ed to divide and discourage the administration party. The
resignation of Mr. Chase had seemed to not a few leading Republicans a
presage of disintegration in the government. Mr. Greeley's mission at
Niagara Falls had unsettled and troubled the minds of many. The
Democrats, not having as yet appointed a candidate or formulated a
platform, were free to devote all their leisure to attacks upon the
administration. The rebel emissaries in Canada, being in thorough
concert with the leading peace men of the North, redoubled their efforts
to disturb the public tranquility, and not without success. In the
midst of these discouraging circumstances the manifesto of Wade and
Davis had appeared to add its depressing influence to the general gloom.

Mr. Lincoln realized to the full the tremendous issues of the campaign.
Asked in August by a friend who noted his worn looks, if he could not go
away for a fortnight's rest, he replied:

"I cannot fly from my thoughts--my solicitude for this great country
follows me wherever I go. I do not think it is personal vanity or
ambition, though I am not free from these infirmities, but I cannot but
feel that the weal or woe of this great nation will be decided in
November. There is no program offered by any wing of the Democratic
party, but that must result in the permanent destruction of the Union."

"But, Mr. President," his friend objected, "General McClellan is in
favor of crushing out this rebellion by force. He will be the Chicago
candidate."

"Sir, the slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove to any man that
the rebel armies cannot be destroyed by Democratic strategy. It would
sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it. There are now in the
service of the United States nearly one hundred and fifty thousand
able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending and
acquiring Union territory. The Democratic strategy demands that these
forces be disbanded, and that the masters be conciliated by restoring
them to slavery.... You cannot conciliate the South if you guarantee to
them ultimate success; and the experience of the present war proves
their successes inevitable if you fling the compulsory labor of millions
of black men into their side of the scale.... Abandon all the posts now
garrisoned by black men, take one hundred and fifty thousand men from
our side and put them in the battle-field or corn-field against us, and
we would be compelled to abandon the war in three w