October 28, 2025 • 27 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in the spring of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was hardly a national name. He’d lost two Senate races and was known mostly as a sharp debater from the Midwest. Yet within weeks, this unlikely candidate from Illinois captured the Republican nomination—and soon after, the presidency. What happened in those few extraordinary days at the convention in Chicago changed the course of American history. Gary Ecelbarger, author of The Great Comeback, shares the story. We want to thank the U.S. National Archives for allowing us access to this audio.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Up next, a story of how a
lawyer from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, became the Savior of the
Union despite all conventional political wisdom. When most people think
(00:32):
of Lincoln, they likely think of his famous speeches, is
on wavering commitment to the nation during the Civil War,
or his tragic inn They probably don't think much about
his political savvy, let alone the forces at work that
even put him in a position to win the nomination
of his party in the first place. Here's Gary Eckelbarger,
(00:54):
author of The Great Comeback, to share that story. We'd
like to thank the US National Archives for this audio.
Let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
The question is how does a two time Senate loser,
two time senate loser come back to win his party's
nomination within a year and a half of that second
Senate defeat. It's only happened once in our history, and
the fact that it happened to Abraham Lincoln makes that
story much more intriguing. The Republican Party in Illinois had
just gone through the ringer. On January fifth, eighteen fifty nine,
(01:25):
Abraham Lincoln officially lost that second Senate race to Douglas
in the twenty first General Assembly of Illinois by a
vote of fifty four to forty six. Back then, they
chose senators, not by a popular vote like they've done
since nineteen thirteen. I believe before then it was done
as indirectly. You chose your state legislator's house and Senate
(01:47):
representatives who would meet in a General Assembly and then
have the official vote, usually in the winner. After the
November election. What a lot of people don't realize is
his bid for the presidency began the very next day.
He gets together with a group of prominent Republicans, a
lot of his lawyer friends in Illinois, and they're meeting
in the basement of the state Capitol. And in the
(02:07):
basement was the state library, So they use the state
library on a snowy Thursday. And they get down there
and they're talking about the state of the party and
they're really in a lot of trouble because he had
just lost. They are in debt, and they were talking
about people who they could possibly support. In eighteen sixty
maybe there's a dozen people in this room, and as
they're bringing up names of prominent Westerners, as they would
(02:29):
call it, we would say Midwesterners that they could consider
for the presidency. Lincoln's silently steing because in his mind,
they're not bringing up the most important name and the
most obvious name his And I think they're doing that
out of deference to him. I mean, twenty four hours earlier,
he just lost a Senate race. But in the midst
of this, Lincoln stands up and says, why don't you
(02:51):
run me? I can be nominated, I can be elected,
and I can run the government. As one person in
that room stated, we all looked at him and thought
he was kidding, and then saw that he was completely serious.
They made no specific overtures on that specific day, but
in their minds this was Lincoln's start of his bid
for the presidency in eighteen sixty. Now this is January
(03:11):
of eighteen fifty nine, but he still looked at as
a guy that lost to the potential Democratic nominee, Stephen A. Douglas. Well,
there will be a specific strategy devised three months later,
and I'm going to call it the under the radar strategy.
I know there's no radar in eighteen fifty nine, but
just work with me on this one. The all idea
is to be a kind of an undetected candidate. So
(03:34):
of course, there were no primaries and there were no
caucuses back then. No primaries, no caucuses. You didn't officially
throw your hat in the ring. You didn't go out
and say I am running for president because you didn't
want to look too ambitious for the office. So you
went out, you made public speeches, you wrote letters that
you hope got published in the prominent media source at
(03:55):
the time, which was newspapers, and you would hope that
you would start to garner some recognized for your principles
and hopefully build up some support for it. And what
they decided to do was that he would be quietly
supported by the state Republican Central Committee members. They were
going to quell any attempts by newspapers who would try
(04:16):
to boom Lincoln's name out too early because they didn't
want him to be seen as a candidate or else
he's going to attract criticism from the other top tier
candidates in the country. The other thing that they already
had to knock down was any talk about Lincoln being
a vice presidential match on any ticket, this would be
a death knell. It was real attractive to put a Westerner,
(04:37):
Midwesterner like Lincoln along a prominent candidate. So they were
talking up cameeron Lincoln tickets or Seward Lincoln nomination tickets.
So they wanted to make sure that Lincoln had no
interest at all at being a vice president linkage on
anybody's ticket. So they stopped that and then it would
be up to Lincoln to do the rest. Before I
do that, I gotta tell you well, this under the
(04:58):
radar strategy worked. The head of the Republicans Central Committee
in Illinois is a band named Norman Judt, who was
Lincoln's campaign manager in a losing race in eighteen fifty eight.
Well as head of the Illinois committee, he was invited
out to New York City with twenty other Republican committee
heads from the other states who are going to meet
(05:18):
at the Astrohouse in New York City to decide two things,
when and where the Republican National Convention is going to
be held. Now, they got the win pretty quickly. They
decided on June of eighteen sixty and then that eventually
be moved up to the middle of May. Where is
going to be the problem because there are so many
prominent Republicans being talked up that everybody was shooting down
(05:41):
any state where these people hailed from as a bias
or at least an advantage to them. So you couldn't
bring up any place in New York City because that
was an advantage to William Henry Seward. You couldn't bring
up Pittsburgh because that was Simon Cameron's advantage. You couldn't
bring up Columbus or Cincinnati because that would be an
advantage for Chase City. That looked like it was going
to win hands down, because it had hotels, it had railroads.
(06:04):
It was supposed to be Saint Louis, all right, But
Saint Louis really had a candidate to consider as well,
and that was Edward Bates, who was an old wig.
He really wasn't even declared as a Republican, but they
knew he was going to be presented as a potential nominee.
