Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [161]
By securing Indiana’s pledge, the Lincoln men gained a decided advantage in the Committee of Twelve, which had remained deadlocked at midnight in its attempts to agree on a common candidate to oppose Seward—prompting Greeley and Halstead to predict a Seward victory. As the committee members continued to talk in the early-morning hours, someone proposed a straw vote to determine the opposition candidate with the greatest strength. In this impromptu poll, since Lincoln already had the support of both Illinois and Indiana, two of the four key states, he emerged as the strongest candidate. According to one committee member, “Mr. Dudley of New Jersey then proposed that for the general good of the party,” Pennsylvania should give up its favorite son after the first ballot, as would New Jersey. The proposition was generally agreed upon, but Pennsylvania required further negotiations to ratify the agreement.
According to Henry Whitney, Davis had previously sent a telegram to Lincoln informing him that if Cameron were promised a space in the cabinet, Pennsylvania might be procured. Lincoln scribbled his answer in the margin of a newspaper, which an emissary carried to the convention. “Make no contracts that will bind me.” When the message arrived, Whitney writes, “Everybody was mad, of course. Here were men working night and day to place him on the highest mountain peak of fame, and he pulling back all he knew how. What was to be done? The bluff Dubois said: ‘Damn Lincoln!’ The polished Swett said, in mellifluous accents: ‘I am very sure if Lincoln was aware of the necessities…’ The critical Logan expectorated viciously, and said: ‘The main difficulty with Lincoln is…’ Herndon ventured: ‘Now, friend, I’ll answer that.’ But Davis cut the Gordian knot by brushing all aside with: ‘Lincoln ain’t here, and don’t know what we have to meet, so we will go ahead, as if we hadn’t heard from him, and he must ratify it.’”
Moreover, Davis undoubtedly understood that other candidates were making pledges of their own. The Blairs had supposedly promised Cassius Clay the post of secretary of war if he would endorse Bates. And doubtless Weed could promise not only cabinet posts but the “oceans of money” he had accumulated for the Republican cause. Nonetheless, Davis’s biographer concludes that no direct pledge was ever made to Cameron. Davis promised only that he would “get every member of the Illinois delegation to recommend Cameron’s appointment,” which the Cameron men mistook for a guaranteed pledge.
Whether or not explicit deals were made, the Lincoln men worked hard to convince Cameron’s contingent that Pennsylvania would be treated generously if Lincoln received their votes. “My assurance to them,” Swett later wrote Lincoln, was that despite the fact that Pennsylvania had not supported Lincoln from the start, “they should be placed upon the same footing as if originally they had been your friends. Now, of course, it is unpleasant for me to write all this stuff and for you to read it. Of course I have never feared you would unintentionally do anything unfair towards these men. I only write to suggest the very delicate situation I am placed towards them so that you might cultivate them as much as possible.”
By adding the votes of Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, three of the four doubtful states, to those of Illinois, Davis and Swett had achieved what many considered impossible: they had made possible the nomination of Abraham Lincoln.
AS THE DAY of the balloting dawned, the Seward men, confident of victory, gathered at the Richmond House for a celebratory march to the convention hall. “A thousand strong,” Murat Halstead observed, and accompanied by a “magnificent band, which was brilliantly uniformed—epaulets shining on their shoulders,” they prolonged “their march a little too far.” Upon reaching the Wigwam, they were dismayed