
pretensions and demands of the Southern leaders had by this time
passed into threats. They declared roundly that they would take
their States out of the Union if slavery were not quickly made
lawful all over the country, or in case a "Black Republican"
President should be elected. The Democrats, unable to agree among
themselves, split into two sections, the Northerners nominating
Stephen A. Douglas for President, while delegates who had come to
their National Convention from what were called the Cotton States
chose John C. Breckinridge. A few men who had belonged to the old
Whig party, but felt themselves unable to join the Republicans or
either faction of the Democrats, met elsewhere and nominated John
Bell.

This breaking up of their political enemies into three distinct
camps greatly cheered the Republicans, and when their National
Convention came together in Chicago on May 16, 1860, its members
were filled with the most eager enthusiasm. Its meetings were
held in a huge temporary wooden building called the Wigwam, so
large that 10,000 people could easily assemble in it to watch the
proceedings. Few conventions have shown such depth of feeling.
Not only the delegates on the central platform, but even the
spectators seemed impressed with the fact that they were taking
part in a great historical event. The first two days were taken
up in seating delegates, adopting a "platform" or statement of
party principles, and in other necessary routine matters. On the
third day, however, it was certain that balloting would begin,
and crowds hurried to the Wigwam in a fever of curiosity. The New
York men, sure that Seward would be the choice of the convention,
marched there in a body, with music and banners. The friends of
Lincoln arrived before them, and while not making so much noise
or show, were doing good work for their favorite. The long
nominating speeches of later years had not then come into
fashion. "I take the liberty," simply said Mr. Evarts of New
York, "to name as a candidate to be nominated by this convention
for the office of President of the United States, William H.
Seward," and at Mr. Seward's name a burst of applause broke
forth, so long and loud that it seemed fairly to shake the great
building. Mr. Judd, of Illinois, performed the same office of
friendship for Mr. Lincoln, and the tremendous cheering that rose
from the throats of his friends echoed and dashed itself against
the sides of the Wigwam, died down, and began anew, until the
noise that had been made by Seward's admirers dwindled to
comparative feebleness. Again and again these contests of lungs
and enthusiasm were repeated as other names were presented to the
convention.

At last the voting began. Two names stood out beyond all the rest
on the very first ballot--Seward's and Lincoln's. The second
ballot showed that Seward had lost votes while Lincoln had gained
them. The third ballot was begun in almost painful suspense,
delegates and spectators keeping count upon their tally-sheets
with nervous fingers. It was found that Lincoln had gained still
more, and now only needed one and a half votes to receive the
nomination. Suddenly the Wigwam became as still as a church.
Everybody leaned forward to see who would break the spell. A man
sprang upon a chair and reported a change of four votes to
Lincoln. Then a teller shouted a name toward the skylight, and
the boom of a cannon from the roof announced the nomination and
started the cheering down the long Chicago streets; while inside
delegation after delegation changed its votes to the victor in a
whirlwind of hurrahs. That same afternoon the convention finished
its labors by nominating Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for
Vice-President, and adjourned--the delegates, speeding homeward
on the night trains, realizing by the bonfires and cheering
crowds at every little station that a memorable Presidential
campaign was already begun.

During this campaign there were, then, four Presidential
candidates in the field. In the order of strength shown at the
election they were:

1. The Republican party, whose "platform," or statement of party
principles, declared that slavery was wrong, and that its further
spread should be prevented. Its candidates were Abraham Lincoln
of Illinois for President, and Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for
Vice-President.

2. The Douglas wing of the Democratic party, which declared that
it did not pretend to decide whether slavery was right or wrong,
and proposed to allow the people of each State and Territory to
choose for themselves whether they would or would not have it.
Its candidates were Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for President,
and Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia for Vice-President.

3. The Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, which declared that
slavery was right, and whose policy was to extend it, and to make
new slave States. Its candidates were John C. Breckinridge of
Kentucky for President, and Joseph Lane of Oregon for
Vice-President.

4. The Constitutional Union party, which ignored slavery in its
platform, declaring that it recognized no political principles
other than "the Constitution of the country, the Union of the
States, and the enforcement of the laws." Its candidates were
John Bell of Tennessee for President, and Edward Everett of
Massachusetts for Vice-President.

