86 POLITICAL LIFE-III 



lived until the Civil War, might have rendered enormous 

 services as a partizan leader. Of course, his action aroused 

 much thought among my students, and their ideas came 

 out in their public discussions. It was part of my duty, 

 once or twice a week, to preside over these discussions, and 

 to decide between the views presented. In these decisions 

 on the political questions now arising I became deeply in- 

 terested, and while I was careful not to give them a parti- 

 zan character, they were, of course, opposed to the domi- 

 nance of slavery. 



In the spring of 1860, the Republican National Conven- 

 tion was held at Chicago, and one fine morning I went to 

 the railway station to greet the New York delegation on 

 its way thither. Among the delegates whom I especially 

 recall were William M. Evarts, under whose Secretary- 

 ship of State I afterward served as minister at Berlin, 

 and my old college friend, Stewart L. Woodford, with 

 whom I was later in close relations during his term as 

 lieutenant-governor of New York and minister to Spain. 

 The candidate of these New York delegates was of course 

 Mr. Seward, and my most devout hopes were with him, 

 but a few days later came news that the nomination had 

 been awarded to Mr. Lincoln. Him we had come to know 

 and admire during his debates with Douglas while the 

 senatorial contest was going on in the State of Illinois; 

 still the defeat of Mr. Seward was a great disappointment, 

 and hardly less so in Michigan than in New York. In the 

 political campaign which followed I took no direct part, 

 though especially aroused by the speeches of a new man 

 who had just appeared above the horizon, Carl Schurz. 

 His arguments seemed to me by far the best of that whole 

 campaign the broadest, the deepest, and the most con- 

 vincing. 



My dear and honored father, during the months of July, 

 August, and the first days of September, was slowly fad- 

 ing away on his death-bed. Yet he was none the less in- 

 terested in the question at issue, and every day I sat by 

 his bedside and read to him the literature bearing upon 



