[197]
It was agreed that a committee should request Mr. Lincoln to withdraw, and Grant was the name which found most favor as a substitute.1 At this time Mr. Lincoln himself faced defeat as altogether probable.2 The disaffection which then seemed so serious disappeared, however, immediately after the Democratic nomination of McClellan, August 31, at Chicago, upon a platform which declared the war to be ‘four years of failure,’ and called for ‘a cessation of hostilities.’
Sumner shared in the opinion of Mr. Lincoln's limitations, which was common with public men in 1863-1864; but he took no part in the plans for putting another candidate in his stead.
In correspondence he referred to the subject but slightly and incidentally, and was reserved in conversation at Washington, though less so in Boston, where he spoke more freely to personal friends of Mr. Lincoln's defects.3 He thought a change of candidate desirable, but only with Mr. Lincoln's free and voluntary withdrawal; and he counselled against any action which might be construed as hostile to him.4 This was also the position of Senator Collamer and John Jay. With Sumner, as with Bryant and Greeley and all other patriotic men, the question was settled by ‘the Chicago treason.’
The fear of an adverse decision of the people in November, felt by Mr. Lincoln himself as well as by others, vanished with the victories of our army in Georgia, which culminated in the evacuation of Atlanta by the rebels on the night of the day of McClellan's nomination.
Mr. Lincoln carried the electoral vote of all the States except three,—Delaware, Kentucky, and New Jersey; but McClellan's vote was very large in some States, as New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.
It is curious to observe how in a few months, when death had set its seal on a great character, Mr. Lincoln's honest critics became his sincere eulogists,—notably Bryant, Greeley, Bancroft, Andrew, and Sumner.5
1 Lieber to Sumner, August 15. According to Lieber, Davis stated at the conference that Mr. Lincoln had said in Corwin's presence that he should be beaten unless victories intervened.
2 Nicolay and Hay's ‘Life of Lincoln,’ vol. IX. pp. 249-251.
3 Life of Amos A. Lawrence, p. 195.
4 Nicolay and Hay (‘Life of Lincoln,’ vol. IX. p. 367) are incorrect in saying that the New York movement had ‘the earnest support and eager instigation of Charles Sumner.’ Their statement is not supported by his letter cited by them of date Sept. 1, 1864, and printed in the New York Sun, June 30, 1889, which is of similar tenor as his letter to Lieber, September 3.
5 Sumner read to the writer, in May, 1865, at his mother's house in Boston, some parts of his eulogy on Lincoln as he was preparing it. When reminded that he had sometimes spoken of the President in a different tone, he answered: ‘Well, Mr. Lincoln was indeed the author of a new order of State papers.’ The study of the complete life evidently had withdrawn his attention from minor defects, and fixed it on the great qualities of his subject.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.