Commander in Chief & Great Emancipator In June 1856, the
Republican Party held its first nominating convention, selecting
the noted explorer John C. Frémont as its standard-bearer
(Frémont would lose the election to Democrat James Buchanan).
Abraham Lincoln came in second in the balloting for the vice-
presidential nomination. Lincoln’s political stature had grown
enormously by the time the Republicans met four years later in
Chicago, due to his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas and
his many well-received speeches, most notably the Cooper Union
address, on behalf of the Republican cause. Yet it was New York
senator and former governor William H. Seward, not Lincoln, who
was considered the favorite to win the party’s nomination in
1860. With Seward’s views on slavery perceived as too radical
for many Northern voters, however, Lincoln’s convention managers
employed a deft strategy of positioning their candidate as a
safe second choice for the New Yorker’s opponents. Moreover,
having secured Chicago as the h