This time he had underestimated the force of blind passions which the hell of war had raised.
Maine voted first and cut down her majority for the administration from nineteen thousand to a bare four thousand. The fact was ominous.
Ohio spoke next and Van Alen's ticket against the administration swept the State, returning fourteen Democrats and only five Republicans to Congress.
Indiana, the State in which the President's mother slept, spoke in thunder tones against him, sending eight Democrats and three Republicans. Even the rockribbed Republican stronghold of Pennsylvania was carried by the opposition by a majority of four thousand, reversing Lincoln's former majority of sixty thousand.
In New York the brilliant Democratic leader, Horatio Seymour, was elected Governor on a platform hostile to the administration by more than ten thousand majority. New Jersey turned against him, Michigan reduced his majority from twenty to six thousand. Wisconsin evenly divided its delegates to Congress.
Illinois, the President's own State, gave the most crushing blow of all. His big majority there was completely reversed and the Democrats carried the State by over seventeen thousand and the Congressional delegates stood eleven to three against him.
And then his Border State Policy, against which the leaders of his party had raged in vain was vindicated in the most startling way. True to his steadfast purpose to hold these States in the Union at all hazards, he had not included them in his Emancipation Proclamation.
One of the reasons for which they had refused his offer of United States bonds in payment for their slaves was they did not believe them worth the paper they were written on. A war costing two million dollars a day was sure to bankrupt the Nation before the end could be seen.
And yet because he had treated them with patience and fairness, with justice and with generosity, the Border States and the new State of West Virginia born of this policy, voted to sustain the President, saved his administration from ruin and gave him another chance to fight for the life of the Union.
It was a close shave. His working majority in Congress was reduced to a narrow margin, the opposition was large, united and fierce in its aggression, but he had been saved from annihilation.