Douglas, Norfolk Speech, August 25, 1860.
All parties entered upon the political canvass with considerable spirit; but the chances of the Republicans were so manifestly superior that their enthusiasm easily outran that of all their competitors. The character and antecedents of Mr. Lincoln appealed directly to the sympathy and favor of the popular masses of the Northern States. As pioneer, farm-laborer, flat-boatman, and frontier politician, they saw in him a true representative of their early if not their present condition. As the successful lawyer, legislator, and public debater in questions of high statesmanship, he was the admired ideal of their own aspirations.
While the Illinois State Republican Convention was in session at Decatur (May 10), about a week before the Chicago Convention, the balloting for State officers was interrupted by the announcement, made with much mystery, that "an old citizen of Macon County" had something to present to the convention. When curiosity had been sufficiently aroused, John Hanks, Lincoln's fellow-pioneer, and a neighbor of Hanks, were suddenly marched into the convention, each bearing upright an old fence-rail, and displaying a banner with an inscription to the effect that these were two rails from the identical lot of three thousand which, when a pioneer boy, Lincoln had helped to cut and split to inclose his father's first farm in Illinois, in 1830. These emblems of his handiwork were received by the convention with deafening shouts, as a prelude to a unanimous resolution recommending him for President. Later, these rails were sent to Chicago; there, during the sittings of the National Republican Convention, they stood in the hotel parlor at the Illinois headquarters, lighted up by tapers, and trimmed with flowers by enthusiastic ladies. Their history and campaign incidents were duly paraded in the newspapers; and throughout the Union Lincoln's ancient and local sobriquet of "Honest Old Abe" was supplemented by the national epithet of "The Illinois Bail-splitter." Of the many peculiarities of the campaign, one feature deserves special mention. Political clubs, for parades and personal campaign work, were no novelty; now, however, the expedients of a cheap yet striking uniform and a half-military organization were tried with marked success. When Lincoln made his New England trip, immediately after the Cooper Institute speech, a score or two of active Republicans in the city of Hartford appeared in close and orderly ranks, wearing each a cap and large cape of oil-cloth, and bearing over their shoulders a long staff, on the end of which blazed a brilliant torch-light. This first "Wide Awake"[3] ] Club, as it called itself, marching with soldierly step, and military music, escorted Mr. Lincoln, on the evening of March 5, from the hall where he addressed the people, to his hotel. The device was so simple and yet so strikingly effective that it immediately became the pattern for other cities. After the campaign opened, there was scarcely a county or village in the North without its organized and drilled association of "Wide Awakes," immensely captivating to the popular eye, and forming everywhere a vigilant corps to spread the fame of, and solicit votes for, the Republican Presidential candidate. On several occasions twenty to thirty thousand "Wide Awakes" met in the larger cities and marched in monster torch-light processions through the principal streets.
His nomination also made necessary some slight changes in Mr. Lincoln's daily life. His law practice was transferred entirely to his partner, and instead of the small dingy office so long occupied by him, he was now given the use of the Governor's room in the State-house, which was not needed for official business during the absence of the Legislature. This also was a room of modest proportions, with scanty and plain furniture. Here Mr. Lincoln, attended only by his private secretary, Mr. Nicolay, passed the long summer days of the campaign, receiving the constant stream of visitors anxious to look upon a real Presidential candidate. There was free access to him; not even an usher stood at the door; any one might knock and enter. His immediate personal friends from Sangamon County and central Illinois availed themselves largely of this opportunity. With men who had known him in field and forest he talked over the incidents of their common pioneer experience with unaffected sympathy and interest, as though he were yet the flat-boatman, surveyor, or village lawyer of the early days. The letters which came to him by hundreds, the newspapers, and the conversation of friends, kept him sufficiently informed of the progress of the campaign, in which personally he took a very slight part. He made no addresses, wrote no public letters, held no conferences. Political leaders several times came to make campaign speeches at the Republican wigwam in Springfield. But beyond a few casual interviews on such occasions, the great Presidential canvass went on with scarcely a private suggestion or touch of actual direction from the Republican candidate.
It is perhaps worth while to record Lincoln's expression on one point, which adds testimony to his general consistency in political action. The rise of the Know-Nothing or the American party, in 1854-5 (which was only a renewal of the Native-American party of 1844), has been elsewhere mentioned. As a national organization, the new faction ceased with the defeat of Fillmore and Donelson in 1856; its fragments nevertheless held together in many places in the form of local minorities, which sometimes made themselves felt in contests for members of the Legislature and county officers; and citizens of foreign birth continued to be justly apprehensive of its avowed jealousy and secret machinery. It was easy to allege that any prominent candidate belonged to the Know-Nothing party, and attended the secret Know-Nothing lodges; and Lincoln, in the late Senatorial, and now again in the Presidential, campaign, suffered his full share of these newspaper accusations.
Lincoln to Edward Lusk, October 30, 1858. MS.
We have already mentioned that in the campaign of 1844 he put on record, by public resolutions in Springfield, his disapprobation of, and opposition to, Native-Americanism. In the later campaigns, while he did not allow his attention to be diverted from the slavery discussion, his disapproval of Know-Nothingism was quite as decided and as public. Thus he wrote in a private letter, dated October 30, 1858: "I understand the story is still being told and insisted upon that I have been a Know-Nothing. I repeat what I stated in a public speech at Meredosia, that I am not, nor ever have been, connected with the party called the Know-Nothing party, or party calling themselves the American party. Certainly no man of truth, and I believe no man of good character for truth, can be found to say on his own knowledge that I ever was connected with that party."
Lincoln to Hon. A. Jonas, July 21, 1860. MS.
So also in the summer of 1860, when his candidacy for President did not permit his writing public letters, he wrote in a confidential note to a friend: "Yours of the 20th is received. I suppose as good or even better men than I may have been in American or Know-Nothing lodges; but, in point of fact, I never was in one, at Quincy or elsewhere.... And now a word of caution. Our adversaries think they can gain a point if they could force me to openly deny the charge, by which some degree of offense would be given to the Americans. For this reason it must not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the charge."
Lincoln to Dr. Theodore Canisius, May 17, 1859.