So that was one strike against him, and they're arguing
about this. The other problem with Saint Louis is it
(06:26):
was in a state where Republicans had no chance to
win in a general election. No southern state is going
to vote for any Republican. So while all the parties
are fighting about this the different heads, Judd stood up
and said, why don't you hold it in Chicago. It's
a neutral place where all of you front running candidates
have an equal chance. Little did they realize that he's
(06:49):
up there in support of Abraham Lincoln, who's under the radar,
and when the final votes come through, Chicago will win
over Saint Louis by one vote.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Juds, you've been listening to Gary Eckelbarger, the author of
The Great Comeback, and we just learned how people got elected,
not just as a president back in the eighteen sixties,
but as a US senator as well. Direct elections did
not happen until the twentieth century. When we come back
more of the story of how Lincoln became the nominee
(07:21):
of the Republican Party here on our American Stories, Li
h Habib Here, as we approach our nation's two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary, I'd like to remind you that all
the history stories you hear on this show brought to
you by the great folks at Hillsdale College, and Hillsdale
isn't just a great school for your kids or grandkids
(07:43):
to attend, but for you as well. Go to Hillsdale
dot edu to find out about their terrific free online courses.
Their series on communism is one of the finest I've
ever seen. Again, go to Hillsdale dot edu and sign
up for their free and terrific online courses. And we
(08:09):
returned to our American stories and the story of how
Abraham Lincoln, a two time Senate loser and lonely lawyer
from Illinois, beat the odds and became the nominee of
the Republican Party in eighteen sixty. Let's get back to
the story here again is Gary Ekelbarger.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Now I didn't really answer the question yet, right, I said,
how does a two time Senate loser win that nomination?
I've only answered the point about saying how he's at
least going to be considered in the mix. Here's the problem. Okay,
he's going to be one of twelve to consider, but
he's the only one of the twelve essentially that doesn't
have a prominent political position at the time of that
(08:49):
national convention. If you think about it, you have a
lot of senators that are going to be highly considered,
like Seward and Cameron. You have governors like Sam and
p Chays. You even have a Supreme Court justice. So
Lincoln is the only one of those twelve, or one
of the few of the twelve that doesn't have a
political position. He's a lawyer in Illinois. On the eve
of that convention, and there are campaign handbooks published and
(09:13):
two of them don't even mention Lincoln as even one
of the candidates to consider in Chicago. But what happens
at that Chicago convention, even before the gavel pounds is dramatic.
Lincoln's team will get up there the Saturday before the
Wednesday beginning of the convention, and by Monday morning, newspapers
as far as Philadelphia and Cincinnati are starting to announce
(09:35):
with inside information. What is absolutely accurate. This is a
two man race between William Seward and Abraham Lincoln. So
the idea that Abraham Lincoln is a dark horse at
the convention not srue at all. Before that convention begins,
he is already one of the two highest considered candidates.
What in the world happened in the two days for
that to occur. How does this thing work? There are
(09:56):
really three ingredients to this whole product, yielding Abraham Lincoln
the nominee. I can mention them in any order because
they're all going to be important. So let's start with
the messenger and the message, and then the team that
supports them. The messenger, of course, is Abraham Lincoln himself. Now,
there is a traditional idea or belief that Abraham Lincoln
(10:17):
is going to win the nomination because of the Lincoln
Douglas debates, and even though he lost, he did so
well in those debates that he's going to be considered
presidential timber. The problem with the Lincoln Douglas debates is
had he kept up the momentum, you could make a
real strong case for those However, Lincoln didn't give another
political speech after those debates for an entire year. One year,
(10:39):
out of sight, out of mind. Fourth of July. What
a great time to give a political speech. He's talking
about food in a place north of Springfield. It's almost
like he's doing this purposely. Now, Lincoln has given a
lot of speeches since eighteen fifty four, maybe one hundred
and sixty of them, but he only gave one speech
outside the state of Illinois, and period of time House
(11:01):
divided speech and big Springfield and Peoria addresses. All these
speeches were Illinois. But if Lincoln wants to be a
national candidate, he's going to have to spread out and
realize this isn't a popularity contest. It's not a caucus
or primary that will get you the nomination. There are none.
It's going to be delegates at the convention. So how
(11:21):
popular you were back in eighteen fifty eight isn't going
to mean very much in eighteen sixty unless you come
out and establish your position. So, in dramatic fashion, Lincoln
will do this. And one year after those Lincoln Douglas debates,
Lincoln makes a tour through Ohio. Five speeches in Ohio,
two in Indiana, four in Wisconsin, seven in Kansas Territory.
(11:43):
And in that six month period from September of eighteen
fifty nine to March of eighteen sixty, thirty speeches in
eight states. Is that a coincidence? That's somebody running for
president and he's doing it under the radar, and it's
working beautifully. He gets close to cost coverage of his
speeches north and south, east and west more than any
(12:05):
Lincoln Douglas debate. Now, you might think that this isn't
going to be as important at the national Convention because
I already said he's not going to be there. He's
not there because normally the candidates for the nomination don't
show up at the convention. So how is the messenger important?
Remember most of the people at the convention, the four
hundred and sixty five delegates, right, So what do you
(12:25):
need to win? What's that number? Two thirty three? I'll
keep asking. I'm going to keep asking that. So there's
four and sixty five delegates there. I guarantee you that
fewer than one hundred of those delegates had never met
Abraham Lincoln before, had never seen him giving a speech,
And until they went to Chicago and the picture was
on display, probably never even knew what Abraham Lincoln looked like, which,
(12:48):
if you've seen some pictures of Lincoln, might not be
such a bad thing, all right, But the important point
is they knew the name. The name has circulated through
Republican circles and in the press even before the Lincoln
Douglas debates. Lincoln was second in the bouting for vice
president in the first convention. It had John C. Fremont
as the Republican's first candidate. And what they learned in
(13:10):
that first convention and the following election was two things.
One is that the South and Republicans were mutually exclusive,
as I said before, and that Fremont actually did pretty well.
There are four they call them doubtful states in the
Republican circles in eighteen sixty we would call them battleground states.
There are four states that Buchanan won. If Freemont had won,
(13:31):
knows he would have been to president even without winning
a southern state. And that includes Pennsylvania, which is Buchanan's
home state, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois. Keep that in mind.
