When Fremont made his brilliant campaign of 1856 and narrowly escaped election to the Presidency, it was generally accepted by all the varied phases of politics opposed to radical Republicanism that the Republican movement was like a bee—biggest at its birth—and that it never could win a national victory; but all the chief events affecting the political sentiment of the country from 1856 until 1860 tended to strengthen Republican sentiment and to alienate a large portion of the intelligent elements of Democracy. The significant elections of 1858 and 1859, with the Kansas-Nebraska war convulsing the country from centre to circumference, steadily strengthened Republican lines, and when the leaders of the party came to face the great battle of 1860 they well understood that success was within their reach, and never did a party exhibit greater sagacity in leadership than was displayed in the convention that nominated Lincoln. William H. Seward was the confessed Republican leader of the nation. He was admittedly its ablest champion and was among its earliest supporters. He had been long in the Senate, and was the peer of any in the discussion of all the grave questions which then agitated our national Legislature. He was not only the ablest of his party, but he was one of the most exemplary and courteous of men. Two-thirds of all the delegates elected to that convention were friends of Seward and expected to vote for him, and his nomination would have been inevitable on the 1st ballot had not the convention been restrained by considerations of expediency which were most reluctantly accepted. Lincoln’s own delegation from Illinois embraced one-third of positive Seward men. They were instructed for Lincoln without hope of his nomination at the time, and most of them expected to perform a mere perfunctory duty by voting for him on one or more ballots. [Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN] Horace Greeley had sounded the first note of warning against the nomination of Seward, and his paper, the New York _Tribune_, was then the most influential journal ever published in this country. It was the Republican Bible, and its weekly edition was more read in the West than all other Eastern papers combined. He startled the party by a series of dignified and masterly articles in favor of Edward Bates, of Missouri, for President, on the ground that Seward was not available, and that a man of the great ability and conservative attitude of Bates alone could win in that contest. But though the conservative element of the opposition to the Democracy was not enthusiastic for Seward and his “irrepressible conflict,” the true reason of Seward’s defeat was not presented either by Mr. Greeley or by any public discussion before the meeting of the convention.