h the cause of
Jefferson, "the man who in the concrete pressure of a struggle for
national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast and
capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract
truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it
there that today and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and
a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and
oppression."(1)

While the Boston committee were turning their eyes toward this great new
phrase-maker of the West, several politicians in Illinois had formed a
bold resolve. They would try to make him President. The movement had two
sources--the personal loyalty of his devoted friends of the circuit, the
shrewdness of the political managers who saw that his duel with Douglas
had made him a national figure. As one of them said to him, "Douglas
being so widely known, you are getting a national reputation through
him." Lincoln replied that he did not lack the ambition but lacked
altogether the confidence in the possibility of success.(2)

This was his attitude during most of 1859. The glow, the enthusiasm, of
the previous year was gone. "I must in candor say that I do not think
myself fit for the Presidency," he wrote to a newspaper editor in April.
He used the same words to another correspondent in July. As late as
November first, he wrote, "For my single self, I have enlisted for the
permanent success of the Republican cause, and for this object I shall
labor faithfully in the ranks, unless, as I think not probable, the
judgment of the party shall assign me a different position."(3)

Meanwhile, both groups of supporters had labored unceasingly, regardless
of his approval. In his personal following, the companionableness of
twenty years had deepened into an almost romantic loyalty. The leaders
of this enthusiastic attachment, most of them lawyers, had no superiors
for influence in Illinois. The man who had such a following was a power
in politics whether he would or no. This the mere politicians saw. They
also saw that the next Republican nomination would rest on a delicate
calculation of probabilities. There were other Republicans more
conspicuous than Lincoln--Seward in New York, Sumner in Massachusetts,
Chase in Ohio--but all these had inveterate enemies. Despite their
importance would it be safe to nominate them? Would not the party be
compelled to take some relatively minor figure, some essentiall