Summary of The Lincoln Miracle by Ed Achorn: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History

By Willie M. Joseph

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Summary of The Lincoln Miracle by Ed Achorn: Inside the Republican Convention That Changed History

 

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Edward Achorn's The Lincoln Miracle is a vivid, behind-the-scenes story of Abraham Lincoln's history-changing nomination to lead the Republican Party in the 1860 presidential election. As the Republican National Convention opened in mid-May 1860, powerful New York Senator William Seward was the overwhelming favorite for the presidential nomination, but Illinois circuit Judge David Davis had come to fight for his friend. Achorn explores the genius of Lincoln's quiet strategy, the vicious partisanship tearing apart America, the fierce battles over racism and slavery, and booming Chicago as a symbol of the modernization transforming the nation. The novel is essential reading for any Lincoln aficionado as it is for anyone who cares about our nation's history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: Feb 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215121610

Willie M. Joseph

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Prologue: Such a Sucker as Me

Henry Villard was waiting for the train to Springfield, Illinois, on a muggy Friday night. He was attending a raucous Republican rally, one of the final events in the electrifying battle between the most dynamic Democrat in America, Stephen Douglas, and the shrewd lawyer who sought to wrest his seat from him, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was making a national name for himself, and his friends believed he was on the cusp of pulling off a stunning victory. However, Democratic operatives were sending Irish immigrant railroad laborers into tightly contested legislative districts to cast votes of dubious legality. This was nothing new in the Democratic Party's creative use of the Irish vote.

The most important details in this text are the events leading up to the election of the Illinois Senate seat on November 2, 1859, which determined whether Douglas or Lincoln would get the Senate seat. The election was effectively settled in four days with the election on Tuesday, November 2, and the young man waiting on the platform was an immigrant and a loyal Democrat, Louis Villard, an agent of the Staats-Zeitung, a German-language newspaper sympathetic to the proimmigrant Democratic Party. Villard had come out West in the late 1850s to cover the celebrated Douglas-Lincoln campaign full-time and provided articles for the pro-Douglas Philadelphia Press. He heard the jangling of a horse's harness and saw a buggy approach through the gloom, and saw a tall, stoopshouldered figure wearing a battered stovepipe hat and lugging a faded black carpetbag. It was the forty-nine-year-old candidate Villard had observed addressing the crowd that night, Frederick Douglass, a former slave from Speyer, Bavaria, who was determined to rise above the rabble in this remarkable young country where even newcomers could turn brains and effort into riches.

The prairie politician and the prim young journalist struck up a conversation on the dark platform as they waited for the overdue train. After half an hour, the sky began to rumble and they dashed to an empty freight car on a siding and climbed inside. They hunkered down on the floor and talked in the dark while rain drummed on the roof. The candidate struck Villard as an indescribably gawky figure with a wrinkled, uncomely face. After the long campaign, Lincoln was in a reflective mood and broke into a little story.

Lincoln traveled more than 1,300 miles in October to debate Douglas and explain Republican values to thousands of voters. He was no big-time politician, but he had sacrificed much of his law income for months to the dream of winning a Senate seat. He was familiar with the area around him, having mapped out Petersburg twenty-two years earlier while pursuing a short-lived career as a surveyor. He was embarrassed about his impoverished upbringing and poor education, but he made self-deprecating jokes and expressed surprise that people took his ambitions seriously. He reminisced about clerking in a country store in nearby New Salem.

Lincoln's highest aspiration was to serve in the state legislature, but his friends got him into the business of running for the U.S. Senate. He had almost captured a seat in 1855 and had come to regard it as his dream job, but his wife Mary insisted he was going to be President. He roared with laughter, wrapping his arms around his knees and shaking with mirth at Mrs. Lincoln's ambition. Lincoln and Villard began to talk, with Lincoln asking questions about Villard's fluency in English and Villard confessing that he did not believe in God, the divinity of Christ, or immortality.

At half past ten, the train arrived and Lincoln and Villard boarded. The locomotive wheezed into motion and the train disappeared into the darkness, carrying a rising young reporter and a strange politician with a future of greatness.

