Seward. Let it
be said, at once, that Seward deserved the nomination, if high service
and party loyalty and distinguished ability counted for anything, and it
looked for a time as though he were going to get it, for on the first
ballot he received 71 more votes than Lincoln. But in the course of his
public career he had made enemies who were anxious for his defeat, his
campaign managers were too confident or too clumsy to take advantage of
opportunity; Lincoln's friends were busy, and by some expert trading, of
which, be it said in justice to Lincoln, he himself was ignorant,
succeeded in securing for him a majority of the votes on the third
ballot.
So, blindly and almost by chance, was the nomination secured of the one
man fitted to meet the crisis. The only other event in American history
to be compared with it in sheer wisdom was the selection of Washington
to head the Revolutionary army--a selection made primarily, not because
of Washington's fitness for the task, but to heal sectional differences
and win the support of the South to a war waged largely in the North.
The nomination, so curiously made, was received with anything but
enthusiasm by the country at large. "Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter,"
might appeal to some, but there was a general doubt whether, after all,
rail-splitting, however honorable in itself, was the best training for
a President.
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