I have read many romances about how, why and by whom Abraham Lincoln was nominated for President at Chicago, but the explanation is very simple, and when presented must be accepted by all as conclusive. Henry S. Lane had been nominated as the Republican candidate for Governor of Indiana, and Andrew G. Curtin had been nominated by the Republicans for Governor of Pennsylvania. These States voted for Governor and other State officers on the second Tuesday of October, and they were the pivotal States of the national contest. It was an absolute necessity to carry them in October to assure the election of a Republican President, and the first inquiry of the Republican leaders at Chicago, outside of those who were blindly devoted to Seward, was “Who can carry Indiana and Pennsylvania?” Lane and Curtin were there solely for the purpose of getting the strongest possible national ticket nominated to aid them in their State contests. With Lane was John D. Defrees, as Chairman of the Republican State Committee of Indiana, and I was with Curtin, as he had charged me with the same responsible duty in Pennsylvania. Curtin and Lane decided that they could not be elected if Seward were nominated for President. They were not personally or politically hostile to him; they had but one thing in view, and that was their own election, which was essential to elect a Republican President. Prior to 1860 the Republican party had never carried either Pennsylvania or Indiana. Opposition to the pro-slavery policy of the Buchanan administration had crystallized antislavery Democrats, Whigs, and Americans into the support of Union State tickets, and had elected them; but in Pennsylvania the Republican name was omitted from necessity, and the organization was entitled the People’s party. In both of these States there was an organized and powerful American party yet in existence, without which the Republicans could not succeed. It was the remnant of the American or Know-Nothing revolution of 1854, and they cherished their own faith with great fidelity and would not support any candidate who was friendly to the Catholics. When Seward was elected Governor of New York in 1838 it was largely by the influence of Archbishop Hughes, one of the ablest Catholic prelates this country has ever had; and Seward, not only because of his gratitude to his Catholic friends, but because of his broad and liberal views generally, in a message to the Legislature urged a division of the school fund between the Catholics and Protestants. That was the rock on which Seward was wrecked. Had he been nominated, the entire American element of the opposition would have been aggressively against him, and Pennsylvania and Indiana would have been lost not only by the defeat of Curtin and Lane in October, but by the defeat of Seward in November.