Confidence of strength is as potential an element in a political canvass as in a military campaign, and never was a more defiant sense of power exhibited than by the Chicago convention of 1860 and by the vast throng which surrounded its meetings.

Such a feeling is contagious, and it spread from that centre until it enveloped the free States.
The impression in the country, for a year preceding the convention, was that Mr.Seward would be nominated.

As the time drew nigh, however, symptoms of dissent appeared in quarters where it had not been expected.

New parties are proverbially free from faction and jealousy.

Personal antagonisms, which come with years, had not then been developed in the Republican ranks.