t of the laws." This party
gathered nearly all the peaceable elements of the community; it assumed
a deprecatory attitude between angry contestants, and of course received
the abuse and contempt of both; it was devoid of combative force, yet
had some numerical strength. The Republicans especially mocked at these
"trimmers," as if their only platform was moral cowardice, which,
however, was an unfair statement of their position. The party died, of
necessity, upon the day when Lincoln was elected, and its members were
then distributed between the Republicans, the Secessionists, and the
Copperheads. John Bell of Tennessee, the candidate for the presidency,
joined the Confederacy; Edward Everett of Massachusetts, the candidate
for the vice-presidency, became a Republican. The party never had a hope
of electing its men; but its existence increased the chance of throwing
the election into Congress; and this hope inspired exertions far beyond
what its own prospects warranted.

On May 16 the Republican Convention came together at Chicago, where the
great "Wigwam" had been built to hold 10,000 persons. The intense
interest with which its action was watched indicated the popular belief
that probably it would name the next President of the United States.
Many candidates were named, chiefly Seward, Lincoln, Chase, Cameron,
Edward Bates of Missouri, and William L. Dayton of New Jersey. Thurlow
Weed was Seward's lieutenant. Horace Greeley, chiefly bent upon the
defeat of Seward, would have liked to achieve it by the success of
Bates. David Davis, aided by Judge Logan and a band of personal friends
from Illinois, was manager for Lincoln. Primarily the contest lay
between Seward and Lincoln, and only a dead-lock between these two could
give a chance to some one of the others. But Seward's friends hoped, and
Lincoln's friends dreaded, that the New Yorker might win by a rush on
the first ballot. George Ashmun of Massachusetts presided. With little
discussion a platform was adopted, long and ill-written, overloaded with
adjectives and rhetoric, sacrificing dignity to the supreme pleasure of
abusing the Democracy, but honest in stating Republican doctrines, and
clearly displaying the temper of an earnest, aggressive party, hot for
the fight and confident of victory. The vote of acceptance was greeted
with such a cheering that "a herd of buffaloes or lions could not have
made a more tremendous roaring."

The details of the brief but sharp