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May 18th, 1860
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As the second Republican National Convention met in between May 16th and 18th, 1860 it had seemed like it would go to New York Senator William Seward. Experienced, from a large state, and without a serious contender with the National Profile necessary to swing the delegates, he had a road map to victory. He would contain Senator Simon Cameron in Pennsylvania, and let Congressman Henry Bates and Governor Salmon Chase split the Ohio delegates. Abraham Lincoln, who had just recently lost the Senate Election to Stephen Douglas, considered the front runner at the Democratic Convention that was to reconvene in Baltimore might make a stir but he hardly had the profile to mount a serious campaign against him. He would offer him the Vice Presidency on the second ballot to shore up his support and ensure the much needed Western States were represented on the ticket.
In many senses it was Seward's to lose as nothing seemed to stand in the way of his ambition or his path to the White House. It was his time and it was his chance to make it happen. He would capitalize on his opponents at the Convention and then his opponents in the general election doing much of the same thing as he coasted to victory.
Yet a strange thing would happen at Wigwam Convention Center in Chicago, Illinois as the former Congressman’s campaign started to show life that Seward and his people hadn’t quite expected. Suddenly it was a race between the New York Senator and Lincoln. Little did he know that over the course of the next few days he would be out maneuvered by the man who had only met with limited electoral success as Lincoln’s surrogates started to nip at his heels and slowly narrow the gap between the two of them. If ever there was a man to live up to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s designation from The Young Duke written almost thirty years prior it would be the upstart from Illinois.
This is the story of Lincoln’s dark horse candidacy for the Republican Party’s 1860, and his unexpected win on May 18th, the beginning of a path that would take him to a narrow victory for the White House a few month later and forever alter the course of American history.
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