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 essentially new man?  In a word, what we know as a “dark horse.”  Believing that this would happen, they built hopefully on their faith in Lincoln.

Toward the end of the year he was at last persuaded to take his candidacy seriously.  The local campaign for his nomination had gone so far that a failure to go further would have the look of being discarded as the local Republican leader.  This argument decided him.  Before the year’s end he had agreed to become a candidate before the convention.  In his own words, “I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me to not be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt some for me to not get the Illinois delegates."(4)

It was shortly after this momentous decision that he went to New York by invitation and made his most celebrated, though not in any respect his greatest, oration.(5) A large audience filled Cooper Union, February 27, 1860.  William Cullen Bryant presided.  David Dudley Field escorted Lincoln to the platform.  Horace Greeley was in the audience.  Again, the performance was purely literary.  No formulation of new policies, no appeal for any new departure.  It was a masterly restatement of his position; of the essence of the debates with Douglas.  It cleansed the Republican platform of all accidental accretions, as if a ship’s hull were being scraped of barnacles preparatory to a voyage; it gave the underlying issues such inflexible definition that they could not be juggled with.  Again he showed a power of lucid statement not possessed by any of his rivals.  An incident of the speech was his unsparing condemnation of John Brown whose raid and death were on every tongue.  “You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves,” said he, apostrophizing the slave-holders.  “We deny it, and what is your proof?  ‘Harper’s Ferry; John Brown!’ John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in this Harper’s Ferry enterprise. . .