In enthusiasm the Republicans quickly took the lead. "Wide Awake"
clubs of young men, wearing caps and capes of glazed oilcloth to
protect their clothing from the dripping oil of their torches,
gathered in torchlight processions miles in length. Fence rails,
supposed to have been made by Lincoln in his youth, were set up
in party headquarters and trimmed with flowers and lighted
tapers. Lincoln was called the "Rail-splitter Candidate," and
this telling name, added to the equally telling "Honest Old Abe,"
by which he had long been known in Illinois, furnished country
and city campaign orators with a powerful appeal to the sympathy
and trust of the working-people of the United States. Men and
women read in newspaper and pamphlet biographies the story of his
humble beginnings: how he had risen by simple, earnest work and
native genius, first to fame and leadership in his own State, and
then to fame and leadership in the nation; and these titles
quickly grew to be much more than mere party nicknames--to stand
for a faith and trust destined to play no small part in the
history of the next few years.

After the nominations were made Douglas went on a tour of
speech-making through the South. Lincoln, on the contrary, stayed
quietly at home in Springfield. His personal habits and
surroundings varied little during the whole of this campaign
summer. Naturally he gave up active law practice, leaving his
office in charge of his partner, William H. Herndon. He spent the
time during the usual business hours of each day in the
governor's room of the State-house at Springfield, attended only
by his private secretary, Mr. Nicolay. Friends and strangers
alike were able to visit him freely and without ceremony, and few
went away without being impressed by the sincere frankness of his
manner and conversation.

All sorts of people came to see him: those from far-away States,
East and West, as well as those from nearer home. Politicians
came to ask him for future favors, and many whose only motives
were friendliness or curiosity called to express their good
wishes and take the Republican candidate by the hand.

He wrote no public letters, and he made no speeches beyond a few
words of thanks and greeting to passing street parades. Even the
strictly private letters in which he gave his advice on points in
the campaign were not more than a dozen in number; but all
through the long summer, while welcoming his throngs of visitors,
listening to the tales of old settlers, making friends of
strangers, and binding old friends closer by his ready sympathy,
Mr. Lincoln watched political developments very closely, not
merely to note the progress of his own chances, but with an
anxious view to the future in case he should be elected. Beyond
the ever-changing circle of friendly faces near him he saw the
growing unrest and anger of the South, and doubtless felt the
uncertainty of many good people in the North, who questioned the
power of this untried Western man to guide the country through
the coming perils.

Never over-confident of his own powers, his mind must at times
have been full of misgivings; but it was only on the night of the
election, November 6, 1860, when, sitting alone with the
operators in the little telegraph-office at Springfield, he read
the messages of Republican victory that fell from the wires until
convinced of his election, that the overwhelming, almost crushing
"weight of his coming duties and responsibilities fell upon him.
In that hour, grappling resolutely and alone with the problem
before him, he completed what was really the first act of his
Presidency--the choice of his cabinet, of the men who were to aid
him. People who doubted the will or the wisdom of their
Rail-splitter Candidate need have had no fear. A weak man would
have chosen this little band of counselors--the Secretary of
State, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the half-dozen others
who were to stand closest to him and to be at the head of the
great departments of the government--from among his personal
friends. A man uncertain of his own power would have taken care
that no other man of strong nature with a great following of his
own should be there to dispute his authority. Lincoln did the
very opposite. He had a sincere belief in public opinion, and a
deep respect for the popular will. In this case he felt that no
men represented that popular will so truly as those whose names
had been considered by the Republican National Convention in its
choice of a candidate for President. So, instead of gathering
about him his friends, he selected his most powerful rivals in
the Republican party. William H. Seward, of New York, was to be
his Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, his Secretary
of the Treasury; Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, his Secretary of
War; Edward Bates, of Missouri, his Attorney-General. The names
of all of these men had been before the Convention. Each one had
hoped to be President in his stead. For the other three members
of his Cabinet he had to look elsewhere. Gideon Welles, of
Connecticut, for Secretary of the Navy; Montgomery Blair, of
Maryland, for Postmaster-General; and Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana,
for Secretary of the Interior, were finally chosen. When people
complained, as they sometimes did, that by this arrangement the
cabinet consisted of four men who had been Democrats in the old
days, and only three who had been Whigs, Lincoln smiled his wise,
humorous smile and answered that he himself had been a Whig, and
would always be there to make matters even. It is not likely that
this exact list was in his mind on the night of the November
election; but the principal names in it most certainly were. To
some of these gentlemen he offered their appointments by letter.
Others he asked to visit him in Springfield to talk the matter
over. Much delay and some misunderstanding occurred before the
list was finally completed: but when he sent it to the Senate, on
the day after his inauguration, it was practically the one he had
in his mind from the beginning.

