So keen were the disappointments of the New York delegation, and Mr. Weed, who was the Seward leader, that when earnestly urged to name a candidate for Vice-President, who would have been accepted by a nearly unanimous vote, they churlishly refused to do so. Governor Morgan would have been taken as the candidate to emphasize the desire of the friends of Lincoln to recognize the friends of Seward, but he peremptorily refused to accept it, and the convention then nominated Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, as a representative of the Democratic-Republican element; but New York divided her vote between five candidates, giving a bare majority to Hamlin from personal choice.

As the friends of Seward declined to indicate a candidate for Vice-President the convention reassembled in the evening to enter a free-for-all race for the second place on the ticket. Hamlin commanded nearly a solid vote from New England that attracted others. He was known throughout the country as the man who had resigned the chairmanship of his committee in the Senate in 1856 to declare himself for Fremont, although an earnest Democrat up to that time, and that he had accepted the Republican nomination for Governor and won out by an overwhelming majority. There was a strong sentiment in the convention in favor of Cassius M. Clay, not because he was personally preferred, but because it was thought wise by many to desectionalize the party by taking a candidate for Vice-President from a Slave State. Hamlin had a good lead on the 1st ballot, and on the 2d won an easy victory. The two ballots were as follows:

STATES.1st Ballot.2d Ballot.
C. M. Clay.Banks.Reeder.Hickman.Hamlin.Hamlin.Clay.Hickman.
Maine————1616——
New Hampshire————1010——
Vermont————1010——
Massachusetts—2011126——
Rhode Island————88——
Connecticut21—2510—2
New York942113570——
New Jersey1—7—614——
Pennsylvania4¹⁄₂2¹⁄₂2471154——
Maryland2——18101—
Delaware3——126——
Virginia23—————23—
Kentucky23—————28—
Ohio————4846——
Indiana18———81214—
Missouri—9—9—135—
Michigan4———884—
Illinois2—1622202—
Texas——————6—
Wisconsin5———555—
Iowa—11—63——
California———8—71—
Minnesota1——1671—
Oregon—1—313—2
Kansas———6—213
Nebraska1——5———6
District of Columbia2————2——
Totals101¹⁄₂38¹⁄₂51581943678613

The Chicago convention that nominated Lincoln for President was not only the ablest national political body that ever met in the country up to that time, but it exhibited the highest type of political strategy. It has never since then been equalled in ability and leadership, with the single exception of the Republican convention of 1880, in which the friends of Grant made their last stand to give their chieftain a third term. As compared with these two, all subsequent conventions were tame.

The following platform was unanimously adopted:

Resolved, That we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the United States, in convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations:

1. That the history of the nation, during the last four years, has fully established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph.

2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution—“that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”—is essential to the preservation of our republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the rights of the States, and the union of the States, must and shall be preserved.

3. That to the union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness at home, and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for disunion, come from whatever source they may; and we congratulate the country that no Republican member of Congress has uttered or countenanced the threats of disunion so often made by Democratic members, without rebuke and with applause from their political associates; and we denounce those threats of disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their ascendancy, as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence.

4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.