Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [160]
All along, the main question among the gathering ranks of the “stop Seward” movement had been whether the opposition would be able to concentrate its strength on a single alternative, or be crippled by its own divisions.
For this eventuality, Lincoln had long prepared. Though he understood he could not positively count on the unanimous support of any delegation beyond Illinois, he knew he had earned widespread respect and admiration throughout the North. “You know how it is in Ohio,” he wrote a friend from the Buckeye State two weeks before the convention. “I am certainly not the first choice there; and yet I have not heard that any one makes any positive objection to me. It is just so everywhere so far as I can perceive. Everywhere, except in Illinois, and possibly Indiana, one or another is prefered to me, but there is no positive objection.”
To reach his goal of becoming everyone’s second choice, Lincoln was careful not to disparage any other candidate. Nor was it in his nature to do so. His committed team of workers—including Judge David Davis, Leonard Swett, Norman Judd, and Stephen Logan—understood this, resolving from the start “to antagonize no one.” They did not need to, for Greeley and candidates for governor in the doubtful states had that task well in hand. Nor, as Kenneth Stampp writes, did they need to win support based upon Lincoln’s “relative ability compared with other candidates…. Their appeal was based on availability and expediency; they urged the delegates to nominate the man who could win.”
“No men ever worked as our boys did,” Swett later claimed. “I did not, the whole week I was there, sleep two hours a night.” Although some of Lincoln’s men had political ambitions of their own, Henry Whitney observed, “Most of them worked con amore, chiefly from love of the man, his lofty moral tone, his pure political morality.” Working in his “typically methodical way,” Davis designated specific tasks to each member of his team. Maine’s Leonard Swett was charged with making inroads in the Maine delegation. Samuel Parks, a native Vermonter, was dispatched to the delegation of the Green Mountain State. In the spring elections in New England, the Republicans had suffered setbacks, leading Lincoln to observe that the election result would be seen as “a drawback upon the prospects of Gov. Seward,” opening the door for one of his rivals. Stephen Logan and Richard Yates were given Kentucky, while Ward Lamon was assigned his home state of Virginia. In each of these states, the Lincoln men worked to pick off individual delegates to keep Seward from sweeping the field on the first ballot.
“It all worked to a charm,” boasted Swett. “The first State approached was Indiana.” Even before the convention had opened, Lincoln got word that “the whole of Indiana might not be difficult to get” and had urged Davis to concentrate on the Hoosier State. Though Indiana contained twenty thousand or more former Know Nothings who likely preferred Bates, the Indiana politicians were fearful that Bates was not strong enough to challenge Seward for the nomination. And if Seward headed the ticket, gubernational candidate Henry Lane never tired of warning, the radical image he projected and his unpopularity with the Know Nothings would jeopardize the entire state ticket.
Claims have been made that Davis made a deal with Indiana’s chairman, Caleb Smith, to bring him into the cabinet in return for Indiana’s vote. No deal was needed, however; Smith had admired Lincoln since their days in Congress and had agreed,