Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Two).djvu/231

 Lincoln as the man who satisfied the demands of the earnest anti-slavery men without subjecting the party to the risks thought to be inseparable from the nomination of Seward. That the popular demonstrations for Lincoln in and around the Convention were, indeed, well planned and organized, is true. But they were by no means a decisive factor. Without them the result would have been the same.

When on the third ballot, Lincoln came so near a majority that his nomination appeared certain, delegates, before the result was declared, tumbled over one another to change their votes in his favor. The Wisconsin delegation did not change its vote. Together with New York, Michigan, Minnesota, and parts of other delegations, we stood solidly for Seward until Mr. Evarts, the chairman of the New York delegation, with a speech of genuine pathos and admirable temper, moved to make Mr. Lincoln's nomination unanimous. To this we heartily assented. I described our action at a ratification meeting held in Milwaukee a few days later:

“We, the delegates from Wisconsin, voted for him to the last. I may say that a few hours after my arrival at Chicago I saw that Seward's nomination was very improbable. I do not lay claim to any particular sagacity for that, for it was a plain arithmetical problem. The causes which brought about his defeat I will not detail; suffice it to say that they were not of an insignificant nature. But we stood by him, determined to carry his name as high as possible. Nor did we follow the example of those who changed their votes after the decisive ballot, before the final result was announced; not as though we had been opposed to Mr. Lincoln, than whom there is no truer man in the nation, but because we thought we owed it to our old chieftain that, if fall he must, he should withdraw with the honors of war, surounded by an unbroken column of true and devoted