“With banners waving and with bugle horns,
We are coming, Father Abraham, five hundred thousand strong,
One blast upon the bugle horn is worth a thousand men.”
This was repeated by numerous speakers on the stump throughout the country.
Memories of these parades, stump speeches, and bonfires linger with me vividly. The marching clubs were called “Wide Awakes,” and upon the oil-cloth cloaks, cut amply long in order to protect their wearers from the weather, the words “Wide Awake,” in tall, white letters, were painted. Each man carried a swinging torch which maintained an upright position no matter how it was held. The campaign developed numerous parades of these “Wide Awakes” in cities and towns throughout the country.
The Republican National Committee was not in possession of large funds, and each organization financed itself. It is doubtful if the National Committee had more than $100,000 to spend, and most of this went for printing and postage. There was no “yellow-dog fund” in those days. Had it been necessary for Mr. Lincoln or his managers to raise a half-million dollars, or go down to defeat, Lincoln would have lost out.
Our “infant industries” had not yet been developed and “brought to a head by the poultice of protection.” The late Senator Hanna would have regarded the prospects of a successful campaign without contribution from the protected interests as exceedingly doubtful.
I threw all my energy into this campaign, and, though young, I was frequently making several speeches during a day and evening. I marched with the “Wide Awakes,” and was sent to different parts of the State, where, with other speakers, I addressed large audiences. The temper of my hearers was not always encouraging.
I have always doubted whether Seward’s partisan adherents in central New York gave really loyal support to Lincoln, since it continued to rankle in their breasts that the sentiment of two-thirds of the convention, originally in favor of Seward, had been turned to Lincoln through the machinations of Horace Greeley, Reuben E. Fenton—afterward Governor of the State of New York—and other prominent anti-Seward men.
No attempt was made by the Republicans to campaign in the Southern States, where the breach existing between the Douglas and Breckenridge adherents was remorselessly unrelenting. The drift in those States was naturally unanimously in favor of Breckenridge, and it was early recognized that Douglas, though a Democrat, would not carry a single Southern State.