So that's what they learned in eighteen fifty six. All right,
So the point to be made here is that they're
going to think about the way we think about electing
people now, or at least people in political circles. You
think of battleground states. Who's going to win battleground states?
(13:54):
So the geography really set the tone of the type
of views that you would establish the Republican Party, and
Illinois is a perfect example of this. You think about
the distance between the northern tier Rockford and the Chicago
area and Galena, et cetera. That area between there and Caro,
the southern tip four hundred miles. In other words, you
draw a line across the northern part of Illinois is
(14:17):
as north as the Massachusetts main border, and the southern
part of Illinois is as south as the North Carolina
Virginia border. Get what I'm saying. You know, the politics
is going to be more southern as you go further
into what it is then called Egypt that part of
the state. Get it, Caro Egypt, all right, And then
the northern part is going to be more abolitionists. The
problem is when the Republican Party is a big tent
(14:41):
fusion party, it is not the GOP the Grand Old Party.
It is the BNP, the brand new party. And the
problem with a brand new party is that its elements,
its makeup, were people that were politically opposed to each
other just a few years before. These were people that
were politically opposed to each other, and they still hated
each other, all right, And I don't like to think
(15:03):
about this as wings. But now I'm gonna get to
talk about Lincoln in the message, the most extreme end
of the Republican Party was the abolition wing. Now you
might say, hey, that's that's a good position to have.
The problem with that is that a word abolitionists in
eighteen sixty was like being called a communist in the
nineteen fifties. You weren't going to win any elections if
you were tagged with that label. And Lincoln was not
(15:25):
an abolitionist, believe it or not. Lincoln was for the
Fugitive Slave Law, returning slaves to their owners. Harriet beat
Tristeau would not be a fan of Abraham Lincoln. In fact,
abolitionists really hated him. William Lloyd Garrison called Lincoln the
slavehound of Illinois. And it's not that he liked slavery.
(15:45):
He's already on the record saying how much he hated it.
But he thought the Constitution clearly protected it, and he
was not for overriding the Constitution. And the reason for
that reverence for the Constitution, in my mind is if
you think about this, and I've been up at three
am thinking about this, so I'm going to save you
guys that thought, and you can sleep really well tonight
and not worry about it. The longest time in our
(16:06):
history was between the Twelfth Amendment, which was ratified in
eighteen oh two, and I hope you're all writing this down,
and the thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery, ratified in eighteen
sixty five. Guess whose entire life was in between those
two amendments. Abraham Lincoln. He lived his entire life knowing
the Constitution as the original document, with the Bill of
(16:27):
Rights and just two amendments added to it, and to
him that was a rock solid document. Now, the other
wing of the Republican Party, and this, to me is
a more fascinating one because normally the two wings of
political parties butt up against each other, but in eighteen
sixty the Republican wing overlapped the Democratic wing. And this
was the group I'll call them the popular sovereigntists. They
(16:49):
actually supported the notion of popular sovereignty for pragmatic reasons.
They're saying, yes, as Douglas stated, you can vote slavery
up or slavery down, which means that it might be
voted down by the people that live in the territories,
and that fits their Republican principles, that that would prevent
slavery from extending in the territories so technically, these folks
(17:10):
are rolling the dice hoping that territorial legislations would keep
slavery out of their territories. Lincoln was dead set against
this wing because he considered this completely immoral. And it's
not that he liked slavery. He's already on record saying
how much he hated it. So he put himself right
in the middle.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And you've been listening to Gary Ecklbarger, author of The
Great Comeback, telling one heck of a story about how
Abraham Lincoln became the nominee of what we now call
the GOP, the Grand Old Party. But as Echobarger points out,
this was the BNP, a brand new party with competing
factions within it who otherwise would not have gotten along
(17:50):
only months ago, and still weren't. The story continues here
on our American Stories, and we returned to our American
stories and the final portion of our story on how
(18:13):
Abraham Lincoln beat the odds and became the nominee of
the Republican Party in eighteen sixty. When we last left off,
Gary Ekelbarger was telling us about how Lincoln struck a
moderate position in his speeches across the nation. He wasn't
an abolitionist after all. Let's get back to the story.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
The party was really hard to hold together. The only
thing they all had in common was that they'd hated
the idea of slavery extending into the territories. He wasn't
trying to unite red state and blue state, which sometimes
I hear ascribed to him. He was trying to unite
that big tent fusion party. And he did this in
ways that were borderline brilliant, in my opinion. I'll give
(18:52):
you one example. He gives a speech in Columbus and
the very next day he goes to Cincinnati. Now the
Cincinnati Gazette has just sent a reporter to Columbus, and
on the morning Lincoln arrives in Cincinnati print his Columbus address. Well,
this is a rarity. The very next issue of the Gazette,
they'll print his Cincinnati speech. Consecutive issues and out of
(19:15):
state candidate getting complete attention for two speeches. And the
reason they did is he gave a completely different speech
in Cincinnati. And the reason why he did that was
because Stephen A. Douglas had just gone through Cincinnati eight
days earlier. And if you are in the audience in Cincinnati,
and you're listening to Stephen Douglas, it makes sense what
Douglas is about to say. He said, you in Ohio,
(19:38):
as he's speaking in Cincinnati, are a free state, meaning
slave free. Not because you were part of the Northwest Territory,
which was a slave free territory, but because of popular sovereignty.
The founding fathers of Ohio decided that the climate and
soil and geography of Ohio was too far north to
(19:59):
be support of crops that would require slave labor. So
in eighteen oh two they decided, by popular sovereignty to
vote slavery out of its state constitution. Now that makes
sense if you're out there in the audience. So Lincoln
will come to Cincinnati eight days later, and he's gonna
vanquish this in a way that he never had done
before and never will have to again. This is the
(20:19):
southernmost speech, and he's right on the Ohio River. What
state is on the other side of the river Kentucky?
