GREAT VICTORY FOR MR. LINCOLN.
The tide of victory swept on. While Grant was holding Lee as in a vise at Petersburg, and Sherman was breaking the shell of the Confederacy at Atlanta, Sheridan was dashing through the Shenandoah Valley. Three striking victories crowned his bold and brilliant progress. The battles of Winchester and Fisher's Hill came within three weeks of Atlanta and within three days of each other. The third exploit at Cedar Creek was still more dramatic and thrilling. The succession of matchless triumphs was the theme of every journal and every orator, and the North was aflame with the enthusiasm it kindled. In the light of the answer flashed back from a score of battle-fields, the Chicago declaration that the war was a failure was not only seen to be unpatriotic and mischievous but was made contemptible by universal ridicule and obloquy.
The political effect of these victories was precisely what Mr. Lincoln had foreseen and foretold. Speaking of the issue to a friend, he said, "With reverses in the field the case is doubtful at the polls. With victory in the field the election will take care of itself." And so it was. Vermont and Maine in September, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in October, registered in advance the edict of the people in regard to the Presidency. The result in November was an overwhelming triumph for Mr. Lincoln. Of the twenty-two States participating in the election, General McClellan received the electoral vote of but three. It is perhaps a still stronger statement to say that of the eighteen free States he received the vote of but one. New Jersey gave him her electors, and Kentucky and Delaware, angered by the impending destruction of Slavery, turned against the Administration and against the prosecution of the war. Maryland had escaped from all influences connected with Slavery by its abolition the preceding October, and now cast her vote for Mr. Lincoln. Missouri and West Virginia, the only other slave States loyal to the Union, stood firmly by the President. Mr. Lincoln received two hundred and twelve electoral votes and General McClellan received twenty-one.
The chief interest of the whole country for the last month of the campaign had centred in New York. As nearly as Mr. Lincoln was willing to regard a political contest as personal to himself, he had so regarded the contest between Mr. Seymour and Mr. Fenton. Governor Seymour's speech in the Chicago Convention had been an indictment of a most malignant type against the Administration. The President felt that he was himself wholly wrong or Governor Seymour was wholly wrong, and the people of New York were to decide which. They rendered their verdict in the election of Reuben E. Fenton to the Governorship by a majority of thousands over Mr. Seymour. Without that result Mr. Lincoln's triumph would have been incomplete. For its accomplishment great credit was awarded to the Republican candidate for the admirable thoroughness of his canvass and for the judicious direction of public thought to the necessity of vindicating the President against the aspersions of Mr. Seymour. The victory in the Nation was the most complete ever achieved in an election that was seriously contested.
CHAPTER XXV.
President's Message, December, 1864.—General Sherman's March.— Compensated Emancipation abandoned.—Thirteenth Amendment.—Earnestly recommended by the President.—He appeals to the Democratic Members. —Mr. Ashley's Energetic Work.—Democratic Opportunity.—Unwisely neglected.—Mr. Pendleton's Argument.—Final Vote.—Amendment adopted.—Cases arising under it.—Supreme Court.—Change of Judges at Different Periods.—Peace Conference at Fortress Monroe.— Secretary Chase resigns.—Mr. Fessenden succeeds him.—Mr. Fessenden's Report.—Surrender of Lee.—General Grant's Military Character.— Assassination of President Lincoln.—His Characteristics.—Cost of the War.—Compared with Wars of Other Nations.—Our Navy.—Created during the War.—Effective Blockade.—Its Effect upon the South.— Its Influence upon the Struggle.—Relative Numbers in Loyal and Disloyal States.—Comparison of Union and Confederate Armies.— Confederate Army at the Close of the War.—Union Armies compared with Armies of Foreign Countries.—Area of the War.—Its Effect upon the Cost.—Character of Edwin M. Stanton.
Sustained by so emphatic a vote of popular confidence, President Lincoln greeted Congress on the first Monday of December, 1864, with a hopeful and cheerful message. He reported that our armies, holding all the lines and positions gained, "have steadily advanced, thus liberating the regions left in the rear." The President regarded "General Sherman's march of three hundred miles directly through an insurgent country" as the "most remarkable feature in the military operations of the year." It was in progress when the President delivered his message, and "the result not yet being known, conjecture in regard to it cannot be here indulged." The President reported that the actual disbursements in money from the Treasury for the past fiscal year were $865,234,087.86.
Mr. Lincoln had finally abandoned the project of compensating the Border States for their loss of property in slaves. The people of those States had, through their representatives, blindly and willfully rejected the offer when it was urged upon them by the Administration, and had defeated the bill embodying the proposition on the eve of its passage in the House when it had already passed the Senate. The situation was now entirely changed. Maryland, without waiting for National action and regardless of compensation, had in the preceding October taken the matter under her own control and deliberately abolished slavery. Mr. Lincoln now announced the State as "secure to liberty and union for all the future. The genius of rebellion will no longer claim Maryland. Like another foul spirit being driven out, it may seek to tear her, but it will woo her no more." There was no reason why the other Border States should not follow her example—and there was the strongest argument against compensating another State for doing what Maryland had done of her own free will and from an instinct of patriotism, as the one act which would conclusively separate her from all possibility of sympathy with the rebellion.
Freed thus from what he may have regarded as the obligations of his Border-State policy and upheld by the great popular majority which he had received in the election, the President warmly recommended to Congress the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. He called attention to the fact that it had already received the sanction of the Senate, but failed in the House for lack of the requisite two-thirds vote. There was no doubt that the large Republican majority, already elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress, would adopt the Amendment, but such adoption implied postponement for a whole year, with loss of the moral influence which would be gained by prompter action. It implied also that the Amendment would depend solely upon Republican votes, and the President was especially anxious that it should receive Democratic support. Still another reason wrought upon the President's mind. He believed the rebellion to be near its end, and no man could tell how soon a proposition might come for the surrender of the Confederate Armies and the return of the Rebel States to their National allegiance. If such a proposition should be made, Mr. Lincoln knew that there would be a wild desire among the loyal people to accept it, and that in the forgiving joy of re-union they would not insist upon the conditions which he believed essential to the future safety and strength of the National Government. Slavery had been abolished in the District of Columbia by a law of Congress, and in Maryland by her own action. It still existed in the other Border States and in Tennessee, and its abolition in the remaining States of the Confederacy depended upon the validity of the President's Proclamation of Emancipation.