The action of the Democratic State convention in April closed the door to any reconciliation with the Buchanan administration.  Douglas received an unqualified indorsement.  The Cincinnati platform was declared to be “the only authoritative exposition of Democratic doctrine.”  No power on earth except a similar national convention had a right “to change or interpolate that platform, or to prescribe new or different tests.”  By sound party doctrine the Lecompton constitution ought to be “submitted to the direct vote of the actual inhabitants of Kansas at a fair election."[679] Could any words have been more explicit?  The administration responded by a merciless proscription of Douglas office-holders and by unremitting efforts to create an opposition ticket.  Under pressure from Washington, conventions were held to nominate candidates for the various State offices, with the undisguised purpose of dividing the Democratic vote for senator.[680]

On the 16th of June, the Republicans of Illinois threw advice to the winds and adopted the unusual course of naming Lincoln as “the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate.”  It was an act of immense political significance.  Not only did it put in jeopardy the political life of Douglas, but it ended for all time to come any coalition between his following and the Republican party.

The subsequent fame of Lincoln has irradiated every phase of his early career.  To his contemporaries in the year 1858, he was a lawyer of recognized ability, an astute politician, and a frank aspirant for national honors.  Those who imagine him to have been an unambitious soul, upon whom honors were thrust, fail to understand the Lincoln whom Herndon, his partner, knew.  Lincoln was a seasoned politician.  He had been identified with the old Whig organization; he had repeatedly represented the Springfield district in the State legislature; and he had served one term without distinction in Congress.  Upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act he had taken an active part in fusing the opposing elements into the Republican party.  His services to the new party made him a candidate for the senatorship in 1855, and received recognition in the national Republican convention of 1856, when he was second on the list of those for whom the convention balloted for Vice-president.  He was not unknown to Republicans of the Northwest, though he was not in any sense a national figure.  Few men had a keener insight into political conditions in Illinois.  None knew better the ins and outs of political campaigning in Illinois.