The most fearful things are probable.

I am acting with Thurlow Weed, Raymond, etc., to try to avert. There is not much hope.

Unless material changes can be wrought, Lincoln's election is beyond any possible hope. It is probably clean gone now.*

Lincoln himself had made up his mind that he would be defeated. What would be his duty then? It was so clear to him, that he wrote it down on a slip of paper:

EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON, August 23, 1864.

This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward.

A. LINCOLN.†

He folded the slip, and when the cabinet met, he asked the members to put their names on the back. What was inside he did not tell them. In the incessant buffeting of his life he had learned that the highest moral experience of which a man is capable is standing clear before his own conscience. He laid the paper away, a compact with his conscience in case of defeat.

The Democrats had deferred their national convention as long as possible, hoping for a military situation which would enable them to win the people. They could not have had a situation more favorable to their plans. But they miscalculated in one vital particular. They took the despair of the country as a sign that peace would be welcome even at the

* Letter loaned by Mr. Leonard Herbert Swett, of Aurora, Ill. "Abraham Lincoln; A History." By Nicolay and Hay.

cost of the Union, and they adopted a peace platform. They nominated on this platform a candidate vowed to war and to the Union, General McClellan. So unpopular was the combination that General McClellan, in accepting the nomination, practically repudiated the platform.

But at this moment something further interfered to save the Administration. Sherman captured Atlanta, and Farragut took Mobile Bay. "Sherman and Farragut," said Seward, "have knocked the bottom out of the Chicago nominations." If they had not quite done that, they had at least given heart to Lincoln's supporters, who went to work with a will to secure his re-election. The following letter by Leonard Swett shows something of what was done:

EXECUTIVE MANSION,

WASHINGTON, September 8, 1864.

My Dear Wife: There has never been an instance in which Providence has kindly interposed in our behalf in our national struggles in so marked and essential manner as in the recent Union victories.

You know I had become very fearful before leaving home. When I arrived in New York, I found the most alarming depression possessing the minds of all the Republicans, Greeley, Beecher, Raymond, Weed; and all the small politicians without exception utterly gave up in despair. Raymond, the chairman of the National Committee, not only gave up, but would do nothing. Nobody would do anything. There was not a man doing anything except mischief.

A movement was organizing to make Mr. Lincoln withdraw or call a convention and supplant him.

I felt it my duty to see if some action could not be inaugurated. I got Raymond, after great labor, to call the committee at Washington three days after I would arrive here, and came first to see if Mr. Lincoln understood his danger and would help to set things in motion. He understood fully the danger of his position, and for once seemed anxious I should try to stem the tide bearing him down. When the

committee met, they showed entire want of organization and had not a dollar of money.

Maine was calling for speakers. Two men were obtained, and I had to advance them a hundred dollars each to go.

The first gleam of hope was in the Chicago convention. The evident depression of the public caused the peace men to control that convention, and then, just as the public began to shrink from accepting it, God gave us the victory at Atlanta, which made the ship right itself, as a ship in a storm does after a great wave has nearly capsized it.

Washburne, of Illinois, a man of great force, came, and he and I have been working incessantly. I have raised and provided one hundred thousand dollars for the canvass.

Don't think this is for improper purposes. It is not. Speakers have to be paid. Documents have to be sent, and innumerable expenses have to be incurred.

The Secessionists are flooding the Northwest with money. Voorhees and Vallandigham are arming the people there, and are trying to make the draft an occasion for an uprising. We are in the midst of conspiracies equal to the French Revolution.

I have felt it my solemn duty under these circumstances to stay here. I have been actuated by no other motive than that of trying to save our country from further dismemberment and war. People from the West, and our best people, say if we fail now the West will surely break off and go with the South. Of course that would be resisted, and the resistance would bring war.*

All through September and October the preparation for the November election continued. The loyal governors of the North, men to whom the Union cause owed much more than has ever been fully realized, worked incessantly. The great orators of the Republican party were set at work, Carl Schurz even giving up his opportunity in the army to take the platform, and many an officer and private who had influence in their communities going home on furloughs to aid in electioneering. The most elaborate preparations were *Letter loaned by Mr. Herbert Leonard Swett of Aurora, Ill.

made for getting the vote of every man, most of the States allowing the soldiers to vote in the field. Where this was not arranged for, the War Department did its utmost to secure furloughs for the men. Even convalescents from the hospitals were sent home to vote.

In this great burst of determined effort Lincoln took little part. The country understood, he believed, exactly what his election meant. It meant the preservation of the Union by force. It meant that he would draft men so long as he needed them; that he would suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and employ a military tribunal, whenever he deemed it necessary. It meant, too, that he would do his utmost to secure an amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery forever, for the platform the Union convention had adopted before nominating him contained that plank. He could not be persuaded by the cautious and timid to modify or obscure this policy. He wanted the people to understand exactly what he intended, he said, and whenever he did speak or write, it was only to reiterate his principles in his peculiarly plain, unmistakable language. Nor would he allow any interference with the suffrage of men in office. They must vote as they pleased. "My wish is," he wrote to the postmaster of Philadelphia, who had been accused of trying to control the votes of his subordinates, " that you will do just as you think fit with your own suffrage in the case, and not constrain any of your subordinates to do other than as he thinks fit with his."

Thus when the election finally came off, on November 8, there was not a man of any intelligence in the country who did not know exactly what he was voting for, if he voted for Lincoln. What these men thought of him the work of that day showed. Out of 233 electoral votes, General McClellan received twenty-one, 212 being for Lincoln. The opportunity to finish the task was now his.