Fremont of California
for President. There was a certain fitness in this selection, from the
fact that he had been elected to the United States Senate when
California applied for admission as a free State, and that the
resistance of the South to her admission had been the entering wedge of
the slavery agitation of 1850. This, however, was in reality a minor
consideration. It was rather his romantic fame as a daring Rocky
Mountain explorer, appealing strongly to popular imagination and
sympathy, which gave him prestige as a presidential candidate.
It was at this point that the career of Abraham Lincoln had a narrow and
fortunate escape from a premature and fatal prominence. The Illinois
Bloomington convention had sent him as a delegate to the Philadelphia
convention; and, no doubt very unexpectedly to himself, on the first
ballot for a candidate for Vice-President he received one hundred and
ten votes against two hundred and fifty-nine votes for William L. Dayton
of New Jersey, upon which the choice of Mr. Dayton was at once made
unanimous. But the incident proves that Mr. Lincoln was already gaining
a national fame among the advanced leaders of political thought.
Happily, a mysterious Providence reserved him for larger and nobler
uses.
The nominations thus made at Philadelphia completed the array for the
presidential battle of 1856.
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