Lincoln - Part 111
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Part 111

248 "the pinch comes". C. H. Ray to AL, May 14, 1860, Lincoln MSS, LC.

249 "devil with fire": Mark W. Delahay to AL, May 17, 1860, Lincoln MSS, LC.

249 "will bind me": CW, 4:50.

249 his directive was unnecessary: According to legend, Lincoln's message vastly upset his lieutenants in Chicago, and Davis overruled it, saying, "Lincoln ain't here and don't know what we have to meet!" Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, vol. 2, p. 256. But the source of the story is Henry C. Whitney's highly unreliable Lincoln the Citizen (New York: Baker & Taylor Co., 1908), pp. 288289.

249 had no foundation: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, p. 256, argues that Davis did make such a pledge to Smith, but King, Lincoln's Manager, pp. 136138, shows how weak the evidence for such an agreement is. For an astute a.n.a.lysis of the decision of the Indiana delegation, see Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana Politics During the Civil War (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1949), pp. 3840.

249 "difficult to get": CW, 4:47.

249 the initial ballot: The evidence on an alleged bargain between Davis and the Cameron forces is complex and hard to evaluate. I conclude that there was no bargain, partly because Davis, Swett, and Lincoln, as quoted below, flatly denied it, partly because after the nomination Cameron and his friends pushed their claim with a nervous intensity that betrayed their uncertainty about the supposed pledge. The best conclusion may well be that of Willard L. King, who says (Lincoln's Manager, p. 141) that Davis made a qualified pledge of his personal support to Cameron.

249 "to our satisfaction": Erwin S. Bradley, Simon Cameron, Lincoln's Secretary of War (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), pp. 149151.

250 "no mortgages executed": Wilson, Intimate Memories, p. 296.

250 "has promised nothing": David Davis to Thomas H. Dudley, Sept. 1, 1860, Dudley MSS, HEH.

250 "are fairly implied": CW, 4:51. Cf. Herndon's Lincoln, 3:473.

250 "and practice law": Jesse W. Weik, The Real Lincoln: A Portrait (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1922), pp. 266267.

250 the nomination unanimous: Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions, pp. 151, 152, 155.

251 "than I am": Charles S. Zane, "Lincoln as I Knew Him," Sunset Magazine 29 (Oct. 1912): 430438. Accounts of how Lincoln received the news of his nomination vary in detail. See Randall, Lincoln the President, 1:173174.

251 "you see me": David Davis to AL, May 18, 1860, Lincoln MSS, LC.

251 "in this respect": CW, 4:75.

251 "look up to": C. C. Coffin, in Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Review, 1888), pp. 168171.

251 "the White House": George Ashmun, "Abraham Lincoln at Home," in Springfield (Ma.s.s.) Daily Republican, May 23, 1860.

252 wealthy Springfield friends: John G. Nicolay to Therena Bates, June 7, 1860, Nicolay MSS, LC; John W. Bunn to Jesse W. Weik, July 26, 1916, HWC.

252 "truly A Lincoln": CW, 4:68.

252 "deport yourself accordingly": O. H. Browning to AL, July 4, 1860, Lincoln MSS, LC.

252 rather than "Abram": CW, 4:68.

252 held his head: Hamilton and Ostendorf, Lincoln in Photographs, p. 48; Mellon, The Face of Lincoln, pp. 1011, 7677.

252 "not an objection": Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Lincoln in Portraiture (New York: Press of the Pioneers, 1935), pp. 111, 9397.

252 "attend to them": CW, 4:60.