He had gained an entrance to the national arena, and he took care to remain before the public.  He made speeches in Ohio, in Kansas, and even in New York and throughout New England, everywhere making a powerful impression.  To disunion and secession he referred only once or twice, for he perceived a truth which, even yet, some of us are reluctant to admit:  that every nation has a right to maintain by force, if it can, its own integrity, and that a portion of a nation may sometimes be justified in struggling for independent national existence.  The whole justification of such a struggle lies in whether its cause and basis is right or wrong.  So, beneath the question of disunion, was the question as to whether slavery was right or wrong.  On this question, of course, northern opinion was practically all one way, while even in the South there were many enemies of the institution.  The world was outgrowing what was really a survival of the dark ages.

When the campaign for the presidential nomination opened in the winter of 1859-1860, Lincoln was early in the field and did everything possible to win support.  He secured the Illinois delegates without difficulty, and when the national convention met at Chicago, in May, the contest soon narrowed down to one between Lincoln and William H. Seward.  Let it be said, at once, that Seward deserved the nomination, if high service and party loyalty and distinguished ability counted for anything, and it looked for a time as though he were going to get it, for on the first ballot he received 71 more votes than Lincoln.  But in the course of his public career he had made enemies who were anxious for his defeat, his campaign managers were too confident or too clumsy to take advantage of opportunity; Lincoln’s friends were busy, and by some expert trading, of which, be it said in justice to Lincoln, he himself was ignorant, succeeded in securing for him a majority of the votes on the third ballot.

So, blindly and almost by chance, was the nomination secured of the one man fitted to meet the crisis.  The only other event in American history to be compared with it in sheer wisdom was the selection of Washington to head the Revolutionary army—­a selection made primarily, not because of Washington’s fitness for the task, but to heal sectional differences and win the support of the South to a war waged largely in the North.

The nomination, so curiously made, was received with anything but enthusiasm by the country at large.  “Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter,” might appeal to some, but there was a general doubt whether, after all, rail-splitting, however honorable in itself, was the best training for a President.  However, the anti-slavery feeling was a tie that bound together people of the most diverse opinions about other things, and a spirited canvass was made, greatly assisted by the final and suicidal split in the ranks of the Democracy, which placed in nomination two men, Lincoln’s