stand; and at once, amid a tumult of
applause, Lincoln was lifted over the heads of the crowd to the
platform. John Hanks then theatrically entered, bearing a couple of
fence rails, and a flag with the legend that they were from a "lot made
by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks in the Sangamon Bottom, in the year
1830." The sympathetic roar rose again. Then Lincoln made a "speech,"
appropriate to the occasion. At last, attention was given to business,
and the convention resolved that Abraham Lincoln was the first choice of
the Republican party of Illinois for the presidency, and instructed
their delegates to the nominating convention "to use all honorable means
to secure his nomination, and to cast the vote of the State as a unit
for him."

With the opening of the spring of 1860 the several parties began the
campaign in earnest. The Democratic Convention met first, at Charleston,
April 23; and immediately the line of disruption opened. Upon the one
side stood Douglas, with the moderate men and nearly all the Northern
delegates, while against him were the advocates of extreme Southern
doctrines, supported by the administration and by most of the delegates
from the "Cotton States." The majority of the committee appointed to
draft the platform were anti-Douglas men; but their report was rejected,
and that offered by the pro-Douglas minority was substituted, 165 yeas
to 138 nays.[96] Thereupon the delegations of Alabama, Mississippi,
Florida, and Texas, and sundry delegates from other States, withdrew
from the convention,[97] taking away 45 votes out of a total of 303.
Those who remained declared the vote of two thirds of a full convention,
_i.e._, 202 votes, to be necessary for a choice. Then during three days
fifty-seven ballots were cast, Douglas being always far in the lead, but
never polling more than 152-1/2 votes. At last, on May 3, an adjournment
was had until June 18, at Baltimore. At this second meeting contesting
delegations appeared, and the decisions were uniformly in favor of the
Douglas men, which provoked another secession of the extremist Southern
men. A ballot showed 173-1/2 votes for Douglas out of a total of
191-1/2; the total was less than two thirds of the full number of the
original convention, and therefore it was decided that any person
receiving two thirds of the votes cast by the delegates present should
be deemed the nominee. The next ballot gave Douglass 181-1/2. Herschel
V. Johnson of Georgia was n