At Bloomington Lincoln was the great figure. Beside him all the rest—even the oldest in the faith and the strongest in the work—were small. Yet he was universally regarded as a recent convert, although the most important one that could be made in the State of Illinois. "We met at Bloomington; and it was there," says Mr. Herndon in one of his lectures, "that Mr. Lincoln was baptized, and joined our church. He made a speech to us. I have heard or read all Mr. Lincoln's great speeches; and I give it as my opinion, on my best judgment, that the Bloomington speech was the grand effort of his life. Heretofore, and up to this moment, he had simply argued the slavery question on grounds of policy,—on what are called the statesman's grounds,—never reaching the question of the radical and the eternal right. Now he was newly baptized and freshly born: he had the fervor of a new convert; the smothered flame broke out; enthusiasm unusual to him blazed up; his eyes were aglow with an inspiration; he felt justice; his heart was alive to the right; his sympathies, remarkably deep for him, burst forth, and he stood before the throne of the eternal Right, in presence of his God, and then and there unburdened his penitential and fired soul. This speech was fresh, new, genuine, odd, original; filled with fervor not unmixed with a divine enthusiasm; his head breathing out through his tender heart its truths, its sense of right, and its feeling of the good and for the good. This speech was full of fire and energy and force: it was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, right, and the good, set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul maddened by the wrong; it was hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, edged, and heated. I attempted for about fifteen minutes, as was usual with me then, to take notes; but at the end of that time I threw pen and paper to the dogs, and lived only in the inspiration of the hour. If Mr. Lincoln was six feet four inches high usually, at Bloomington he was seven feet, and inspired at that. From that day to the day of his death, he stood firm on the right. He felt his great cross, had his great idea, nursed it, kept it, taught it to others, and in his fidelity bore witness of it to his death, and finally sealed it with his precious blood."
If any thing in the foregoing description by Mr. Herndon seems extravagant to the reader, something must be pardoned to the spirit of a patient friend and an impatient teacher, who saw in this scene the first fruits of his careful husbandry, and the end of his long vigil. He appears to have participated even then in the belief which Mr. Lincoln himself avowed,—that the latter was designed by the Dispenser of all things to occupy a great place in the world's history; and he felt that that day's doings had fixed his political character forever. The Bloomington Convention was called "Republican," and the Republican party of Illinois was there formed: but the most noted Abolitionists were in it, the spirit of the Lovejoys was present; and Mr. Herndon had a right to say, that, if Mr. Lincoln was not an Abolitionist, he was tending "Abolition-ward" so surely that no doubt could be entertained of his ultimate destination. But, after all, the resolutions of the convention were very "moderate." They merely denounced the administration for its course regarding Kansas, stigmatized the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as an act of bad faith, and opposed "the extension of slavery into Territories heretofore free." It was surely not because Mr. Lincoln was present, and aiding at the passage of such resolutions, that Mr. Herndon and others thereafter regarded him as a "newborn" Abolitionist. It must have been the general warmth of his speech against the South,—his manifest detestation of slaveholders and slaveholding, as exhibited in his words,—which led them to believe that his feelings at least, if not his opinions, were similar to theirs. But the reader will see, nevertheless, as we get along in our history, that the Bloomington resolutions were the actual standard of Mr. Lincoln's views; that he continued to express his determination to maintain the rights of the Slave States under the Constitution, and to make conspicuously plain his abhorrence of negro suffrage and negro equality. He certainly disliked the Southern politicians very much; but even that sentiment, growing daily more fierce and ominous in the masses of the new party, was in his case counterbalanced by his prejudices or his caution, and he never saw the day when he would willingly have clothed the negroes with political privileges.
