ght from Lincoln the remark: "If Grant takes Richmond,
by all means let him have the nomination." When the delegates came
together, however, in Baltimore, it was evident that, representing as
they did the sober and well-thought-out convictions of the people, no
candidacy but that of Lincoln could secure consideration and his
nomination was practically unanimous.

The election in November gave evidence that, even in the midst of civil
war, a people's government can sustain the responsibility of a national
election. The large popular majorities in nearly all of the voting
States constituted not only a cordial recognition of the service that
was being rendered by Lincoln and by Lincoln's administration, but a
substantial assurance that the cause of nationality was to be sustained
with all the resources of the nation. The Presidential election of this
year gave the final blow to the hopes of the Confederacy.

I had myself a part in a very small division of this election, a
division which could have no effect in the final gathering of the votes,
but which was in a way typical of the spirit of the army. On the 6th of
November, 1864, I was in Libby Prison, having been captured at the
battle of Cedar Creek in October. It was decided to hold a Presidential
election in the prison, although some of us were rather doubtful as to
the policy and anxious in regard to the result. The exchange of
prisoners had been blocked for nearly a year on the ground of the
refusal on the part of the South to exchange the coloured troops or
white officers who held commissions in coloured regiments. Lincoln took
the ground, very properly, that all of the nation's soldiers must be
treated alike and must be protected by a uniform policy. Until the
coloured troops should be included in the exchange, "there can," said
Lincoln, "be no exchanging of prisoners." This decision, while sound,
just, and necessary, brought, naturally, a good deal of dissatisfaction
to the men in prison and to their friends at home. When I reached Libby
in October, I found there men who had been prisoners for six or seven
months and who (as far as they lived to get out) were to be prisoners
for five months more. Through the winter of 1864-65, the illness and
mortality in the Virginia prisons of Libby and Danville were very
severe. It was in fact a stupid barbarity on the part of the Confederate
authorities to keep any prisoners in Richmond during that last winter of
the War. It