Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [405]
Lincoln had been in the telegraph office when reports of the Frémont convention came over the wires. Hearing that the attendance was a mere four hundred of the expected thousands, he was reminded of a passage in the Bible. Opening his Bible to I Samuel 22:2, he read aloud: “And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.”
The night before the Baltimore convention, Lincoln talked with Noah Brooks. When Brooks observed that his “renomination was an absolute certainty,” Lincoln “cheerfully conceded that point without any false modesty.” Understanding that there were several candidates for vice president, including the incumbent Hannibal Hamlin, New York’s Daniel Dickinson, and Tennessee’s military governor, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln declined to express his preference. He did say, however, that “he hoped that the convention would declare in favor of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery,” and he asked Brooks to report back to him all “the odd bits of gossip” that a good reporter would pick up.
As expected, the convention was initially confronted with two contesting delegations from Missouri: an anti-Blair radical delegation pledged to vote for Grant as a means of expressing displeasure with Lincoln, and a pro-Blair conservative delegation pledged to Lincoln. With the president’s approval, the radical delegation was seated. Lincoln understood the importance, as one delegate put it, of integrating “all the elements of the Republican party—including the impracticables, the Pharisees, the better-than-thou declaimers, the long-haired men and the short-haired women.” Moreover, the radicals had tacitly agreed that they would switch their votes to Lincoln after the first ballot, making the president’s nomination unanimous.
Nothing better indicated the nation’s transformation since the Chicago convention four years earlier than the tumultuous applause that greeted the third resolution of the platform: “Resolved, That as Slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength, of this Rebellion…[we] demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic.” While upholding the president’s proclamation, which “aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil,” the resolution continued: “we are in favor, furthermore,” of a constitutional amendment to “forever prohibit the existence of slavery” in the United States.
Resounding applause also greeted the resolution thanking soldiers and sailors, “who have periled their lives in defense of their country”; but the crowd’s greatest demonstration was reserved for the resolution endorsing Lincoln’s leadership. “The enthusiasm was terrific,” Brooks noted, “the convention breaking out into yells and cheers unbounded as soon as the beloved name of Lincoln was spoken.” The only discordant note was the passage of a radical plank aimed at conservative Montgomery Blair, calling for “a purge of any cabinet member” who failed to support the platform in full. “Harmony was restored” when the roll call nominating Lincoln was completed, at which point, the National Republican noted, “the audience rose en masse, and such an enthusiastic demonstration was scarcely ever paralleled. Men waved their hands and hats, and ladies, in the galleries, their kerchiefs,” while the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
The next order of business was the nomination of a vice president. Though Thurlow Weed was