The spirits of the people touched the lowest tide ebb of despair.
The war debt had reached the appalling total of two thousand millions of dollars and its daily cost was four millions. The paper of the Treasury was rapidly depreciating and the premium on gold rising until the value of a one dollar green-back note was less than fifty cents in real money. The bankers, fearing the total bankruptcy of the Nation, had begun to refuse further loans on bonds at any rate of interest.
The bounty offered to men for reënlistment in the army when their terms expired amounted to the unheard of sum of one thousand five hundred dollars cash on signing for the new term. Bounty jumping had become the favorite sport of adventurous scoundrels. Millions of dollars were being stolen by these men without the addition of a musket to the fighting force. Grant was hanging them daily, but the traitor's work continued. The enlisted man deserted in three weeks and reappeared at the next post and reënlisted again, collecting his bounty with each enrollment.
The enemies of the President in his own party, led by Senator Winter, to make sure of his defeat before the convention, which was about to meet in Baltimore, held a National convention of Radical Republicans in Cleveland and nominated John C. Fremont for the Presidency. Their purpose was by this party division to make Lincoln's nomination an impossibility. Fremont's withdrawal was the weapon with which they would fight the President before the regular Republican convention and after. Senator Winter voiced the feeling of this convention in a speech of bitter and vindictive eloquence.
"I denounce the administration of Abraham Lincoln," he declared, "as imbecile and vacillating. We demand not only the crushing of Lee's army, but a program of vengeance against the rebels, which will mean their annihilation when conquered. We demand the confiscation of their property, the overthrow of every trace of local government and the reduction of their States to conquered provinces under the control of Congress. The milk and water policy of Lincoln is both a civil and a military failure, and his renomination would be the greatest calamity which could befall our Nation!"
A week later the regular party convention met at Baltimore. On the night before this meeting the President's renomination was not certain.
On every hand his enemies were assailing him with unabated fury. Every check to the National arms was laid at his door—every mistake of civil or military management. The ravages of the Confederate cruisers which were built in England and had swept the seas of our commerce were blamed on him. He should have called Great Britain to account for these outrages and had two wars instead of one!
The cost of the great struggle mounting and mounting into billions was his fault. The draft might have been avoided with the Government in abler hands. The emancipation policy had not freed a single negro and driven the whole Democratic Party into opposition to the war. His Border State policy had held four Slave States in the Union, but crippled the moral power of his position as anti-Slavery man. Every lie, every slander of four years were now repeated and magnified.
A competent man must be put into the White House. The Rail-splitter must go!
The real test of strength would come in the secret meeting of the Grand Council of the Union League—the Secret Society which had been organized to defeat the schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle. In this meeting men will say exactly what they think. In the big convention to-morrow all will be harmony and peace. The convention will do what these powerful leaders from every State in the North tell them to do.