All right, Kentucky has slaves. And Lincoln just takes apart
Douglas's argument because the way that river courses around while
they're in Cincinnati, there's a small part of Kentucky that's
north of them. And so Lincoln comes out rather haughtily
(20:41):
and says, pray, what made you free? Could it be
climate in soil? No, because if that was the reason,
we are in a region where north of us are
parts of Kentucky, why are they completely covered with slavery
and Ohio is entirely free of it. The only reason
is because Ohio is part of a territory that this
allowed slavery the Ordinance of seventeen eighty seven, and Kentucky
(21:03):
was not bound by that same ordinance. That's why you
have to have the same kind of laws across the
Mississippi River, because the chances of having a slave free
state in those territories the Kansas Nebraska would be much
less if they were slave free territories. The argument worked brilliantly.
He only used it in Cincinnati, and because he gave
a different speech, that's the speech that traveled the most,
(21:25):
clearly his most underrated speech. So those are the kind
of messages that Lincoln established for the middle ground position.
So the messenger and the message are extremely important. And
now the most important part, at least for the end
of what I was going to say, is a team
that took him there. Why does Lincoln become the second
to the top rung of the ladder before the convention
begins in two days Because they argued on the battleground
(21:47):
state basis. They being his team of supporters. They got
together being Illinois one of the four right, one of
the four battleground states, and the first thing they did
was got Indiana on their side, the second one. So
by Monday morning they have two of the four states
in their corner. So that's why, all of a sudden,
the papers are starting to talk up Lincoln as a
second because they've already grabbed those two states. But here's
(22:10):
the problem. You got to get these other two Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and they're not budget okay, especially Pennsylvania, and
they like Lincoln. But the plan for the Lincoln folks
is to try to get one hundred votes in the
first round. And the reason for that is so that
you clearly set yourself away from the rest of the field. Well,
that's ambitious. Twelve candidates. You want to get one hundred
(22:32):
out of four hundred and sixty five. That's quite a
goal to get a quarter of those votes. But the
most important thing is in the next round. You want
to build momentum, and you don't want this thing to
go You know, in eighteen fifty two it went forty
nine ballots. You don't want that to happen because then
you'll have a real dark horse coming out of nowhere
to claim the nomination. So they wanted this thing not
to go too many ballots. It's scripted much like a
(22:55):
football coach would script the first fifteen plays. You actually
knew how many votes your guy was going to get
each round. No big surprises are going to occur unless
somebody doesn't keep their promise. So the problem with the
Lincoln team was they thought they had the first round
one hundred. They were worried about the second round. They
weren't building momentum anywhere. So they made the deal. All right,
(23:15):
if Pennsylvania switched completely to Lincoln, if Lincoln won the election,
that Simon Cameron was going to get a position on
Lincoln's cabinet. And this is controversial. Many people claim that
it was done for the good of the party and
they're going to go completely to Lincoln, and that's how
this is going to work. So second round, they're voting
not alphabetically by states, but geographically from the Atlantic across
(23:36):
to the Mississippi. All of a sudden, everybody sees what's
happening when they get to Pennsylvania and they drop Cameron
and forty eight more votes go to Lincoln, and everybody thought, WHOA,
something's happening here. But Seward's picking up votes too. Everybody
else is not. And at the end of the second round,
Seward is still winning one hundred and eighty four. Lincoln
(23:57):
won eighty one. A right round, and now the advantage
of having the home state, there's a huge Lincoln crowd.
They probably printed fake tickets, but that just made a
lot of noise. It didn't make any effect on the outcome.
What made an effect on the outcome is the platform
seating because as the host delegation, you sat your delegations
(24:19):
on the platform and the ten thousand people are watching
this whole process. So Judd, the guy that got Chicago
as the site, was in charge of the delegation seating,
and it stayed the same for all three days and
nobody caught on. He surrounded New York with all the
other Seward supporting states. They are locked in, and then
(24:40):
all the undecided states next to the Lincoln crowds. So
what can't the Seward people do between rounds? They can't
get up in log roll, in other words, try to
coax votes from coming across. Seward. Folks are now going
to be caught up in a sea of Lincoln. And
after two rounds it's one eighty four to one eighty one.
Then you get to the third round, and I don't
know how you get a half a vote, But at
(25:01):
the end of the third round, Seward has one hundred
and eighty Lincoln has two hundred and thirty one and
a half. Not quite there. They're about to start the
ballot for the fourth but four Ohio wins announce that
they're going to change this and end it. And on
Friday at two pm and May eighteenth, Lincoln will go
over the top and he will win that nomination. Now,
I'm going to end today by giving you an irony
(25:24):
and a lesson of this whole nomination, the most momentous
and perhaps exciting nomination in our history. History will tell
us that within eleven months of that May convention, Fort
Sumter is fired upon and the Civil War begins. But
if you read the Republican Party platform of eighteen sixty.
You can google it up. It's there. It is so
(25:46):
conciliatory to the South. They use the term rights of
the States. There's a Republican plank that says guaranteeing protection
of Southern institutions, which is a euphemism for slavery. Another
plank for the protection of the Fugitive Slave Law. It
couldn't be more conciliatory to the South. And if you
read those planks, it's almost as Abraham Lincoln could have
(26:07):
written it himself. And I think, even though there's no
paper trail to show it, it's one of the reasons
why I got picked. He fit the platform so perfectly.
In other words, the people that chose Abraham Lincoln at
the Chicago convention didn't choose him because they expected him
to be the guy that was going to preside over
secession in Civil War. They chose Abraham Lincoln because they
(26:29):
thought he would be the one to prevent it. Had
the delegates collected in Chicago really thought that secession was inevitable.
