Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [144]
Frustrated supporters tried to shake him into more concerted action. “I now begin to fear that Seward will get a majority of the delegates from Maryland,” Chase’s loyal backer James Ashley warned. “He and his friends work—work. They not only work—but he works.” The willful Chase was blind to troubling signs, convinced that if the delegates voted their conscience, he would ultimately prevail.
“I shall have nobody to push or act for me at Chicago,” Chase boasted to Benjamin Eggleston, a delegate from Cincinnati, “except the Ohio delegation who will, I doubt not, faithfully represent the Republicans of the State.” While a large majority of the Ohio state delegation indeed supported Chase, Senator Ben Wade had his own devoted followers. “The Ohio delegation does not seem to be anywhere as yet,” delegate Erastus Hopkins warned. Heedless, Chase remained positive that the entire Ohio delegation would come around, given everything he had done and sacrificed for his state. To support any other candidate would put one “in a position no man of honor or sensibility would care to occupy.”
A month before the convention, Kate convinced her father that a journey to Washington would shore up his support among various congressmen and senators. Lodging at the Willard Hotel, they made the rounds of receptions and dinners. Seward was very kind to them, Chase admitted to his friend James Briggs. The genial New Yorker hosted a dinner party in their honor at which “all sides were pretty fairly represented” and “there was a good deal of joking.” The next evening, former Ohio congressman John Gurley organized a party to honor both Chase and Ohio’s new governor, William Dennison. Seward was invited to join the Ohio gathering, which included former Whig leader Tom Corwin and Senator Ben Wade.
Writing home after the dinner, Seward joshingly noted that he “found much comfort” in the discovery that Ohio was home to at least three candidates for the presidency, “all eminent and excellent men, but each preferring anybody out of Ohio, to his two rivals within.” While Seward immediately intuited signals that Ben Wade, in particular, coveted the nomination, Chase remained oblivious, refusing to believe that Ohio would not back its most deserving son. On the Chases’ last evening in Washington, the Blairs threw them a lavish party at their country estate in Silver Spring.
As usual, Kate left a deep impression on everyone. Seward afterward told Frances that she was quite “a young lady, pleasant and well-cultivated.” Chase wrote Nettie how pleased he was that many showed “attention to Katie,” and many were “kind to me.” He returned home convinced that his trip had accomplished a great deal. “Everybody seems to like me and to feel a very gratifying degree of confidence in me,” he reported to a Cincinnati friend. Confusing hospitality with hard allegiance, he told one of his supporters that “a great change seemed to come over men’s minds while I was in Washington.”
THE BEGINNING of the pre-presidential year found the backers of Edward Bates more active in the pursuit of his nomination than the candidate himself. While Bates would gradually warm to the idea, he found himself, as always, conflicted about plunging into politics. Without the encouragement of the powerful Blairs, it is unlikely that he would have put his name forward. Once he agreed to stand, he was confronted with a political dilemma. His strength lay among old Whigs and nativists concentrated in the border states, and conservatives in the North and Northwest. To have a genuine chance for the nomination, he would have to prove himself acceptable to moderate Republicans as well.
Had he used the months prior to the nomination to travel to the very different states of Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Maryland, he might have acquainted himself with the wide range of views that comprised the new party. But he never left his home