Page:The Ifs of History (1907).pdf/158

 most extraordinary circumstances made him the nominee of the Republican party for the presidency in 1860. If he had been the leading statesman and politician of Mississippi, his path to the Confederate presidency, as the success of Davis proved, would have been comparatively easy.

Without Lincoln, the anti-slavery agitation would have gone on just the same. The Republican party would have been constituted just the same. Everything up to the 18th day of May, 1860, when Lincoln was nominated for president at the Wigwam in Chicago, would have gone on just the same. But lacking Lincoln, what a world of things afterward would have happened differently!

In the first place, it is probable that Seward would have been nominated for president. Very likely he would not have been elected; and as it was Lincoln who "smoked out" Douglas, it is probable that Douglas