Defending Emancipation: Abraham Lincoln and the Conkling Letter, 1863

Although Paul M. Angle and Earl Schenck Miers edited Fire the Salute! Abe Lincoln Is Nominated (Kingsport, Tenn.: Kingsport Press, 1960) in which on pages 53 through 61 are listed the official voting delegates to the Republican National Nominating Convention at Chicago in 1860, there is no comparable source for the delegates to the Illinois State Republican Nominating Convention that year. It was this latter body which chose Lincoln as its favorite son, and a huge number of members labored diligently for his nomination a few days later in Chicago. These stalwart men served as the backbone of his candidacy, and yet too many of them are totally forgotten today. In 1961, The Willow Press at LaCross, Wisconsin, published my study entitled Lincoln the Railsplitter. However, it dealt mostly with the origin of the sobriquet "Railsplitter" given to Lincoln at Decatur on May 9 and 10, 1860. No attempt was made at that time to catalogue the delegates entitled to vote. So, I left the official proceedings buried in the Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), May 12, 1860, p. 2, cc. 3-4. From this issue the names have been compiled for this study. Since the appointed secretaries of the Convention or the delegates themselves often set down only initials for first and middle names, no effort has been spared to ferret out fuller identities. To accomplish this end, the United States Census for 1860 has been consulted as well as county histories, the correspondence of Abraham Lincoln, etc. Nevertheless, some of these people only revealed one initial to the enumerator, also. A few persons somehow completely escaped inclusion in the census, but an attempt was made to check for phonetic spellings. My additions or corrections have been added silently to the names. While struggling with census records for identification, it was noted that a great majority of these new Republicans stemmed from the New England States or areas north of the Ohio River. Only a very small number came from the South, evidently being anti-slavery advocates. Nevertheless, only a handful were probably full-blown abolitionists at that time. Amazing as it might seem today, some of the delegates were physicians. In those days, doctors often dabbled in politics. No doubt others were also physicians but have not been discovered by me as such. Following is the revised list of the 645 delegates. They were the power base for Lincoln's sudden rise to the Presidency. Of course, numerous others supported him very actively, too. Many of them attended both the State and National conventions but were not official delegates. Some were running for nomination to State offices and did not deem it proper to appear also as voting delegates. Anyhow, we have rescued the delegates themselves from obscurity. LIST OF DELEGATES TO THE REPUBLICAN NOMINATING CONVENTION AT DECATUR IN MAY OF 1860 ADAMS COUNTY, 16 votes. Orville Hickman Browning, John Tillson, Henry Asbury, Jacob Dick, Frederic W. Jansen, Jackson Grimshaw, Benjamin Mayberry Prentiss, John E Morton, Lewis Braddee, Joseph Turner, Thomas Bailey, James J. Graham, William Booth, Pardon B. Grover, Kiler K. Jones, and Nathaniel Pease. ALEXANDER COUNTY, 1 vote. James C. Sloo. BOND COUNTY, 4 votes. C. W. Johnson, J. D. Lansing, A. G. Henry,1 and S. P. Moore. J. F Alexander, William M. Evans, Alexander Kelso, and William Plant [either 4 alternates or else 1/2 vote for each of the 8 delegates]. BOONE COUNTY, 5 votes. Stephen Augustus Hurlbut, Allen C. Fuller, J. Nels Brockway, Luther W. Lawrence, and Horatio C. DeMunn. BROWN COUNTY, 4 votes. S. R. Glenn, J. E. Moorman, E M. Stout, and James S. Irwin. BUREAU COUNTY, 10 votes. John Howard Bryant, Cyrus Bryant, George W. Stipp, S. Allen Paddock,2 T. K. Waldron, Thompson Gordon, Chauncy A Dean, Tracy Reeve, William M. Whipple, Chauncy C. Nicholls, Cyrus Todd, and Dr. Charles S. Latimer. CALHOUN COUNTY, 2 votes. …

Delegates to the Illinois State Republican Nominating Convention in 1860

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Wayne C. Temple

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Delegates to the Illinois State Republican Nominating Convention in 1860