; for many
of the loyal public had been fooled by his proclamations, the press
had written him up to the skies as the Young Napoleon, and the
great mass of the rank and file still believed in him. He took
the kindly interest in camp comforts that goes to the soldier's
heart; and he really did know how to organize. Add his power of
passing off tinsel promises for golden deeds, and it can be well
understood how great was the danger of dismissing him before his
defects had become so apparent to the mass of people as to have
turned opinion decisively against him. We shall presently meet
him in his relation to Lincoln during the Virginian campaign, and
later on in his relation to Lee. Here we may leave him with the
reminder that he was the Democratic candidate for President in
'64, that he was still a mortal danger to the Union, even though
he had rejected the actual wording of his party's peace plank.

The turn of the tide at the fighting front came in '63; but not
at the home front, where public opinion of the most vocal kind
was stirred to its dregs by the enforcement of the draft. The dime
song books of the Copperhead parts of New York expressed in rude
rhymes very much the same sort of apprehension that was voiced
by the official opposition in the Presidential campaign of '64.

Abram Lincoln, what yer 'bout?
Stop this war, for it's played out.

Another rhyme, called "The Beauties of Conscription," was a more
decorous expression of such public opinion.

And this, the "People's Sovereignty,"
Before a despot humbled!
. . . .
Well have they cashed old Lincoln's drafts,
Hurrah for the Conscription!
. . . .
Is not this war--this MURDER--for
The negro, _nolens volens?_

So, carrying out their ideas to the same sort of logical conclusion,
the New York mob of '63 not only burnt every recruiting office they
found undefended but burnt the negro orphan asylum and killed all
the negroes they could lay their hands on.

Public opinion did veer round a little with the rising tide of
victory in the winter of '63 and '64. But, incredible as it may
seem to those who think the home front must always reflect the
fighting front, the nadir of public opinion in the North was reached
in the summer of '64, when every expert knew that the resources of
the South were nearing exhaustion and that the forces of the North
could certainly wear out Lee's dwindling army even if they could
not beat it. The trumpet gave no