Saturday, May 12, 1860

Unconscious Strength

The long depot at the corner of Canal and Van Buren Streets was crawling with people on May 12, 1860, as the St. Louis, Alton & Chicago Railroad unloaded masses of visitors for the national convention of the Republican Party. The station stood just west of the Chicago River, which wafted feces, industrial chemicals, garbage, ash, and the offal of slaughtered animals slowly out to Lake Michigan. It was also a valuable avenue of trade, bristling with vessels of all sizes, from sailing ships with towering masts moored at freight docks to chugging tugboats belching black coal smoke. People seemed to accept the smoke and smells, but one man, five feet eleven inches tall and three hundred pounds, had left his farmhouse in Bloomington, Illinois, with its flowers and two hundred acres of fields coming to life, and had climbed aboard a train for the five-and-a-half-hour trip to Chicago. David Davis, a forty-five-year-old Western man, had come to Chicago on a remarkable mission: to make his friend Abraham Lincoln the Republican nominee for president of the United States.

Lincoln was the favorite-son candidate of Illinois and had gained some national recognition by wounding Stephen Douglas, but few imagined he could win. Davis was an ambitious, resourceful, no-nonsense Western man who had a way of surmounting obstacles thrown in his path. The Harper's Weekly edition of Harper's Weekly featured a two-page center spread of portraits of the potential Republican nominees, dominated by a large oval engraving of the delegates' overwhelming favorite: William Henry Seward, a bright, witty, and engaging U.S. senator and former governor of New York. The centerpiece of the convention was Seward's nomination, which was a tribute to his years of heroic opposition to slavery, his extensive political experience, and his talent for turning phrases that roused his supporters and enraged his opponents. Lincoln was consigned to a small picture at the bottom of the Harper's gallery, with the also-rans Cassius Clay, John Bell, and John Frémont.

Even those who were opposed to Seward tended to overlook the Illinois lawyer, as Ohio's delegates favored their nationally prominent U.S. senators, Salmon P. Chase and Benjamin F. Wade. Davis made his way to the Tremont House, a six-story brick structure designed by John Van Osdel, which was decorated with Egyptian marble, chairs, linen sheets, silk-lined damask curtains, and a clever system of speaking tubes and electric bells. The Tremont House was a luxurious hotel in Chicago during the 1850s, with a leather-lunged porter to guide travelers to their destinations and a white observation tower on the roof. Rooms went for a pricey $2.50 a day, with parlors and additional rooms costing extra. It was a luxury in a nation torn apart by partisanship, attracting a varied and colorful clientele.

In June 1859, eight-year-old Willie Lincoln wrote a letter to a friend about his visit to the hotel with his father, Abraham Lincoln. Davis, a delegate-at-large from Illinois, discovered that the Lincoln campaign was so disorganized that nobody had thought of booking rooms for its headquarters. He sought out Assistant Manager Drake, who was able to help him secure space in the crowded hotel. Davis posted a sign on the door of his suite, number 74 —Illinois Headquarters—and was in business for the next several days, directing Lincoln's friends and supporters to the places they were most needed. Judge David Davis was known for his latent, unconscious strength and ability to exert control over others.

He had a genial face, blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, a pleasant smile, and curly whiskers under a square jaw. He enjoyed humor and was imbued with a sense of fun. He invested heavily in property and eventually became rich. He adored his wife Sarah and had a big head and a big body, a big brain and a big heart. He had fewer flaws than any man he ever met, including Abraham Lincoln, who was born in poverty in Kentucky.

Davis was a conservative who hewed a middle course between detesting slavery and sympathizing with those trapped in it. He was only eight months old when his father died and his inheritance was placed in the hands of his stepfather, who frittered away some of it to pay off his own debts. Davis tried to claw back the money, but only obtained a portion from his stepfather's sureties. He then attended Kenyon College, which produced future U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes, secretary of war Edwin Stanton, and two future Supreme Court