He said the same to the editor of the “Central Illinois Gazette;” but this gentleman “brought him out in the issue of May 4,” and “thence the movement spread rapidly and strongly."[95] In the winter of 1859-60 sundry “intimate friends,” active politicians of Illinois, pressed him to consent to be mentioned as a candidate.  He considered the matter over night and then gave them the desired permission, at the same time saying that he would not accept the vice-presidency.

Being now fairly started in the race, he used all his well-known skill as a politician to forward his campaign, though nothing derogatory is to be inferred from these words as to his conduct or methods.  February 9, 1860, he wrote to Mr. Judd:  “I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me not to be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt some for me not to get the Illinois delegates....  Can you help me a little in this matter at your end of the vineyard?” This point of the allegiance of his own State was soon made right.  The Republican State Convention met in the “Wigwam” at Decatur, May 9 and 10, 1860.  Governor Oglesby, who presided, suggested that a distinguished citizen, whom Illinois delighted to honor, was present, and that he should be invited to a place on the 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