Initially, William H. Seward of New York, Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania were the leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. But Abraham Lincoln, a former one-term House member who gained fame amid the Lincoln–Douglas debates of 1858, had fewer political opponents within the party and outmaneuvered the other contenders. On May 16, 1860, he received the Republican nomination at their convention in Chicago.