ssful contest
against the President and the Democratic party united. Even those
elections which result, in the exuberant language of the press, in
an overwhelming victory on the one side and an overwhelming defeat,
on the other, are often found, upon analysis, to be based on very
narrow margins in the popular result, the reversal of which requires
only the change of a few thousand votes. This was demonstrated in
many of the great States, even in the second election of Mr. Lincoln,
when to the general apprehension he was almost unanimously sustained.
From this fact it was well argued by Republicans in Congress that
great danger to the party was involved in the impending dissension.
Even the most sanguine feared defeat, and the naturally despondent
already counted it as certain. Never before had so stringent a test
of principle been applied to the members of both Houses. The situation
was indeed peculiar. The great statesman who had been honored as the
founder of the Republican party was now closely allied with the
Administration. His colleague who had sat next him in the Cabinet of
Mr. Lincoln, and who, in the judgment of his partial friends, was the
peer of Mr. Seward both in ability and in merit, did not hesitate to
show from the exalted seat of the Chief Justice his strong sympathy
with the President.

The leading commercial men, who had become weary of war, contemplated
with positive dread the re-opening of a controversy which might prove
as disturbing to the business of the country as the struggle of arms
had been, and without the quickening impulses to trade which active
war always imparts. The bankers of the great cities, whose capital
and whose deposits all rested upon the credit of the country and were
invested in its paper, believed that the speedy settlement of all
dissension and the harmonious co-operation of all departments of the
Government were needed to maintain the financial honor of the nation
and to re-instate confidence among the people. Against obstacles so
menacing, against resistance so ominous, against an array of power so
imposing, it seemed to be an act of boundless temerity to challenge the
President to a contest, to array public opinion against him, to
denounce him, to deride him, to defy him.

It is to the eminent credit of the Republican members of Congress that
they stood in a crisis of this magnitude true to principle, firm
against all the power and all the patronage of the Admin