Public interest and curiosity were aroused. Who was this distinguished citizen?
The Governor paused a moment, and then uttered the name of Abraham Lincoln.
Instantly there was a roar of applause, there was a rush to where the astonished Lincoln sat, he was seized, and the crowd being too dense to press through, he was literally passed over the heads and shoulders of the great throng until breathless he found himself on the platform. Willing or unwilling he was literally for the time being “in the hands of his friends.”
Later on Gov. Oglesby rose once more and said: “There is an old Democrat outside who has something which he wishes to present to the Convention.”
“What is it?” “What is it?” “Receive it!” shouts the crowd.
The door of the wigwam opens, and an old man, bluff and hearty, comes forward, bearing on his shoulder two small rails, surmounted by a banner, with this inscription:--
From a lot made by Abraham Lincoln and John Hanks, in the Sangamon Bottom, in the year 1830.
This old man was John Hanks himself! His entrance was greeted with tumultuous applause.
“Lincoln! Lincoln! A speech!” shouts the crowd.
Mr. Lincoln seemed amused. He rose at length and said:
“Gentlemen, I suppose you want to know something about those things,” (the rails). “Well, the truth is, John Hanks and I did make rails in the Sangamon Bottom. I don’t know whether we made those rails or not; fact is, I don’t think they are a credit to the makers,” (laughing as he spoke). “But I do know this: I made rails then, and I think I could make better ones than these now.”
Before the Convention dissolved, a resolution was passed, declaring that “Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of the Republican party of Illinois for the Presidency, and instructing the delegates to the Chicago Convention to use all honorable means to secure his nomination, and to cast the vote of the State as a unit for him.”
So Abraham Lincoln, “the rail-splitter,” as he was familiarly called, was fairly in the field as a candidate for the highest office in the gift of the nation.
On the 16th of May the Republican Convention assembled in Chicago. Considered with reference to its outcome, no more important convention had assembled since the organization of the Government. Though this could not be realized at the time, its deliberations were followed with great interest all over the country. The opponents of the slave power were, for the first time, to make a formidable effort to prevent its extension and indefinite perpetuation.