Lincoln, the unknown

—LINCOLN THE UNKNOWN• 111was born a Kentuckian, and he could win votes in the doubtfulborder States. Furthermore, he was the kind of candidate theNorthwest wanted—a man who had fought his way up fromsplitting rails and breaking sod, a man who understood thecommon people.When arguments like these didn't succeed, they used others.They won Indiana's delegates by promising Caleb B. Smith aplace in the Cabinet, and they won Pennsylvania's fifty-sixvotes with the assurance that Simeon Cameron would sit atLincoln's right hand.On Friday morning the balloting began. Forty thousandpeople had poured into Chicago, eager for excitement. Tenthousand wedged into the convention hall, and thirty thousandpacked the streets outside. The seething mob reached for blocks.Seward led on the first ballot. On the second, Pennsylvaniacast her fifty-two votes for Lincoln, and the break began. On thethird, it was all but a stampede.Inside the hall, ten thousand people, half crazed with excitement,leaped upon the seats, shouting, yelling, smashing theirhats on one another's heads. A cannon boomed on the roofand thirty thousand people in the streets raised a shout.Men hugged one another and danced about wildly, weepingand laughing and shrieking.One hundred guns at the Tremont House belched and barkedtheir volleys of fire; a thousand bells joined in the clamor; whilewhistles on railway engines, on steamboats, on factories, wereopened and tied open for the day.For twenty-hour hours the excitement raged."No such uproar," declared the "Chicago Tribune," "hasbeen heard on earth since the walls of Jericho fell down."In the midst of all this rejoicing, Horace Greeley saw ThurlowWeed, the erstwhile "maker of Presidents," shedding bittertears. At last, Greeley had his sweet revenge.In the meantime what was happening down in Springfield?Lincoln had gone to his law office as usual that morning andtried to work on a case. Too restless to concentrate, he soontossed the legal papers aside and went out and pitched ball fora while back of a store, then played a game or two of billiards,and finally went to the "Springfield Journal" to hear the news.The telegraph office occupied the room above. He was sittingin a big arm-chair, discussing the second ballot, when suddenly