Are they going to choose the Illinois lawyer without any
prominent position, the two time Senate loser. No way, They'll
choose the statesman and a lesson from all this is,
despite the best intentions, in the best studied efforts, sometimes
our best leaders are those that accomplish what was not
(26:52):
expected of them, rather than or in addition to, what
was expected of them.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Thank you and a special thanks to Gary ecklb his
work The Great Comeback and What Irony, indeed perhaps the
most momentous nomination process in American history, and the law
of unintended consequences. They had actually nominated Lincoln thinking he'd
prevent the war, but in the end Lincoln helped start
(27:18):
and win the war. The story of how Lincoln became
the nominee here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Up next, a story of how a
lawyer from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, became the Savior of the
Union despite all conventional political wisdom. When most people think
(00:32):
of Lincoln, they likely think of his famous speeches, is
on wavering commitment to the nation during the Civil War,
or his tragic inn They probably don't think much about
his political savvy, let alone the forces at work that
even put him in a position to win the nomination
of his party in the first place. Here's Gary Eckelbarger,
(00:54):
author of The Great Comeback, to share that story. We'd
like to thank the US National Archives for this audio.
Let's get into it.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
The question is how does a two time Senate loser,
two time senate loser come back to win his party's
nomination within a year and a half of that second
Senate defeat. It's only happened once in our history, and
the fact that it happened to Abraham Lincoln makes that
story much more intriguing. The Republican Party in Illinois had
just gone through the ringer. On January fifth, eighteen fifty nine,
(01:25):
Abraham Lincoln officially lost that second Senate race to Douglas
in the twenty first General Assembly of Illinois by a
vote of fifty four to forty six. Back then, they
chose senators, not by a popular vote like they've done
since nineteen thirteen. I believe before then it was done
as indirectly. You chose your state legislator's house and Senate
(01:47):
representatives who would meet in a General Assembly and then
have the official vote, usually in the winner. After the
November election. What a lot of people don't realize is
his bid for the presidency began the very next day.
He gets together with a group of prominent Republicans, a
lot of his lawyer friends in Illinois, and they're meeting
in the basement of the state Capitol. And in the
(02:07):
basement was the state library, So they use the state
library on a snowy Thursday. And they get down there
and they're talking about the state of the party and
they're really in a lot of trouble because he had
just lost. They are in debt, and they were talking
about people who they could possibly support. In eighteen sixty
maybe there's a dozen people in this room, and as
they're bringing up names of prominent Westerners, as they would
(02:29):
call it, we would say Midwesterners that they could consider
for the presidency. Lincoln's silently steing because in his mind,
they're not bringing up the most important name and the
most obvious name his And I think they're doing that
out of deference to him. I mean, twenty four hours earlier,
he just lost a Senate race. But in the midst
of this, Lincoln stands up and says, why don't you
(02:51):
run me? I can be nominated, I can be elected,
and I can run the government. As one person in
that room stated, we all looked at him and thought
he was kidding, and then saw that he was completely serious.
They made no specific overtures on that specific day, but
in their minds this was Lincoln's start of his bid
for the presidency in eighteen sixty. Now this is January
(03:11):
of eighteen fifty nine, but he still looked at as
a guy that lost to the potential Democratic nominee, Stephen A. Douglas. Well,
there will be a specific strategy devised three months later,
and I'm going to call it the under the radar strategy.
I know there's no radar in eighteen fifty nine, but
just work with me on this one. The all idea
is to be a kind of an undetected candidate. So
(03:34):
of course, there were no primaries and there were no
caucuses back then. No primaries, no caucuses. You didn't officially
throw your hat in the ring. You didn't go out
and say I am running for president because you didn't
want to look too ambitious for the office. So you
went out, you made public speeches, you wrote letters that
you hope got published in the prominent media source at
(03:55):
the time, which was newspapers, and you would hope that
you would start to garner some recognized for your principles
and hopefully build up some support for it. And what
they decided to do was that he would be quietly
supported by the state Republican Central Committee members. They were
going to quell any attempts by newspapers who would try
(04:16):
to boom Lincoln's name out too early because they didn't
want him to be seen as a candidate or else
he's going to attract criticism from the other top tier
candidates in the country. The other thing that they already
had to knock down was any talk about Lincoln being
a vice presidential match on any ticket, this would be
a death knell. It was real attractive to put a Westerner,
(04:37):
Midwesterner like Lincoln along a prominent candidate. So they were
talking up cameeron Lincoln tickets or Seward Lincoln nomination tickets.
So they wanted to make sure that Lincoln had no
interest at all at being a vice president linkage on
anybody's ticket. So they stopped that and then it would
be up to Lincoln to do the rest. Before I
do that, I gotta tell you well, this under the
(04:58):
radar strategy worked. The head of the Republicans Central Committee
in Illinois is a band named Norman Judt, who was
Lincoln's campaign manager in a losing race in eighteen fifty eight.
Well as head of the Illinois committee, he was invited
out to New York City with twenty other Republican committee
heads from the other states who are going to meet
(05:18):
at the Astrohouse in New York City to decide two things,
when and where the Republican National Convention is going to
be held. Now, they got the win pretty quickly. They
decided on June of eighteen sixty and then that eventually
be moved up to the middle of May. Where is
going to be the problem because there are so many
prominent Republicans being talked up that everybody was shooting down
(05:41):
any state where these people hailed from as a bias
or at least an advantage to them. So you couldn't
bring up any place in New York City because that
was an advantage to William Henry Seward. You couldn't bring
up Pittsburgh because that was Simon Cameron's advantage. You couldn't
bring up Columbus or Cincinnati because that would be an
advantage for Chase City. That looked like it was going
to win hands down, because it had hotels, it had railroads.
(06:04):
It was supposed to be Saint Louis, all right, But
Saint Louis really had a candidate to consider as well,
and that was Edward Bates, who was an old wig.
He really wasn't even declared as a Republican, but they
knew he was going to be presented as a potential nominee.