A President is elected by popular vote early in November, but he
is not inaugurated until the following fourth of March. Until the
day of his inauguration, when he takes the oath of office and
begins to discharge his duties, he is not only not President--he
has no more power in the affairs of the Government than the
humblest private citizen. It is easy to imagine the anxieties and
misgivings that beset Mr. Lincoln during the four long months
that lay between his election and his inauguration. True to their
threats never to endure the rule of a "Black Republican"
President, the Cotton States one after the other withdrew their
senators and representatives from Congress, passed what they
called "Ordinances of Secession," and declared themselves to be
no longer a part of the United States. One after another, too,
army and navy officers stationed in the Southern States gave up
to the Southern leaders in this movement the forts, navy-yards,
arsenals, mints, ships, and other government property under their
charge. President Buchanan, in whose hands alone rested the power
to punish these traitors and avenge their insults to the
government he had sworn to protect and defend, showed no
disposition to do so; and Lincoln, looking on with a heavy heart,
was unable to interfere in any way. No matter how anxiously he
might watch the developments at Washington or in the Cotton
States, no matter what appeals might be made to him, no action of
any kind was possible on his part.

The only bit of cheer that came to him and other Union men during
this anxious season of waiting, was in the conduct of Major
Robert Anderson at Charleston Harbor, who, instead of following
the example of other officers who were proving unfaithful, boldly
defied the Southern "secessionists," and moving his little
handful of soldiers into the harbor fort best fitted for defense,
prepared to hold out against them until help could reach him from
Washington.

In February the leaders of the Southern people met at Montgomery,
Alabama, adopted a Constitution, and set up a government which
they called the Confederate States of America, electing Jefferson
Davis, of Mississippi, President, and Alexander H. Stephens, of
Georgia, Vice-President. Stephens was the "little, slim
pale-faced consumptive man" whose speech in Congress had won
Lincoln's admiration years before. Davis had been the child who
began his schooling so near to Lincoln in Kentucky. He had had a
far different career. Good fortune had carried him to West Point,
into the Mexican War, into the cabinet of President Franklin
Pierce, and twice into the Senate. He had had money, high office,
the best education his country could give him--everything, it
seemed, that had been denied to Lincoln. Now the two men were the
chosen heads of two great opposing factions, one bent on
destroying the government that had treated him so kindly; the
other, for whom it had done so little, willing to lay down his
life in its defense.

It must not be supposed that Lincoln remained idle during these
four months of waiting. Besides completing his cabinet, and
receiving his many visitors, he devoted himself to writing his
inaugural address, withdrawing himself for some hours each day to
a quiet room over the store of his brother-in-law, where he could
think and write undisturbed. The newspaper correspondents who had
gathered at Springfield, though alert for every item of news, and
especially anxious for a sight of his inaugural address, seeing
him every day as usual, got not the slightest hint of what he was
doing.

Mr. Lincoln started on his journey to Washington on February 11,
1861 two days after Jefferson Davis had been elected President of
the Confederate States of America. He went on a special train,
accompanied by Mrs. Lincoln and their three children, his two
private secretaries, and about a dozen personal friends. Mr.
Seward had suggested that because of the unsettled condition of
public affairs it would be better for the President-elect to come
a week earlier; but Mr. Lincoln allowed himself only time
comfortably to fill the engagements he had made to visit the
State capitals and principal cities that lay on his way, to which
he had been invited by State and town officials, regardless of
party. The morning on which he left Springfield was dismal and
stormy, but fully a thousand of his friends and neighbors
assembled to bid him farewell. The weather seemed to add to the
gloom and depression of their spirits, and the leave-taking was
one of subdued anxiety, almost of solemnity. Mr. Lincoln took his
stand in the waiting-room while his friends filed past him, often
merely pressing his hand in silent emotion. The arrival of the
rushing train broke in upon this ceremony, and the crowd closed
about the car into which the President-elect and his party made
their way. Just as they were starting, when the conductor had his
hand upon the bell-rope, Mr. Lincoln stepped out upon the front
platform and made the following brief and pathetic address. It
was the last time his voice was to be heard in the city which had
so long been his home:

"My Friends: No one not in my situation can appreciate my feeling
of sadness at this parting. To this place and the kindness of
these people I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a
century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my
children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not
knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me
greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the
assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot
succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who
can go with me, and remain with you, and be everywhere for good,
let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care
commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I
bid you an affectionate farewell."

