hall be gratified exceedingly if the good people of the
State shall, by their votes, ratify the new constitution."

At the election which was held on October 12 and 13, stubborn Maryland
conservatism, whose roots reached far back to the colonial days, made
its last desperate stand, and the constitution was ratified by a
majority of only three hundred and seventy-five votes out of a total of
nearly sixty thousand. But the result was accepted as decisive, and in
due time the governor issued his proclamation, declaring the new
constitution legally adopted.

XXXI

Shaping of the Presidential Campaign--Criticisms of Mr. Lincoln--Chase's
Presidential Ambitions--The Pomeroy Circular--Cleveland
Convention--Attempt to Nominate Grant--Meeting of Baltimore
Convention--Lincoln's Letter to Schurz--Platform of Republican
Convention--Lincoln Renominated--Refuses to Indicate Preference for
Vice-President--Johnson Nominated for Vice-President--Lincoln's Speech
to Committee of Notification--Reference to Mexico in his Letter of
Acceptance--The French in Mexico

The final shaping of the campaign, the definition of the issues, the
wording of the platforms, and selection of the candidates, had grown
much more out of national politics than out of mere party combination or
personal intrigues. The success of the war, and fate of the Union, of
course dominated every other consideration; and next to this the
treatment of the slavery question became in a hundred forms almost a
direct personal interest. Mere party feeling, which had utterly vanished
for a few months in the first grand uprising of the North, had been once
more awakened by the first Bull Run defeat, and from that time onward
was heard in loud and constant criticism of Mr. Lincoln and the acts of
his supporters wherever they touched the institution of slavery. The
Democratic party, which had been allied with the Southern politicians in
the interests of that institution through so many decades, quite
naturally took up its habitual role of protest that slavery should
receive no hurt or damage from the incidents of war, where, in the
border States, it still had constitutional existence among loyal Union
men.

On the other hand, among Republicans who had elected Mr. Lincoln, and
who, as a partizan duty, indorsed and sustained his measures, Fremont's
proclamation of military emancipation in the first year of the war
excited the over-hasty zeal of antislavery extremists, and d