So that was one strike against him, and they're arguing
about this. The other problem with Saint Louis is it
(06:26):
was in a state where Republicans had no chance to
win in a general election. No southern state is going
to vote for any Republican. So while all the parties
are fighting about this the different heads, Judd stood up
and said, why don't you hold it in Chicago. It's
a neutral place where all of you front running candidates
have an equal chance. Little did they realize that he's
(06:49):
up there in support of Abraham Lincoln, who's under the radar,
and when the final votes come through, Chicago will win
over Saint Louis by one vote.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Juds, you've been listening to Gary Eckelbarger, the author of
The Great Comeback, and we just learned how people got elected,
not just as a president back in the eighteen sixties,
but as a US senator as well. Direct elections did
not happen until the twentieth century. When we come back
more of the story of how Lincoln became the nominee
(07:21):
of the Republican Party here on our American Stories, Li
h Habib Here, as we approach our nation's two hundred
and fiftieth anniversary, I'd like to remind you that all
the history stories you hear on this show brought to
you by the great folks at Hillsdale College, and Hillsdale
isn't just a great school for your kids or grandkids
(07:43):
to attend, but for you as well. Go to Hillsdale
dot edu to find out about their terrific free online courses.
Their series on communism is one of the finest I've
ever seen. Again, go to Hillsdale dot edu and sign
up for their free and terrific online courses. And we
(08:09):
returned to our American stories and the story of how
Abraham Lincoln, a two time Senate loser and lonely lawyer
from Illinois, beat the odds and became the nominee of
the Republican Party in eighteen sixty. Let's get back to
the story here again is Gary Ekelbarger.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Now I didn't really answer the question yet, right, I said,
how does a two time Senate loser win that nomination?
I've only answered the point about saying how he's at
least going to be considered in the mix. Here's the problem. Okay,
he's going to be one of twelve to consider, but
he's the only one of the twelve essentially that doesn't
have a prominent political position at the time of that
(08:49):
national convention. If you think about it, you have a
lot of senators that are going to be highly considered,
like Seward and Cameron. You have governors like Sam and
p Chays. You even have a Supreme Court justice. So
Lincoln is the only one of those twelve, or one
of the few of the twelve that doesn't have a
political position. He's a lawyer in Illinois. On the eve
of that convention, and there are campaign handbooks published and
(09:13):
two of them don't even mention Lincoln as even one
of the candidates to consider in Chicago. But what happens
at that Chicago convention, even before the gavel pounds is dramatic.
Lincoln's team will get up there the Saturday before the
Wednesday beginning of the convention, and by Monday morning, newspapers
as far as Philadelphia and Cincinnati are starting to announce
(09:35):
with inside information. What is absolutely accurate. This is a
two man race between William Seward and Abraham Lincoln. So
the idea that Abraham Lincoln is a dark horse at
the convention not srue at all. Before that convention begins,
he is already one of the two highest considered candidates.
What in the world happened in the two days for
that to occur. How does this thing work? There are
(09:56):
really three ingredients to this whole product, yielding Abraham Lincoln
the nominee. I can mention them in any order because
they're all going to be important. So let's start with
the messenger and the message, and then the team that
supports them. The messenger, of course, is Abraham Lincoln himself. Now,
there is a traditional idea or belief that Abraham Lincoln
(10:17):
is going to win the nomination because of the Lincoln
Douglas debates, and even though he lost, he did so
well in those debates that he's going to be considered
presidential timber. The problem with the Lincoln Douglas debates is
had he kept up the momentum, you could make a
real strong case for those However, Lincoln didn't give another
political speech after those debates for an entire year. One year,
(10:39):
out of sight, out of mind. Fourth of July. What
a great time to give a political speech. He's talking
about food in a place north of Springfield. It's almost
like he's doing this purposely. Now, Lincoln has given a
lot of speeches since eighteen fifty four, maybe one hundred
and sixty of them, but he only gave one speech
outside the state of Illinois, and period of time House
(11:01):
divided speech and big Springfield and Peoria addresses. All these
speeches were Illinois. But if Lincoln wants to be a
national candidate, he's going to have to spread out and
realize this isn't a popularity contest. It's not a caucus
or primary that will get you the nomination. There are none.
It's going to be delegates at the convention. So how
(11:21):
popular you were back in eighteen fifty eight isn't going
to mean very much in eighteen sixty unless you come
out and establish your position. So, in dramatic fashion, Lincoln
will do this. And one year after those Lincoln Douglas debates,
Lincoln makes a tour through Ohio. Five speeches in Ohio,
two in Indiana, four in Wisconsin, seven in Kansas Territory.
(11:43):
And in that six month period from September of eighteen
fifty nine to March of eighteen sixty, thirty speeches in
eight states. Is that a coincidence? That's somebody running for
president and he's doing it under the radar, and it's
working beautifully. He gets close to cost coverage of his
speeches north and south, east and west more than any
(12:05):
Lincoln Douglas debate. Now, you might think that this isn't
going to be as important at the national Convention because
I already said he's not going to be there. He's
not there because normally the candidates for the nomination don't
show up at the convention. So how is the messenger important?
Remember most of the people at the convention, the four
hundred and sixty five delegates, right, So what do you
(12:25):
need to win? What's that number? Two thirty three? I'll
keep asking. I'm going to keep asking that. So there's
four and sixty five delegates there. I guarantee you that
fewer than one hundred of those delegates had never met
Abraham Lincoln before, had never seen him giving a speech,
And until they went to Chicago and the picture was
on display, probably never even knew what Abraham Lincoln looked like, which,
(12:48):
if you've seen some pictures of Lincoln, might not be
such a bad thing, all right, But the important point
is they knew the name. The name has circulated through
Republican circles and in the press even before the Lincoln
Douglas debates. Lincoln was second in the bouting for vice
president in the first convention. It had John C. Fremont
as the Republican's first candidate. And what they learned in
(13:10):
that first convention and the following election was two things.
One is that the South and Republicans were mutually exclusive,
as I said before, and that Fremont actually did pretty well.
There are four they call them doubtful states in the
Republican circles in eighteen sixty we would call them battleground states.
There are four states that Buchanan won. If Freemont had won,
(13:31):
knows he would have been to president even without winning
a southern state. And that includes Pennsylvania, which is Buchanan's
home state, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois. Keep that in mind.
So that's what they learned in eighteen fifty six. All right,
So the point to be made here is that they're
going to think about the way we think about electing
people now, or at least people in political circles. You
think of battleground states. Who's going to win battleground states?