The conductor gave the signal, the train rolled slowly out of the
station, and the journey to Washington was begun. It was a
remarkable progress. At almost every station, even the smallest,
crowds had gathered to catch a glimpse of the face of the
President-elect, or at least to see the flying train. At the
larger stopping-places these crowds swelled to thousands, and in
the great cities to almost unmanageable throngs. Everywhere there
were calls for Mr. Lincoln, and if he showed himself; for a
speech. Whenever there was time, he would go to the rear platform
of the car and bow as the train moved away, or utter a few words
of thanks and greeting. At the capitals of Indiana, Ohio, New
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and in the cities of
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, New York, and Philadelphia, halts
of one or two days were made, the time being filled with formal
visits and addresses to each house of the legislature, street
processions, large evening receptions, and other ceremonies.

Party foes as well as party friends made up these expectant
crowds. Every eye was eager, every ear strained, to get some hint
of the thoughts and purposes of the man who was to be the guide
and head of the nation in the crisis that every one now knew to
be upon the country, but the course and end of which the wisest
could not foresee. In spite of all the cheers and the enthusiasm,
there was also an under-current of anxiety for his personal
safety, for the South had openly boasted that Lincoln would never
live to be inaugurated President. He himself paid no heed to such
warnings; but the railroad officials, and others who were
responsible for his journey, had detectives on watch at different
points to report any suspicious happenings. Nothing occurred to
change the program already agreed upon until the party reached
Philadelphia; but there Mr. Lincoln was met by Frederick W.
Seward, the son of his future Secretary of State, with an
important message from his father. A plot had been discovered to
do violence to, and perhaps kill, the President-elect as he
passed through the city of Baltimore. Mr. Seward and General
Scott, the venerable hero of the Mexican War, who was now at the
head of the army, begged him to run no risk, but to alter his
plans so that a portion of his party might pass through Baltimore
by a night train without previous notice. The seriousness of the
warning was doubled by the fact that Mr. Lincoln had just been
told of a similar, if not exactly the same, danger, by a Chicago
detective employed in Baltimore by one of the great railroad
companies. Two such warnings, coming from entirely different
sources, could not be disregarded; for however much Mr. Lincoln
might dislike to change his plans for so shadowy a danger, his
duty to the people who had elected him forbade his running any
unnecessary risk. Accordingly, after fulfilling all his
engagements in Philadelphia and Harrisburg on February 22, he and
a single companion took a night train, passed quietly through
Baltimore, and arrived in Washington about daylight on the
morning of February 23. This action called forth much talk,
ranging from the highest praise to ridicule and blame. A reckless
newspaper reporter telegraphed all over the country the absurd
story that he had traveled disguised in a Scotch cap and a long
military cloak. There was, of course, not a word of truth in the
absurd tale. The rest of the party followed Mr. Lincoln at the
time originally planned. They saw great crowds in the streets of
Baltimore, but there was now no occasion for violence.

In the week that passed between his arrival and the day of his
inauguration Mr. Lincoln exchanged the customary visits of
ceremony with President Buchanan, his cabinet, the Supreme Court,
the two houses of Congress, and other dignitaries.

Careful preparations for the inauguration had been made under the
personal direction of General Scott, who held the small military
force in the city ready instantly to suppress any attempt to
disturb the peace and quiet of the day.

On the morning of the fourth of March President Buchanan and
Citizen Lincoln, the outgoing and incoming heads of the
government, rode side by side in a carriage from the Executive
Mansion, or White House, as it is more commonly called, to the
Capitol, escorted by an imposing procession; and at noon a great
throng of people heard Mr. Lincoln read his inaugural address as
he stood on the east portico of the Capitol, surrounded by all
the high officials of the government. Senator Douglas, his
unsuccessful rival, standing not an arm's length away from him,
courteously held his hat during the ceremony. A cheer greeted him
as he finished his address. Then the Chief Justice arose, the
clerk opened his Bible, and Mr. Lincoln, laying his hand upon the
book, pronounced the oath:

"I, Abraham Lincoln, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully
execute the office of President of the United States, and will,
to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States."

Amid the thundering of cannon and the applause of all the
spectators, President Lincoln and Citizen Buchanan again entered
their carriage and drove back from the Capitol to the Executive
Mansion, on the threshold of which Mr. Buchanan, warmly shaking
the hand of his successor, expressed his wishes for the personal
happiness of the new President, and for the national peace and
prosperity.