The life and public services of Abraham Lincoln ... together with his state papers, including his speeches, addresses, messages, letters, and proclamations, and the closing scenes connected with his life and death. By Henry J. Raymond. To which are added anecdotes and personal reminiscences of President Lincoln, by Frank B. Carpenter.

10(

THE LIFE, PUBLIC SERVICES, AND

All honor to Jefferson; to a man wh1o, in the concrete pressure of a
struggle for national in(lependence by a single people, had the coolness,
forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary docunment an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to
embalm it there, that to-day and in all coming d:ays it shall be a rebuke
and a stumbling-block to the harbingers of reappearing tyranny and
~ plp)ressionl.
Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.
Messrs. I. L. PIERCE, and others, etc.
But we turn from this episode to resume the formal,record of Mr. Lincoln's political career.
T'I, l( lpublicanl National Convention of 1860 met on the
16th of May, ait Chicago, in an immense building which
the people of that city had put up for the purpose, called
tle \Wigwam. There were four hundred and sixty-five
delegates. The city was filled with earnest men, who
had come tlhelr to press the claims of their favorite candidates, and the, halls and corridors of all the hotels
swarmed and buzzed with an eager crowd, in and out of
whlic(h darted or pusled or wormed their way the various
leaders of party politics. Mr. Chase, Mr. Bates, and Mr.
(ameron were spoken of and pressed somewhat as candidates, but from the first it was evident that the contest
lay between Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln.
Judge Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, was chosen temporary
Clhairman of the Convention, and in the afternoon of the
first day a permanent organization was effected, by the
choice of George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, as president, with twenty-seven vice-presidents and twenty-five
secretaries. On Thursday, the 17th, the Committee on
Resolutions reported the platform, which was enthusiastically adopted. A motion was made to proceed to the
nomination at once, and if that had been done the result
of the Convention might have proved very different, as
at tha:t time it was thought that Mr. Seward's chances
were the best. But an adjournment was taken till the
morning, and during the night the combinations were
made which resulted in the nomination of Mr. Lincoln.
The excitement of the Convention and of the audience on