CHAPTER LIII.

THE NATION'S VERDICT.

The Rebellion Bleeding to Death-A Half a Million More-The Results of the Election-Sherman's March to the Sea-The Last Great Battle in the West-Changes in the Cabinet-Grant on "Executive Interference."

THE course of the civil war during the summer and early autumn of the year 1864, studded thickly as it was with bloody battles, may be described with fair exactness as a process of attrition. Both in the East and West, the opposing armies were grinding in almost continuous struggle.

The military results, viewed strictly as such, were in favor of the Union armies, and, all the while, the conquered districts put behind these in their advances were becoming more and more hopelessly lost forever to the Confederacy. One obvious fact needed no presentation in any army bulletin. The area from which the Rebel forces could draw recruits and supplies was steadily narrowing. Whenever their armies now in the field should be ground away and used up by the ceaseless campaigning forced upon them, no others like them could be obtained to take their places. The end of all drew nearer with every charge they made, successful or otherwise, upon the wall of steel and fire that was pitilessly closing in around them.

The resources of the North were not perceptibly diminished. A Rebel officer of Texas cavalry, captured and carried to one of the forts in New York harbor, was paroled late one evening and spent the night at the Astor House, on Broadway, in New York City. He came out upon the steps of the hotel, after breakfast, the next morning, and stood for an hour or so, watching the tide of men flow past him. At first he thought it a

"procession" or the result of some uncommon excitement; but when the truth dawned upon him that this was only the everyday rush of the great city, he sat down and wrote to his friends at the South:

"How they have lied to us! It is of no use. I give it up. There are more men in the North than there were before the war. Ours are all gone, and it's about time to stop."

Mr. Lincoln would gladly have seen the entire South arriving at so sensible a decision; but every faint sign of promise in any such direction proved instantly illusory. He was now contending with the wounded pride, rather than the sane hope or expectation, of a group of men in power at Richmond, whose indomitable obstinacy upheld them until the gallant men whom they forced to fight for them were uselessly crushed upon the last vain battle-fields of the civil war.

Fully understanding his antagonists, Mr. Lincoln prepared for the worst. On the 18th of July he called for five hundred thousand more men, the number not furnished by voluntary enlistments to be obtained by a draft, after September 5. Even his enemies were unable to describe so unpopular an act as an electioneering operation in behalf of his re-election. His friends told him, plainly, that it might insure his defeat at the November polls.

Perhaps he had more correctly gauged the temper and understanding of the people. At all events, the summoned men came forward rapidly, a large and valuable percentage of them being veterans who had served their time under previous enlistments.

One after another, every device of the Opposition utterly broke down. Even before election-day it was evident that no danger of Democratic success remained. When the polls were closed and the votes were counted, it was found that the country contained 4,015,902 voters, the greater part of whom were possible fighters. Mr. Lincoln's enormous majority of 411,428 fairly buried the McClellan electoral tickets. Kentucky and Delaware, old slave-States, with New Jersey, feebly testified

their disgust with Emancipation, but they were of small account in an electoral college of 233 votes, wherein 212 were solidly against them. There could be raised no question of the "constitutionality" of such an election. It was the carefully formed and solemnly announced judgment of the nation. Mr. Lincoln had taken no especial or undue means to secure the political victory, but it was altogether such as he had confidently looked for. It was no surprise to him, and it justified alike his faith in God and in the general right-mindedness of his fellowcitizens.

The people breathed more freely after the election, in spite of the exciting nature of current news from the army.

In the very middle of November began Sherman's "march to the sea," and only one month later, with the tidings that he had reached the coast, came the defeat and demoralization of the last great Rebel army in the West, at Nashville. The fighting in Virginia had been hard and costly, upon both sides, throughout the season. It included the "battles of the Wilderness," the siege of Petersburg, the victories of Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley, and many another fierce collision of forces, and it ended with the beginning of the final closing in upon Richmond and Lee's army.

There had been three changes in the Cabinet during the year. Mr. Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General, after rendering valuable services, had been succeeded by Governor William Dennison, of Ohio. Edward Bates, of Missouri, AttorneyGeneral, had been succeeded by Mr. Lincoln's old personal friend, James Speed, of Kentucky. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, had been succeeded by William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine.

Neither of these changes originated in the personal will or feeling of the President, or implied any dissatisfaction on his part with the official conduct of the gentlemen who tendered their resignations. The precise causes, in either case, have ceased to be important or generally interesting. If there were

peculiar circumstances attending the withdrawal of Mr. Chase, connected with the course taken by his friends prior to the Baltimore Convention, all cause for remembering them was removed by the subsequent action of Mr. Lincoln. Chief-Justice Taney of the Supreme Court died on the 12th of October, and, after giving a full hearing to all who chose to offer advice upon the subject, the President named Mr. Chase as his successor. The possible range of human events could not have offered him a better means for testifying his repudiation of personal animosity and his keen appreciation of patriotic fidelity and capacity.

The appointment to the Supreme Court bench of his old and tried friend and adviser, David Davis, of Illinois, was in a somewhat different way a similar testimonial to personal worth, conferred without regard to political or any other influence to the contrary.

If Mr. Lincoln's utterances and letters, during this period, continually express his increasing religious feeling and his confidence in an overruling Providence, his correspondence with army commanders testifies to his belief that the conduct of military affairs was at last in the right hands. He had his doubts, indeed, as to the wisdom of Sherman's march into Georgia, but he refused to interfere. In a letter to General Grant he said:

"The particulars of your plan I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any restraints or constraints upon you."

General Grant's reply contained this comprehensive testi

mony:

"From my first entrance into the volunteer service of my country to the present day, I have never had cause of complaint. . . . Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsibility and importance of success, I have been astonished at the

readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation being asked."

How great a relief was thus obtained by the weary Commander-in-Chief can hardly be estimated. How much he was in need of such relief could only be guessed, at the time, by those who loved him and narrowly noted the visible signs that his iron constitution was beginning to yield to the ceaseless drain and strain.

The overthrow of the Rebellion, the return of peace, might possibly bring him easier times. His mind was stronger and clearer than ever, and his education was still going steadily forward; but his bodily frame was bent and at times it drooped a little, for the burdens yet upon him were almost too much for human endurance.