The details of the brief but sharp contest for the nomination are not altogether gratifying.  The partisans of Seward set about winning votes by much parading in the streets with banners and music, and by out-yelling all competitors within the walls of the convention.  For this intelligent purpose they had engaged Tom Hyer, the prize fighter, with a gang of roughs, to hold possession of the Wigwam, and to howl illimitably at appropriate moments.  But they had undertaken a difficult task in trying to outdo the great West, in one of its own cities, at a game of this kind.  The Lincoln leaders in their turn secured a couple of stentorian yellers (one of them a Democrat), instructed them carefully, and then filled the Wigwam full actually at daybreak, while the Seward men were marching; so in the next yelling match the West won magnificently.  How great was the real efficiency of these tactics in affecting the choice of the ruler of a great nation commonly accounted intelligent, it is difficult to say with accuracy; but it is certain that the expert managers spared no pains about this scenic business of “enthusiasm.”

Meanwhile other work, entirely quiet, was being done elsewhere.  The objection to Seward was that he was too radical, too far in advance of the party.  The Bates following were pushing their candidate as a moderate man, who would be acceptable to “Union men.”  But Bates’s chance was small, and any tendency towards a moderate candidate was likely to carry his friends to Lincoln rather than to Seward; for Lincoln was generally supposed, however erroneously,[100] to be more remote from Abolitionism than Seward was.  To counteract this, a Seward delegate telegraphed to the Bates men at St. Louis that Lincoln was as radical as Seward.  Lincoln, at Springfield, saw this dispatch, and at once wrote a message to David Davis:  “Lincoln agrees with Seward in his irrepressible-conflict idea, and in Negro Equality; but he is opposed to Seward’s Higher Law. Make no contracts that will bind me.”  He underscored the last sentence; but when his managers saw it, they recognized that such independence did not accord with the situation, and so they set it aside.

The first vote was:—­

Whole number                      465
Necessary for choice              233

William H. Seward of New York     173-1/2
Abraham Lincoln of Illinois       102
Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania      50-1/2
Salmon P. Chase of Ohio            49
Edward Bates of Missouri           48
William L. Dayton of New Jersey    14
John McLean of Ohio                12
Jacob Collamer of Vermont          10

  Scattering 6

The fact was, and Lincoln’s friends perfectly understood it, that Cameron held that peculiar kind of power which gave him no real prospect of success, yet had a considerable salable value.  Could they refrain from trying the market?  They asked the owners of the 50-1/2 Cameron votes what was their price.  The owners said:  The Treasury Department.  Lincoln’s friends declared this extravagant.  Then they all chaffered.  Finally Cameron’s men took a place in the cabinet, without further specification.  Lamon says that another smaller contract was made with the friends of Caleb B. Smith.  Then the Lincoln managers rested in a pleasing sense of security.