war and its demands, and by the superabundance of paper money. There was a feverish kind of prosperity, leading to speculation, extravagance, and corruption, but the apparently heavy burden of taxation was really carried without diminishing the necessary personal outlays of anybody.

On March 26th, 1864, General Grant took up his headquarters with the army he was to command in person, and the long and terrible Wilderness campaign, so thickly strung with bloody encounters, began a few days later. There was no needless delay in the opening of active hostilities in the West, and the fourth year of the war for the Union gave an early promise of the tragic character it was to as

sume.

The political campaign had already begun, or, rather, it can hardly be said to have ceased since 1860. The Republican masses had now no thought of any other candidate than Abraham Lincoln, and those who accused him of personal ambition for a second term were frankly met with something like, "Of course he wants it. He can't let go till the job's finished. It's a bad time to swap horses when you're crossing a stream."

The Republican National Convention was summoned to meet at Baltimore, June 8th, 1864, and the National Grand Council of the Union League of America was summoned to meet in the same city on the 7th. The latter body was largely composed of men who were also delegates to the former, and the first in session served an admirable purpose as a safety-valve for forces which might otherwise have

made trouble. All the disaffection of the Missouri delegates, and a few others, talked itself out in the council, the League declared for Lincoln's nomination, and its action was, the next day, unanimously ratified by the National Convention. Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, was named for Vice-President, to express the wish of Mr. Lincoln for a recognition of the Union-loving citizens of the border States. He would not so have been nominated, but for a unanimous confidence in the tough and tireless health of Mr. Lincoln.

The platform adopted assumed for the Republican Party the responsibility of the entire course of the Lincoln Administration, approved its measures of war and finance, the Emancipation Proclamation, the conscription, the policy pursued with foreign powers and with malcontents at home. It was bold, clear, and unhesitating, and it threw open to the Opposition the entire field of criticism. This was indeed wide, and it was at once occupied with a great deal of energy and ability. The great mass of the men who were opposed to the re-election of Mr. Lincoln were Union men educated to accept the constitutionality and abstract right of slaveholding, opposed to the Republican Party from its birth, and for these and other reasons prepared to condemn the conduct of the war. Their candidate, indicating their convictions, was already as good as nominated. Very much the more virulent, although smaller faction of the Opposition-calling itself the Democratic Party, although missing from its councils a surprisingly large number of old-time Democrats

was not by any means soundly in favor of the war for the Union, but was not strong enough to set up for itself. When, therefore, the Democratic National Convention met at Chicago, August 27th, 1864, and nominated General George B. McClellan for President, with George H. Pendleton for VicePresident, all that its extreme Copperhead membership could do was to give the convention and its platform a tone which was distasteful to its own nominee and aided in assuring his defeat at the polls. It would have been worth many votes to have simply named the general without any platform what

ever.

Mr. Lincoln's letter of acceptance was brief, its most important point having reference to the attitude of the Administration with reference to the French in Mexico.

What promised to be the most effective political outcry of the Opposition, was its assertion that Mr. Lincoln was not willing to consider and grant such terms of peace with the Confederacy as the nation, or, at least, the Democratic part of it, might deem entirely admissible. An effort to create or increase an impression of this kind was made in July, some weeks before the Chicago Convention assembled. It was made to appear that a pair of authorized Peace Commissioners were in Canada, near the line, waiting to present propositions from the Confederate Government. One of the President's secretaries, Major John Hay, was sent to investigate the matter, and he found two zealous gentlemen from the South, but they were merely a political experiment.

They were of value in presenting an opportunity for publishing to the nation, through the instructions carried by Major Hay, the exact attitude of the President. These were in the following form:

"To whom it may concern:

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Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now at war against the United States, will be received and considered by the Executive Government of the United States, and will be met on liberal terms on substantial and collateral points; and the bearer or bearers thereof shall have safe conduct both ways."

The commissioners bore nothing of the kind, and they went away disgusted, while the Opposition organs made the best they could of the matter, but the people, generally, decided that the kind of peace described by Mr. Lincoln was the precise thing they were fighting for and paying for.

Even timid Republican politicians were startled when, on July 18th, the President issued a call for five hundred thousand more volunteers, adding that all deficiencies would be made up by conscription. It was a very stern announcement of the basis upon which he proposed to be re-elected or defeated, and of his own perception of the shortest and surest road to peace. The people took him at his word, and all the while the advices from the army strengthened his hands. There were Union reverses here and there, for the Confederate leaders made their last campaigns with the energy of desperation and with unsurpassed ability.

The Opposition contested every point with a freedom of speech and of the press which robbed them of their sharpest protest against "the Lincoln despotism." They belittled Union victories and magnified Confederate successes, while declaiming with much justice against the waste, the favoritism, and the corruption incident to so vast a civil and military establishment, but for which the President could not justly be held responsible. The November election came at last, and it was found that the States in which it was held contained over four million of voters. Of these, a majority of more than four hundred thousand sustained Mr. Lincoln, giving him two hundred and thirty-three electoral votes against twenty-one secured by McClellan and Pendle

ton.

These latter came from Kentucky and Delaware, old slave States, and from New Jersey. There could be no question of Mr. Lincoln's constitutional title, for he had a majority of a full electoral college of all the States.

The result had been generally expected by the nation, and had never been doubted by Mr. Lincoln. It was a stunning blow to any remaining hope entertained by the Confederacy. Another was given, a few weeks later, by the utter defeat, at Nashville, of its last important army in the West, and by the beginning of General Sherman's "march to the

sea."

All the operations of the forces were now under the unquestioned management of General Grant. The military authority was more subordinate than ever to the civil Executive, because the President