Most everyone is familiar with the role played by Madison Avenue in today's glamorous electoral process. Candidates are packaged and merchandised shiny images of knightly virtue, bold leadership and down-home simplicity. But the most successful publicity stunt ever staged for a political candidate came not from one of today's spin doctors, but occurred 135 years ago.
Folks in Illinois were preparing for the Republican nominating convention of 1860. Abraham Lincoln was the favorite son of the Illinois party. He had gained recognition in the debates of 1858 against Stephen Douglas. He had delivered a highly successful speech at the Cooper Institute in New York before an audience of some 1,500. The New York Tribune wrote: "No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience." A subsequent speaking tour of New England brought him additional recognition and praise.
And, significantly, Lincoln had developed a new confidence. "The taste is in my mouth a little," he admitted when Senator Lyman Trumbull asked if Lincoln would run for president. A year earlier he had responded to similar inquiries: "I must say, I do not think myself fit for the presidency."
Still, Senator William Seward was the nationally known front-runner for the nomination. He even hoped to gain some support at a meeting in Decatur, where Illinois Republicans would endorse a favorite before the Chicago convention.
Lincoln arrived late to Decatur, received a tumultuous ovation, .. and, to the delight of the delegates, was seated on the platform. As the cheers faded away, Richard Oglesby, a Lincoln supporter chairing the meeting, announced that an old Macon Democrat wished to make a contribution. "Receive it," roared the crowd.
Lincoln's cousin, weather-beaten old John Hanks, and his friend, Isaac Jennings, came marching proudly down the aisle carrying an odd-looking banner tied between two fence rails bedecked with flags and streamers. The banner proclaimed:
"Abraham Lincoln -- The Rail Candidate for President in 1860. Two Rails from a Lot of 3,000 Made in 1830 by Thos. Hanks and Abe Lincoln -- Whose Father was the First Pioneer of Macon County."
The sign contained an error and an exaggeration. It should have read "John Hanks," and Lincoln's father was not the first settler in the county.
Upon seeing the placard, the crowd erupted. Men cheered, screamed, yelled, tossed hats and newspapers in the air and pushed and shoved until part of an awning forming the roof caved in. After cleaning up the wreckage, the crowd called for Lincoln to speak.
Rising slowly and pointing to the banner, the candidate said, "I suppose I am expected to reply to that." He explained that some 30 years before, while moving to Illinois, he stopped with his mother's family for one season in Macon County. They built a cabin, split rails and farmed "down on the Sangamon [River]" six or eight miles from Decatur. Pointing to the rails held by John Hanks, he said they were probably taken from a fence built on that farm. While he wasn't sure he had made those particular rails, he assured the crowd that he had "mauled many and better ones" since he had grown to manhood.
And so the "Rail Splitter" image was born. Abraham Lincoln now became the humble "Abe" of the common people, a home-spun hero full of prairie wit and folk wisdom. People forgot or never learned that the "Rail Splitter" was a life-long politician and lately a corporation lawyer who earned more money than the governor and circuit judges.
Nullified was an earlier charge that had been leveled against Lincoln as "the candidate of pride, wealth and aristocratic distinction." John Hanks' rails put the tall Illinoisan back among the common folk. It identified him with the soil and symbolized his humble origin and kinship with the workingman skilled with ax and maul.
Credit for the dramatic entry of Hanks and Jennings probably belong to Oglesby, a Republi- can lawyer from Decatur, who contacted Hanks and took him at party expense to get some of the black walnut and honey locust rails Hanks had split with Lincoln 30 years earlier.
The next day Lincoln was made the choice of the Republican Party of Illinois for the presidency. This guaranteed his name would be put in nomination at Chicago and he could count on 22 votes.
The story of the Decatur convention received only passing notice in the press. But a few days later the fence-rail story began to circulate as editors of Republican newspapers ran it in all parts of the North. Horace Greeley's widely read Tribune carried a feature on the rails. Ever after, Lincoln was the "Rail Splitter."
Martin D. Tullai is chairman of the history department at St. Paul's School.