Notwithstanding the conservative character of the resolutions, the proceedings of the Bloomington Convention were alarming to a portion of the community, and seem to have found little favor with the people of Springfield. About five days after its adjournment, Herndon and Lincoln bethought them of holding a ratification meeting. Mr. Herndon got out huge posters, announcing the event, and employed a band of musicians to parade the streets and "drum up a crowd." As the hour of meeting drew near, he "lit up the Court House with many blazes," rung the bells, and blew a horn. At seven o'clock the meeting should have been called to order, but it turned out to be extremely slim. There was nobody present, with all those brilliant lights, but A. Lincoln, W. H. Herndon, and John Pain. "When Lincoln came into the courtroom," says the bill-poster and horn-blower of this great demonstration, "he came with a sadness and a sense of the ludicrous on his face. He walked to the stand, mounted it in a kind of mockery,—mirth and sadness all combined,—and said, 'Gentlemen, this meeting is larger than I knew it would be. I knew that Herndon and myself would come, but I did not know that any one else would be here; and yet another has come,—you, John Pain. These are sad times, and seem out of joint. All seems dead, dead, dead: but the age is not yet dead; it liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of life and motion, the world does move nevertheless. Be hopeful. And now let us adjourn, and appeal to the people.'
"This speech is in substance just as he delivered it, and substantially in the same sad but determined spirit; and so we did adjourn, did go out, and did witness the fact that 'the world was not dead.'"
The Bloomington Convention sent delegates to the general Republican Convention, which was to be held at Philadelphia in June. That body was to nominate candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency, and high hopes were entertained of their success. But much remained to be done before such a revolution in sentiment could be expected. The American or Know-Nothing party—corrupt, hideous, and delusive, but still powerful—had adopted the old Whig platform on the several slavery questions, and planted itself decisively against the agitations of the Anti-Nebraska men and the Republicans. A "National Council" had taken this position for it the year previous, in terms beside which the resolutions of the Whigs and Democrats in 1852 were mild and inexpressive. Something, therefore, must be done to get this great organization out of the way, or to put its machinery under "Republican" control. We have seen a party of gentlemen from Chicago proposing to go into the lodges, and "rule them for freedom." Mr. Herndon and Mr. Lincoln rejected the plot with lofty indignation; but a section of the Free-Soil politicians were by no means so fastidious. They were for the most part bad, insincere, trading men, with whom the profession of principles of any kind was merely a convenient disguise, and who could be attached to no party, except from motives of self-interest. As yet, they were not quite certain whether it were possible to raise more hatred in the Northern mind against foreigners and Catholics than against slaveholders; and they prudently determined to be in a situation to try either. Accordingly, they went into the lodges, took the oaths, swore to stand by the platform of the "National Council" of 1855, and were perfectly ready to do that, or to betray the organization to the Republicans, as the prospect seemed good or bad. Believing the latter scheme to be the best, upon deliberation, they carried it out as far as in them lay, and then told the old, grim, honest, antislavery men, with whom they again sought association, that they had joined the Know-Nothings, and sworn irrevocable oaths to proscribe foreigners and Catholics, solely that they might rule the order "for freedom;" and, the Republicans standing in much need of aid just then, the excuse was considered very good. But it was too shameless a business for Lincoln and Herndon; and they most righteously despised it.
In February, 1856, the Republicans held what Mr. Greeley styles their "first National. Convention," at Pittsburg; but they made no nominations there. At the same time, a Know-Nothing American "National Council" was sitting at Philadelphia (to be followed by a nominating convention); and the Republicans at Pittsburg had not adjourned before they got news by telegraph, that the patriots who had entered the lodges on false pretences were achieving a great success: the American party was disintegrating, and a great section of it falling away to the Republicans. A most wonderful political feat had been performed, and the way was now apparently clear for a union of the all-formidable anti-Democratic elements in the Presidential canvass.
On the 17th of June the National Republican Convention met at Philadelphia, and nominated John C. Fremont for President, and William L. Dayton for Vice-President. Mr. Williams, Chairman of the Illinois Delegation, presented to the convention the name of Abraham Lincoln for the latter office; and it was received with great enthusiasm by some of the Western delegates. He received, however, but 110 votes, against 259 for Mr. Dayton, and 180 scattered; and Mr. Dayton was immediately thereafter unanimously declared the nominee.
While this convention was sitting, Mr. Lincoln was attending court at Urbana, in Champaign County. When the news reached that place that Mr. Dayton had been nominated, and "Lincoln had received 110 votes," some of the lawyers insisted that the latter must have been "our [their] Lincoln;" but he said, "No, it could not be: it must have been the great Lincoln from Massachusetts." He utterly refused to believe in the reality of this unexpected distinction until he saw the proceedings in full. He was just then in one of his melancholy moods, his spirits depressed, and his heart suffering the miseries of a morbid mind.