Decatur hosted the eighteen sixty Republican State Convention, where Abraham Lincoln was the most prominent Republican present. As delegates began their first formal balloting, Decatur resident Richard Oglesby asked leave for an "old Democrat" to present something to the convention. John Hanks, Lincoln's second cousin, and Isaac Jennings entered carrying fence rails with a banner identifying Lincoln as "The Rail Candidate for President in 1860" and saying the rails came from a lot of three thousand made in 1830 by John Hanks and Abe Lincoln, whose father was the first pioneer in Macon County. Called upon to comment, Lincoln replied, "I cannot say whether I made those rails or not, but I am quite sure that I have made a great many just as good!" and the "Railsplitter Candidate" was born. Shortly before the convention, Oglesby and Hanks had gone to the old Lincoln home near the Sangamon River west of Decatur in rural Macon County to obtain two rails for the demonstration, and Hanks verified them by whittling them. Lafayette Whitley, who was a boy at the time, later claimed that his father would not have let them have the rails if he had known how the election was going, because he was a staunch Democrat. Political imagery and symbols were already well established in American politics, as in William Henry Harrison's 1840 "Log Cabin and Hard Cider" campaign and in imagery featuring American Indians, laborers, flags, and figures such as George Washington. The "Railsplitter" image presented Lincoln as a common, hard-working man of the people without nobility or deception, and with advances in the graphic arts, campaigners placed the icon on medals, envelopes, glassware, and stationery, helping propel him to the presidency. The image remains widely recognized.