Between 1860 and 1996, Chicago hosted 25 Republican and Democratic conventions. No other city has hosted nearly as many.
A drawing shows the arrival of the delegates to the 1860 Republican convention in Chicago, sketched by W.B. Baird in 1868.
“We’re not playing second in this dance to any musician. It’s president or nothing. Else you can count the Tribune out. We’re not fooling away our time and science on the vice presidency.” In 1932, the Democrats chose Franklin Roosevelt as the savior of the “Forgotten Man” of the Great Depression, and in 1940, the party nominated FDR for an unprecedented third term. Word War II was on the horizon when, thanks to a Chicago ward boss yelling into a hidden microphone, the Chicago Stadium was rocked with the sound of: “Labor wants Roosevelt! Women want Roosevelt!
For Medill, ending slavery was a moral imperative. He helped to found the “Underground Road,” an organization that sent weapons to the militant abolitionist John Brown, who was waging a shooting war with proslavery forces in Kansas. But Brown was hanged in 1859 after a raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Intended to provoke a slave revolt, it threatened to cost the anti-slavery movement its moderate supporters.
Though the 1858 election was won by Douglas, a forthright defender of slavery, it made Lincoln, whose political resume was limited to a seat in the Illinois legislature almost two decades earlier, more widely known.He was still a long shot when the Republican Convention opened in May 1860, in the Wigwam, at the corner of Lake and Market streets.
But that argument would go for naught unless Seward could be stopped from winning on the first ballot. That was less likely to be accomplished with lofty words than through backroom horse-trading and a touch of dirty politics.