Lincoln’s nomination was therefore hailed with more real gratification by the _Post_ than by any other great Eastern newspaper. It saw in him one who would call forth the enthusiasm of his party, and the attachment of independent voters. The popular approval had already been surprising in its volume and gusto. “The Convention could have made no choice, we think, which, along with so many demonstrations of ardent approval, would have been met with so few expressions of dissent.” It paused to point out the two reasons for Seward’s defeat. The first was the convention’s opinion, with which it was inclined to agree, that he could not be elected, because he could not have carried Pennsylvania, Douglas would have beaten him in Illinois, and he was weak in Ohio, Indiana, and Vermont; the second lay in the distrust of his warmest political friends excited by the corruption of the two last New York legislatures. At this time there was much talk about “representative men,” and the _Post_, after naming a few, remarked that Lincoln surpassed them all as a personification of the distinctive genius of our country and its institutions. “Whatever is peculiar in the history and development of America, whatever is foremost in its civilization, whatever is good in its social and political structure, finds its best expression in the career of such men as Abraham Lincoln.” A vignette of Lincoln by one of Bryant’s friends then traveling in the West, George Opdyke, was immediately printed to disprove the current story that he dwelt in “the lowest hoosier style”: I found Mr. Lincoln living in a handsome, but not pretentious, double two-story frame house, having a wide hall running through the center, with parlors on both sides, neatly but not ostentatiously furnished. It was just such a dwelling as a majority of the well-to-do residents of these fine western towns occupy. Everything about it had a look of comfort and independence. The library I remarked in passing, particularly, and I was pleased to see long rows of books, which told of the scholarly tastes and culture of the family.