Lincoln Secures Nomination: Path to Presidency Opens

Abraham Lincoln won the Republican presidential nomination on May 18, 1860, on the third ballot at the Wigwam convention hall in Chicago, defeating the heavily favored William Seward in one of American politics' greatest upsets. Lincoln entered the convention as a regional figure, a former one-term congressman from Illinois known mainly for his 1858 Senate debates with Stephen Douglas. Seward, the senator from New York and the party's most prominent figure, had arrived in Chicago expecting a first-ballot coronation. Lincoln's campaign team, led by his ruthless political operator David Davis, worked the delegates relentlessly in the days before the vote. They packed the Wigwam's galleries with Lincoln supporters who had been given counterfeit admission tickets. They made deals with delegates from Indiana, Pennsylvania, and other swing states, promising cabinet positions and patronage in exchange for support. Lincoln himself stayed in Springfield, following the convention's tradition that candidates did not attend. Seward's vulnerability was his reputation for radicalism on the slavery question. His speeches about an "irrepressible conflict" and a "higher law" than the Constitution alarmed moderates who feared he could not win the general election. Lincoln, by contrast, had staked out a position opposing the expansion of slavery into new territories while accepting its existence in current slave states. This made him acceptable to both the party's radical and moderate wings. The nomination set up the most consequential presidential election in American history. Lincoln's victory in November, achieved with less than 40 percent of the popular vote in a four-way race, triggered the secession of seven southern states before he even took office. The man the Republican convention chose as a compromise candidate became the president who preserved the Union, abolished slavery, and redefined the meaning of American democracy. Seward, offered the consolation prize of Secretary of State, became Lincoln's most trusted advisor.