had found a general who perfectly embodied his own view of the use to be made of the superior resources of the National Government. General Grant's own words, in a letter to the President, set forth admirably the relations between them. He

wrote:

"From my first entrance into the volunteer service of my country to the present day, I have never had cause of complaint. Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsibility and importance of success, I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded without even an explanation being asked."

The Congress which assembled on December 5th, 1864, was in full accord with Mr. Lincoln. Its Opposition membership, with few exceptions, professed a desire for a vigorous prosecution of the war, reserving and exercising its utmost right of criticism of every measure proposed or adopted by the Administration.

The Message of the President was laid before Congress on the 6th, and contained a great deal of interesting and encouraging material, but its most important request was for the adoption of an Amendment to the Constitution, forever prohibiting slavery. An effort in that direction made in the previous Congress had failed, in strange evidence of the morbid timidity of the American people upon the subject of the supposed right of one man to buy or sell another.

Never yet had the President given to any meas

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

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

The result had been generally expected by the mation, and bad 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

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

had found a general who perfectly embodied his own view of the use to be made of the superior resources of the National Government. General Grant's own words, in a letter to the President, set forth admirably the relations between them. He

wrote:

"From my first entrance into the volunteer service of my country to the present day, I have never had cause of complaint. Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsibility and importance of success, I have been astonished at the readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded without even an explanation being asked."

The Congress which assembled on December 5th, 1864, was in full accord with Mr. Lincoln. Its Opposition membership, with few exceptions, professed a desire for a vigorous prosecution of the war, reserving and exercising its utmost right of criticism of every measure proposed or adopted by the Administration.

The Message of the President was laid before Congress on the 6th, and contained a great deal of interesting and encouraging material, but its most important request was for the adoption of an Amendment to the Constitution, forever prohibiting slavery. An effort in that direction made in the previous Congress had failed, in strange evidence of the morbid timidity of the American people upon the subject of the supposed right of one man to buy or sell another.

Never yet had the President given to any meas

ure before Congress the open, pronounced, ceaseless advocacy which he now gave to that amendment, declaring it the one thing needful. When at last it became a part of the fundamental law of the land, it was but the "ultimate extinction" he had looked forward to from the platform of the Bloomington Convention.

On February 3d, 1865, something like an effort to open negotiations for peace was made, in an informal conference, on a steamer in Hampton Roads, between the President and Mr. Seward, for the United States, and Alexander H. Stephens, Robert M. T. Hunter, and J. A. Campbell, for the Confederacy. These gentlemen presented no written proposition. They desired an armistice, as between two independent powers, during which both were to reduce armaments while discussing terms of permanent peace. At this point the conference broke down, no matter what other points were made or suggested or what arguments sustained them. Recognition of the Confederacy as a treaty-making power would have been yielding all that the nation was contending for, since it would have included all else. Moreover, the Southern commissioners possessed no authority for negotiations which did not assume that recognition, and the effort was necessarily abandoned.

Sherman's army had reached the coast and was now sweeping steadily northward. Charleston, the birthplace of the war, was already garrisoned by Union troops. The Army of the Potomac, after a series of terrine battles, was closing slowly in upon

the Army of Northern Virginia and upon Richmond, the last stronghold of the Confederacy.

A month passed by after the conference in Hampton Roads, and the day arrived for the second. inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States. He stood, March 4th, 1865, upon a platform at the east front of the Capitol, as in 1864. Around him and behind him was as dignified an assembly of officials and notables-perhaps it included a larger number of distinguished men. Before him was as vast a multitude of his fellow citizens. How greatly all else had changed he proceeded to depict in the address which he delivered, as follows:

"FELLOW COUNTRYMEN: At this second appearance to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.

"The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. "On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending Civil War. All dreaded it; all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war-seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.