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To the surprise of many observers, the delegates jettisoned Vice President Hannibal Hamlin and in his place nominated Andrew Johnson, the military governor of Tennessee. Lincoln made no public comment on the vice presidency before the convention and instructed John Hay, who attended the meeting, “not to interfere about V. P.” Had Lincoln worked behind the scenes for Johnson’s nomination? It is certain that if he had expressed a desire to retain Hamlin on the ticket the convention would have obliged. Hamlin, however, did not expect to be renominated. His office, he later remarked, was a “nullity,” and he had played no role whatever in decision making. More to the point, many Republicans believed that a War Democrat would add strength to the ticket, and Johnson had the added advantage that he was the country’s most prominent southern Unionist. When the balloting began, the Massachusetts delegation executed an unexpected gambit. It pushed for the War Democrat Daniel Dickinson of New York, hoping that Hamlin (who lived in Maine) would return to the Senate, replacing the conservative William P. Fessenden, and that the election of Dickinson would force Secretary of State Seward to resign, since two top offices could not be held by persons from the same state. Whereupon Thurlow Weed, to protect Seward, swung the New York delegation to Johnson and other states followed.24

This maneuvering should not obscure Johnson’s widespread popularity in Republican ranks. All wings of the party admired his “splendid stand against secession.” As early as February 1864, the Chicago Tribune had reported that “a large and influential party in the Union ranks” favored Johnson as Lincoln’s running mate. In any event, most Republicans considered the vice presidential nomination “of comparatively little moment.” Time would reveal this to be a tragic error. “I did think it was good policy to place some one living in a southern state—who had been true—on the ticket and favored Johnson,” wrote John D. Defrees of Indiana in 1866, after Johnson had unexpectedly become president. “For which the Lord forgive me.”25

William Lloyd Garrison, who attended the Union convention, was delighted by the enthusiasm with which the delegates greeted speeches denouncing slavery. After the gathering adjourned he headed to Washington, where he had an hour-long meeting at the White House. He left convinced of Lincoln’s “desire to do all that he can…to uproot slavery.” Departing from his previous conduct as fully as Phillips, Garrison endorsed Lincoln’s reelection as essential to securing abolition. But if the delegates thought that the Baltimore convention would restore party harmony, events soon proved them wrong. The debate over admitting delegates from the southern states was a precursor to further Republican divisions over Reconstruction. Indeed, shortly after the convention seated the Arkansas delegation, Congress refused to admit senators and representatives who had been elected from that state, declaring the government Lincoln recognized there illegitimate. Lincoln instructed the local military commander to support it anyway.26

As noted in the previous chapter, Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan, announced in December 1863, had initially won support from all parts of the Republican party. But the racism openly expressed by members of the Louisiana constitutional convention in the spring of 1864, and disturbing reports about the treatment of black laborers in the state, raised concerns in Washington, as did the visit of the black emissaries from New Orleans requesting the right to vote. The Reconstruction question languished for a time as Congress concentrated on the Thirteenth Amendment and other matters. But on the eve of adjournment in July 1864, Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, a repudiation of Lincoln’s course regarding Reconstruction. The bill proposed to delay the start of Reconstruction until a majority, not 10 percent, of a state’s white males had taken an oath to support