thusiasm. Cameron was the stumbling-block of the
conservative Eastern Republicans, and he was expected to command his
price. Horace Greeley, cast out of the Republican camp by the Seward men
in New York, came as a delegate from Oregon, and he was busy from morn
till night trying to defeat Seward. Chase, Lincoln, and Bates, though
they were not in the convention, were doing what they could to defeat
the great New York leader on the ground that he could not possibly carry
Indiana and Illinois. It was more than a friendly rivalry.

In drafting the platform no reference was to be made to the idealistic
Declaration of Independence, so popular in 1856; but the resolute threat
of a bolt, by Joshua R. Giddings, caused a reconsideration and the
adoption of the brief reference which one reads in the historic
document. All raids into States or Territories were duly denounced, and
slavery itself was guaranteed in all its rights. The Pacific railroad
scheme of Douglas was again indorsed, and the old land policy of the
West found expression in the free homestead plank. The tariff ideas of
Clay appeared in a clause which promised protection to American
industry, better wages to American labor, and higher prices for farm
products. One sees here the genius of political management, not the fire
of reformers, and if the Southerners had kept cool they could have read
between the lines of this declaration all the guarantees that they
required, save alone on the subject of slavery in the new Territories,
which the Republicans could not possibly yield and hold their followers
together. It was an alliance of the East and the Northwest, arranged by
Seward in much the same way that Calhoun arranged the combination of
1828 which raised Jackson to the Presidency.

To the surprise of the country and especially of the East, Cameron,
Greeley, and Bates proved able to defeat Seward, and Lincoln was
nominated. Many people of the East had never heard of the successful
candidate till they read in the papers that he had won. Lincoln was
moderate in temper and conciliatory in tone, like the platform, but he
was a sincere democrat, one who was in mind and thought one of the
people. The great men of the party who had borne the burden and heat of
the day felt outraged. Sumner never forgave Lincoln for his lack of
culture, and for a time it seemed that Seward would not give his humble
rival the support necessary to success. "The rail-splitter" of Illinois
was