In the Chicago Convention of 1860 the fight for Seward was maintained
with desperate resolve until the final ballot was taken. Thurlow Weed
was the Seward leader, and he was simply incomparable as a master in
handling a convention. With him were Governor Morgan, Henry J. Raymond,
of the New York Times, with William M. Evarts as chairman of the New
York delegation, whose speech nominating Seward was the most impressive
utterance of his life. The Bates men (Bates was afterwards Lincoln’s
Attorney-General) were led by Frank Blair, the only Republican
Congressman from a slave State, who was nothing if not heroic, aided by
his brother Montgomery (afterwards Lincoln’s Postmaster General), who
was a politician of uncommon cunning. With them was Horace Greeley, who
was chairman of the delegation from the then almost inaccessible State
of Oregon.
It was Lincoln’s friends, however, who were the “hustlers” of that
battle. They had men for sober counsel like David Davis; men of supreme
sagacity like Leonard Swett; men of tireless effort like Norman B. Judd;
and they had what was more important than all--a seething multitude wild
with enthusiasm for “Old Abe.”