I never suspected Lincoln’s purpose in asking me to change my position as a delegate until three days before the meeting of the convention, when I went to Washington in obedience to his summons. He then asked me to vote for the nomination of Andrew Johnson for Vice-President. He had Cameron already committed to the nomination of Johnson as a War Democrat to succeed Hamlin, but he gave me no intimation of Cameron’s position. I was favorable to the renomination of Hamlin, but after hearing Mr. Lincoln’s reasons for the request he made I would have voted for Johnson in obedience to a sense of public duty, although Lincoln was not wrong in assuming that I was likely to vote for any candidate for Vice-President he specially desired. He was not opposed to Hamlin, but he knew that the success of the party depended upon bringing into the Republican fold a large body of War Democrats who had never become Republicans, such as Judge Holt, General Dix, General Butler, and Governor Johnson, and he wished to nationalize the Republican party. But the conclusive reason why he desired the nomination of Johnson was that it would most effectually prevent the recognition of the Confederacy by England and France. That was the great peril in the last year of the war, and Lincoln believed that in no way could the success of the Government in the suppression of the Rebellion be so clearly presented to the world as by taking Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, who had filled every important position within the gift of his State, and elect him to the Vice-Presidency from a reorganized rebellious State in the heart of the Confederacy. It is needless to say that, notwithstanding my prejudice against Johnson, I agreed to support him; but Lincoln’s caution prevented him from giving me any intimation as to the attitude of Cameron, who was equally pledged to Lincoln in the Johnson cause. Cameron and I met at the convention in Baltimore on June 7 without either knowing the position of the other, and as our political relations were not of the confidential order, although our personal intercourse was always pleasant, it required some diplomacy for us to reach an understanding. Cameron had been committed to Hamlin, with whom he had served in the Senate, and was somewhat embarrassed, and he suggested that while he was friendly to Hamlin he did not believe that he could be nominated, to which I agreed. He then proposed that we should line up the two factions of the State in the delegation and cast a unanimous vote for Hamlin when the State was first called, and change it to a unanimous vote for Johnson when the roll-call ended, to which I readily assented; and with some effort we had a harmonious delegation on that line with the exception of Thaddeus Stevens, who sat beside me when I cast my vote for Johnson, and who with a grim smile said to me: “Can’t you find a candidate for Vice-President without going down into a d——d rebel province?” The vote of the State was,