(13:54):
So the geography really set the tone of the type
of views that you would establish the Republican Party, and
Illinois is a perfect example of this. You think about
the distance between the northern tier Rockford and the Chicago
area and Galena, et cetera. That area between there and Caro,
the southern tip four hundred miles. In other words, you
draw a line across the northern part of Illinois is
(14:17):
as north as the Massachusetts main border, and the southern
part of Illinois is as south as the North Carolina
Virginia border. Get what I'm saying. You know, the politics
is going to be more southern as you go further
into what it is then called Egypt that part of
the state. Get it, Caro Egypt, all right, And then
the northern part is going to be more abolitionists. The
problem is when the Republican Party is a big tent
(14:41):
fusion party, it is not the GOP the Grand Old Party.
It is the BNP, the brand new party. And the
problem with a brand new party is that its elements,
its makeup, were people that were politically opposed to each
other just a few years before. These were people that
were politically opposed to each other, and they still hated
each other, all right, And I don't like to think
(15:03):
about this as wings. But now I'm gonna get to
talk about Lincoln in the message, the most extreme end
of the Republican Party was the abolition wing. Now you
might say, hey, that's that's a good position to have.
The problem with that is that a word abolitionists in
eighteen sixty was like being called a communist in the
nineteen fifties. You weren't going to win any elections if
you were tagged with that label. And Lincoln was not
(15:25):
an abolitionist, believe it or not. Lincoln was for the
Fugitive Slave Law, returning slaves to their owners. Harriet beat
Tristeau would not be a fan of Abraham Lincoln. In fact,
abolitionists really hated him. William Lloyd Garrison called Lincoln the
slavehound of Illinois. And it's not that he liked slavery.
(15:45):
He's already on the record saying how much he hated it.
But he thought the Constitution clearly protected it, and he
was not for overriding the Constitution. And the reason for
that reverence for the Constitution, in my mind is if
you think about this, and I've been up at three
am thinking about this, so I'm going to save you
guys that thought, and you can sleep really well tonight
and not worry about it. The longest time in our
(16:06):
history was between the Twelfth Amendment, which was ratified in
eighteen oh two, and I hope you're all writing this down,
and the thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery, ratified in eighteen
sixty five. Guess whose entire life was in between those
two amendments. Abraham Lincoln. He lived his entire life knowing
the Constitution as the original document, with the Bill of
(16:27):
Rights and just two amendments added to it, and to
him that was a rock solid document. Now, the other
wing of the Republican Party, and this, to me is
a more fascinating one because normally the two wings of
political parties butt up against each other, but in eighteen
sixty the Republican wing overlapped the Democratic wing. And this
was the group I'll call them the popular sovereigntists. They
(16:49):
actually supported the notion of popular sovereignty for pragmatic reasons.
They're saying, yes, as Douglas stated, you can vote slavery
up or slavery down, which means that it might be
voted down by the people that live in the territories,
and that fits their Republican principles, that that would prevent
slavery from extending in the territories so technically, these folks
(17:10):
are rolling the dice hoping that territorial legislations would keep
slavery out of their territories. Lincoln was dead set against
this wing because he considered this completely immoral. And it's
not that he liked slavery. He's already on record saying
how much he hated it. So he put himself right
in the middle.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
And you've been listening to Gary Ecklbarger, author of The
Great Comeback, telling one heck of a story about how
Abraham Lincoln became the nominee of what we now call
the GOP, the Grand Old Party. But as Echobarger points out,
this was the BNP, a brand new party with competing
factions within it who otherwise would not have gotten along
(17:50):
only months ago, and still weren't. The story continues here
on our American Stories, and we returned to our American
stories and the final portion of our story on how
(18:13):
Abraham Lincoln beat the odds and became the nominee of
the Republican Party in eighteen sixty. When we last left off,
Gary Ekelbarger was telling us about how Lincoln struck a
moderate position in his speeches across the nation. He wasn't
an abolitionist after all. Let's get back to the story.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
The party was really hard to hold together. The only
thing they all had in common was that they'd hated
the idea of slavery extending into the territories. He wasn't
trying to unite red state and blue state, which sometimes
I hear ascribed to him. He was trying to unite
that big tent fusion party. And he did this in
ways that were borderline brilliant, in my opinion. I'll give
(18:52):
you one example. He gives a speech in Columbus and
the very next day he goes to Cincinnati. Now the
Cincinnati Gazette has just sent a reporter to Columbus, and
on the morning Lincoln arrives in Cincinnati print his Columbus address. Well,
this is a rarity. The very next issue of the Gazette,
they'll print his Cincinnati speech. Consecutive issues and out of
(19:15):
state candidate getting complete attention for two speeches. And the
reason they did is he gave a completely different speech
in Cincinnati. And the reason why he did that was
because Stephen A. Douglas had just gone through Cincinnati eight
days earlier. And if you are in the audience in Cincinnati,
and you're listening to Stephen Douglas, it makes sense what
Douglas is about to say. He said, you in Ohio,
(19:38):
as he's speaking in Cincinnati, are a free state, meaning
slave free. Not because you were part of the Northwest Territory,
which was a slave free territory, but because of popular sovereignty.
The founding fathers of Ohio decided that the climate and
soil and geography of Ohio was too far north to
(19:59):
be support of crops that would require slave labor. So
in eighteen oh two they decided, by popular sovereignty to
vote slavery out of its state constitution. Now that makes
sense if you're out there in the audience. So Lincoln
will come to Cincinnati eight days later, and he's gonna
vanquish this in a way that he never had done
before and never will have to again. This is the
(20:19):
southernmost speech, and he's right on the Ohio River. What
state is on the other side of the river Kentucky?
