The Lincoln managers played upon the Eastern jealousies and the Eastern
fears with great skill. There was little sleep among the delegates the
night previous to the balloting. At just the right moment, the Lincoln
managers, though their chief had forbidden them to do so, offered
promises with regard to Cabinet appointments.(6) And they succeeded in
packing the galleries of the Convention Hall with a perfectly organized
claque-"rooters," the modern American would say.

The result on the third ballot was a rush to Lincoln of all the enemies
of Seward, and Lincoln's nomination amid a roaring frenzy of applause.




XI. SECESSION

After twenty-three years of successive defeats, Lincoln, almost
fortuitously, was at the center of the political maelstrom. The clue
to what follows is in the way he had developed during that long
discouraging apprenticeship to greatness. Mentally, he had always been
in isolation. Socially, he had lived in a near horizon. The real tragedy
of his failure at Washington was in the closing against him of the
opportunity to know his country as a whole. Had it been Lincoln instead
of Douglas to whom destiny had given a residence at Washington during
the 'fifties, it is conceivable that things might have been different
in the 'sixties. On the other hand, America would have lost its greatest
example of the artist in politics.

And without that artist, without his extraordinary literary gift, his
party might not have consolidated in 1860. A very curious party it was.