The second ballot showed slight changes:—­

Seward      184-1/2
Lincoln     181
Cameron       2
Chase        42-1/2
Bates         5
Dayton       10
McLean        8

  Scattering 2

Upon the third ballot delivery was made of what Mr. Davis had bought.  That epidemic foreknowledge, which sometimes so unaccountably foreruns an event, told the convention that the decision was at hand.  A dead silence reigned save for the click of the telegraphic instruments and the low scratching of hundreds of pencils checking off the votes as the roll was called.  Those who were keeping the tally saw that it stood:—­

Seward      180
Lincoln     231-1/2
Chase        24-1/2
Bates        22
Dayton        1
McLean        5

  Scattering 1

Cameron was out of the race; Lincoln was within 1-1/2 votes of the goal.  Before the count could be announced, a delegate from Ohio transferred four votes to Lincoln.  This settled the matter; and then other delegations followed, till Lincoln’s score rose to 354.  At once the “enthusiasm” of 10,000 men again reduced to insignificance a “herd of buffaloes or lions.”  When at last quiet was restored, William M. Evarts, who had led for Seward, offered the usual motion to make the nomination of Abraham Lincoln unanimous.  It was done.  Again the “tremendous roaring” arose.  Later in the day the convention nominated Hannibal Hamlin[101] of Maine, on the second ballot, by 367 votes, for the vice-presidency.  Then for many hours, till exhaustion brought rest, Chicago was given over to the wonted follies; cannon boomed, music resounded, and streets and barrooms were filled with the howling and drinking crowds of the intelligent promoters of one of the great moral crusades of the human race.

Lamon says that the committee deputed to wait upon Lincoln at Springfield found him “sad and dejected.  The reaction from excessive joy to deep despondency—­a process peculiar to his constitution—­had already set in."[102] His remarks to these gentlemen were brief and colorless.  His letter afterward was little more than a simple acceptance of the platform.

* * * * *

Since white men first landed on this continent, the selection of Washington to lead the army of the Revolution is the only event to be compared in good fortune with this nomination of Abraham Lincoln.  Yet the convention deserved no credit for its action.  It did not know the true ratio between Seward and Lincoln, which only the future was to make plain.  By all that it did know, it ought to have given the honor to Seward, who merited it by the high offices which he had held with distinction and without blemish, by the leadership which he had acquired in the party through long-continued constancy and courage, by the force and clearness with which he had maintained its principles, by his experience and supposed natural aptitude in the higher walks of statesmanship.  Yet actually by reason