The third scrap is a letter from Governor Yates to Trumbull dated Springfield, February 26, to whom, perhaps, McPike showed Trumbull's letter quoted above. Yates writes:
As you are a Senator from Illinois, the state of Mr. Lincoln, please be cautious as to your course till I see you. I have such strong regard for you personally that I do not wish either enemies or friends on our side, who would like to supplant you, to get any undue advantage over you.
Trumbull believed there was a lack of efficiency in the use made, by the executive branch of the Government, of the means placed at its disposal for putting down the rebellion. That such was his opinion was made clear by his participation in the anti-Seward movements of the previous year. Whether the opinion was justified or not, it was so generally entertained in Washington that if the nomination had rested in the hands of the Senators and Representatives in Congress, Lincoln would have had very few votes in the Baltimore Convention. Albert G. Riddle describes a scene in the White House in February, 1864, illustrative of public sentiment in Washington at that time. The reception room of the Executive Mansion was filled with persons, most of whom were inveighing against Lincoln, who was not present. The one most loud and bitter against the President was Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts. His assaults were so amazing that Riddle cautioned him to choose some other place than the Executive Mansion for uttering them; advised him to make his speeches in the Senate, or get himself elected to the coming National Union Convention and then denounce Lincoln, where his words might have some effect. Wilson replied that he knew the people were for Lincoln and that nothing could prevent his renomination.[67]
The opposition was based wholly upon charges of inefficiency and lack of earnestness and vigor in the prosecution of the war. But the feeling, both among the people at home and the soldiers in the field, was so overwhelmingly for Lincoln, that when the delegates came together in convention the opposition in Congress was silenced. After the nominations of both parties had been made, however, the previous distrust reappeared on a larger scale and became so pronounced that Lincoln himself thought that he was about to be defeated and took steps to turn the Government over to McClellan practically before the constitutional period for his own retirement.[68] If Lincoln himself was in despair, other persons who shared his gloom might be excused.
The radicals who were opposed to Lincoln held a convention in the city of Cleveland on the 31st of May, 1864, and nominated General John C. Frémont for President and General John Cochrane for Vice-President. Among the leaders in this movement were B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, Wendell Phillips, of Massachusetts, and Rev. George B. Cheever, of New York. They had the sympathy of Ben Wade, of Ohio, and Henry Winter Davis, of Maryland, and they reckoned upon the support of many radical Germans of the fiery type, perhaps sufficiently numerous to turn the votes of some important Western States. On the 21st of September, Frémont withdrew as a candidate and on the 23d the President asked for the resignation of Montgomery Blair as Postmaster-General, which the latter immediately gave. The simultaneous retirement of Frémont and Blair, who were known to be enemies to each other, led to a suspicion that there was some connection between the two events. The account given by Nicolay and Hay conveys no hint of this, but is confused and self-contradictory. Evidence is available to indicate that Frémont made his retirement conditional upon the removal of Blair from the Cabinet, and that Lincoln, although reluctant to lose Blair from his official family, deemed it a necessity to get the third ticket out of the presidential contest, for public reasons.[69]
In the Senatorial contest of 1867 the false accusation was made that Trumbull had refused to make speeches in favor of Lincoln's reëlection; whereas he was the leading speaker at the great Union Mass Meeting at Springfield on the 5th of October, 1864, which was addressed by Doolittle, Yates, and Logan also. His correspondence shows that he spoke at several other places during that month.
But speech-making did not gain the victory in the election of 1864. That fight was won by General Sherman at Atlanta, aided by General Sheridan in the Valley of Virginia, and by Admiral Farragut at Mobile.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] Riddle's Recollections of War-Time, p. 267.