President had shown. In
vain did Fremont seek to give to his candidacy a serious and dignified
character. Very few persons cared anything about it, except the
Democrats, and their clamorous approval was as unwelcome as it was
significant. Under this humiliation the unfortunate candidate at last
decided to withdraw, and so notified his committee about the middle of
September. He still stood by his principles, however, and asserted that
Mr. Lincoln's administration had been "politically, militarily, and
financially a failure;" that the President had paralyzed the generous
unanimity of the North; and that, by declaring that "slavery should be
protected," he had "built up for the South a strength which otherwise
they could have never attained." The nation received the statement
placidly and without alarm.

A feeble movement in New York to nominate General Grant deserves
mention, chiefly for the purpose of also mentioning the generous manner
in which the general decisively brushed it aside. Mr. Lincoln quietly
said that if Grant would take Richmond he might also have the
presidency. But it was, of course, plain to every one that for the
present it would be ridiculous folly to take Grant out of his tent in
order to put him into the White House.

During this same troubled period a few of the Republican malcontents
went so far as to fancy that they could put upon Mr. Lincoln a pressure
which would induce him to withdraw from the ticket. They never learned
the extreme absurdity of their design, for they never got enough
encouragement to induce them to push it beyond the stage of preliminary
discussion.

All these movements had some support from newspapers in different parts
of the country. Many editors had the like grievance against Mr. Lincoln
which so many politicians had. For they had told him what to do, and too
often he had not done it. Horace Greeley, it is needless to say, was
conspicuous in his unlimited condemnation of the President.

The first indications of the revolt of the politicians and the radicals
against Mr. Lincoln were signals for instant counteracting activity
among the various bodies which more closely felt the popular impulse.
State conventions, caucuses, of all sizes and kinds, and gatherings of
the Republican members of state legislatures, overstepped their regular
functions to declare for the renomination of Mr. Lincoln. Clubs and
societies did the same. Simon Cameron, transmitting to the President