All right, Kentucky has slaves. And Lincoln just takes apart
Douglas's argument because the way that river courses around while
they're in Cincinnati, there's a small part of Kentucky that's
north of them. And so Lincoln comes out rather haughtily
(20:41):
and says, pray, what made you free? Could it be
climate in soil? No, because if that was the reason,
we are in a region where north of us are
parts of Kentucky, why are they completely covered with slavery
and Ohio is entirely free of it. The only reason
is because Ohio is part of a territory that this
allowed slavery the Ordinance of seventeen eighty seven, and Kentucky
(21:03):
was not bound by that same ordinance. That's why you
have to have the same kind of laws across the
Mississippi River, because the chances of having a slave free
state in those territories the Kansas Nebraska would be much
less if they were slave free territories. The argument worked brilliantly.
He only used it in Cincinnati, and because he gave
a different speech, that's the speech that traveled the most,
(21:25):
clearly his most underrated speech. So those are the kind
of messages that Lincoln established for the middle ground position.
So the messenger and the message are extremely important. And
now the most important part, at least for the end
of what I was going to say, is a team
that took him there. Why does Lincoln become the second
to the top rung of the ladder before the convention
begins in two days Because they argued on the battleground
(21:47):
state basis. They being his team of supporters. They got
together being Illinois one of the four right, one of
the four battleground states, and the first thing they did
was got Indiana on their side, the second one. So
by Monday morning they have two of the four states
in their corner. So that's why, all of a sudden,
the papers are starting to talk up Lincoln as a
second because they've already grabbed those two states. But here's
(22:10):
the problem. You got to get these other two Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and they're not budget okay, especially Pennsylvania, and
they like Lincoln. But the plan for the Lincoln folks
is to try to get one hundred votes in the
first round. And the reason for that is so that
you clearly set yourself away from the rest of the field. Well,
that's ambitious. Twelve candidates. You want to get one hundred
(22:32):
out of four hundred and sixty five. That's quite a
goal to get a quarter of those votes. But the
most important thing is in the next round. You want
to build momentum, and you don't want this thing to
go You know, in eighteen fifty two it went forty
nine ballots. You don't want that to happen because then
you'll have a real dark horse coming out of nowhere
to claim the nomination. So they wanted this thing not
to go too many ballots. It's scripted much like a
(22:55):
football coach would script the first fifteen plays. You actually
knew how many votes your guy was going to get
each round. No big surprises are going to occur unless
somebody doesn't keep their promise. So the problem with the
Lincoln team was they thought they had the first round
one hundred. They were worried about the second round. They
weren't building momentum anywhere. So they made the deal. All right,
(23:15):
if Pennsylvania switched completely to Lincoln, if Lincoln won the election,
that Simon Cameron was going to get a position on
Lincoln's cabinet. And this is controversial. Many people claim that
it was done for the good of the party and
they're going to go completely to Lincoln, and that's how
this is going to work. So second round, they're voting
not alphabetically by states, but geographically from the Atlantic across
(23:36):
to the Mississippi. All of a sudden, everybody sees what's
happening when they get to Pennsylvania and they drop Cameron
and forty eight more votes go to Lincoln, and everybody thought, WHOA,
something's happening here. But Seward's picking up votes too. Everybody
else is not. And at the end of the second round,
Seward is still winning one hundred and eighty four. Lincoln
(23:57):
won eighty one. A right round, and now the advantage
of having the home state, there's a huge Lincoln crowd.
They probably printed fake tickets, but that just made a
lot of noise. It didn't make any effect on the outcome.
What made an effect on the outcome is the platform
seating because as the host delegation, you sat your delegations
(24:19):
on the platform and the ten thousand people are watching
this whole process. So Judd, the guy that got Chicago
as the site, was in charge of the delegation seating,
and it stayed the same for all three days and
nobody caught on. He surrounded New York with all the
other Seward supporting states. They are locked in, and then
(24:40):
all the undecided states next to the Lincoln crowds. So
what can't the Seward people do between rounds? They can't
get up in log roll, in other words, try to
coax votes from coming across. Seward. Folks are now going
to be caught up in a sea of Lincoln. And
after two rounds it's one eighty four to one eighty one.
Then you get to the third round, and I don't
know how you get a half a vote, But at
(25:01):
the end of the third round, Seward has one hundred
and eighty Lincoln has two hundred and thirty one and
a half. Not quite there. They're about to start the
ballot for the fourth but four Ohio wins announce that
they're going to change this and end it. And on
Friday at two pm and May eighteenth, Lincoln will go
over the top and he will win that nomination. Now,
I'm going to end today by giving you an irony
(25:24):
and a lesson of this whole nomination, the most momentous
and perhaps exciting nomination in our history. History will tell
us that within eleven months of that May convention, Fort
Sumter is fired upon and the Civil War begins. But
if you read the Republican Party platform of eighteen sixty.
You can google it up. It's there. It is so
(25:46):
conciliatory to the South. They use the term rights of
the States. There's a Republican plank that says guaranteeing protection
of Southern institutions, which is a euphemism for slavery. Another
plank for the protection of the Fugitive Slave Law. It
couldn't be more conciliatory to the South. And if you
read those planks, it's almost as Abraham Lincoln could have
(26:07):
written it himself. And I think, even though there's no
paper trail to show it, it's one of the reasons
why I got picked. He fit the platform so perfectly.
In other words, the people that chose Abraham Lincoln at
the Chicago convention didn't choose him because they expected him
to be the guy that was going to preside over
secession in Civil War. They chose Abraham Lincoln because they
(26:29):
thought he would be the one to prevent it. Had
the delegates collected in Chicago really thought that secession was inevitable.
Are they going to choose the Illinois lawyer without any
prominent position, the two time Senate loser. No way, They'll
choose the statesman and a lesson from all this is,
despite the best intentions, in the best studied efforts, sometimes
our best leaders are those that accomplish what was not
(26:52):
expected of them, rather than or in addition to, what
was expected of them.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Thank you and a special thanks to Gary ecklb his
work The Great Comeback and What Irony, indeed perhaps the
most momentous nomination process in American history, and the law
of unintended consequences. They had actually nominated Lincoln thinking he'd
prevent the war, but in the end Lincoln helped start
(27:18):
and win the war. The story of how Lincoln became
the nominee here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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