Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [159]
Bates was further handicapped by the fact that he never really represented the middle of the party, however much the Blairs and Greeley tried to position him there. He was much too conservative for liberal Republicans, who might welcome him into their party but would never accord him chief command of an army in which he had never officially enlisted. At the same time, the letter he had written to prove his credentials to the Republicans had diminished the previous enthusiasm of conservatives and former Know Nothings.
Nor was all going well for Salmon Chase. Besides Seward, Chase was the most renowned Republican aspirant. Though more zealously committed to the black man than Seward, Chase was not hampered by Seward’s radical reputation; his words had not become emblazoned on the banner of the antislavery movement. In contrast to Seward’s reputation as a liberal spender, which hurt in battleground states, he was an economic conservative. And, unlike Seward, he had never openly attacked the Know Nothings.
Moreover, as the third largest delegation at the convention, Ohio wielded substantial power. “If united,” observed Halstead, “it would have a formidable influence and might throw the casting votes between candidates, holding the balance of power between the East and the West.” But Ohio would not unite behind Chase, as some delegates held out for Ben Wade or Judge McLean. The many enemies Chase had made and failed to conciliate over the years came back to haunt him at this critical juncture. Any hope of persuading McLean to turn over his votes had been lost long before as a consequence of his manipulations to gain his Senate seat. Chase, McLean remarked, “is selfish, beyond any other man. And I know from the bargain he has made in being elected to the Senate, he is ready to make any bargain to promote his interest.”
“There was no unity of action, no determination of purpose,” one Chase supporter later lamented; there was “a weakness in the spinal column in the Ohio delegation at Chicago, most pitiable to behold.” Ohio’s inability to settle firmly on Chase, another delegate told him, proved catastrophic. “If the Ohio delegation had been true…you would have been nominated…. I mingled freely with many of the delegations—they stood ready as a second choice…to give you their votes—would have done so if Ohio had…[been] relied upon.”
Nor had Chase learned from his mistakes four years earlier. Once again, he failed to appoint a set of trusted managers who could guide his campaign, answer objections, cajole wavering delegates, and, at the right moment, make promises to buoy supporters and strengthen wills. “There are lots of good feeling afloat here for you,” one of Chase’s friends told him, “but there is no set of men in earnest for you…I think the hardest kind of death to die is that occasioned by indecisive, or lukewarm friends.”
MEANWHILE, THROUGHOUT this night of a thousand knives, the opposition to Seward grew more vociferous, even frantic. “Men gather in little groups,” observed Halstead, “and with their arms about each other, and chatter and whisper as if the fate of the country depended upon their immediate delivery of the mighty political secrets with which their imaginations are big.” Rumors multiplied with each passing hour; “things of incalculable moment are communicated to you confidentially, at intervals of five minutes.”
The rumor was deliberately circulated “that the Republican candidates for governor in Indiana, Illinois