page_title: Elihu B. Washburne
section_title: Presidential candidate (1880)
hierarchical_section_title: Elihu B. Washburne / Presidential candidate (1880)
caption_attribution_description: 1880 Republican National Convention at Chicago, Illinois. A view inside the Interstate Exposition Building (known as the "Glass Palace") during the convention; James Garfield (center, right) is on the podium, waiting to speak.
context_page_description: Elihu Benjamin Washburne was an American politician and diplomat. A member of the Washburn family, which played a prominent role in the early formation of the United States Republican Party, he served as a congressman from Illinois before and during the American Civil War. He was a political ally of President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. During Grant's administration, Washburne was the 25th United States Secretary of State briefly in 1869, and was the United States Minister to France from 1869 to 1877.
  In his youth, when his family became destitute, Washburne left home in Maine at the age of 14, to support himself and further his education. After working for newspapers in Maine and studying law, Washburne passed the bar and moved to Galena, Illinois, where he became a partner in a successful law firm. Washburne was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1852 and served from 1853 to 1869, which included the American Civil War and the first part of Reconstruction.
context_section_description: Washburne left France at the end of Grant's term in 1877, and returned to Galena.  When Grant decided to run for an unprecedented third term in 1880, Washburne agreed to support him, and disavowed attempts by his own supporters to make Washburne a candidate.  Despite Washburne's disavowals, he was a contender at the 1880 Republican National Convention in Chicago.  With 379 votes required to win the nomination, he consistently received support from 30 to 40 delegates; Grant had been the early front runner, and consistently received between 300 and 315 votes.  Recognizing after more than 30 ballots that neither Grant nor the other leading contenders, James G. Blaine and John Sherman could be nominated, delegates began to search for a dark horse.  Having failed to build momentum for Washburne on an earlier ballot, on the 34th ballot 16 Washburne delegates from Wisconsin cast their votes for James A. Garfield without warning. This surprise action started a groundswell of support for Garfield, and he was nominated on the 36th ballot.
  Most of Grant's delegates held firm even as most of those supporting Blaine and Sherman shifted to Garfield.  Grant was angry at Washburne, believing that Washburne had not strongly supported Grant's candidacy, as Washburne had pledged to do.  Grant was convinced that if Washburne's delegates switched to him, it might have generated momentum sufficient for him to win the nomination.  For Washburne's part, he believed that if Grant had withdrawn, as Blaine and Sherman had, Washburne and not Garfield might have been the dark horse who obtained the nomination. Grant and Washburne never met each other again and their friendship ended.
caption: 1880 Republican Convention. James A. Garfield (center, right) won the presidential nomination.
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