of reminding the public of Frémont's emancipation proclamation; of his life-long hatred of slavery; of his chivalry, his generalship-and not least-of Lincoln's jealousy and persecution of him and his final removal from the field of active service. "Frémont Clubs" sprang up in Missouri. This group of Radicals had no more vigorous champion than Elizabeth Cady Stanton and enrolled that nondescript collection described by Samuel Bowles as "the gentler sex of both genders." The most uncompromising of the old-time Abolitionists were counted in this "People's Party," which met, on the last day of May, in Cleveland. The delegates, before leaving their homes, promised themselves a feast of political purification. Horace Greeley, so it was reported, would attend the convention, but he somewhat dryly answered inquiry by saying that "the only convention he took any interest in was the one Grant was holding before Richmond." Some of the delegates thought that Grant should be nominated for president, but Frémont was the favorite. “In the course of this debate," write Nicolay and Hay, "the somewhat dreary proceedings were enlivened by a comic incident. A middle-aged man, who gave his name as Carr, addressed the chair, saying that he had come from Illinois as a delegate under the last call and did not want to be favored 'a single mite.' His ideas not flowing readily, he repeated this declaration three times in a voice continually rising in shrillness with his excitement. Something in his tone stirred the risibles of the Convention, and loud laughter saluted the Illinoisan. As soon as he could make himself heard he cried out: "These are solemn times.' This statement was greeted with another laugh, and the delegate now shouted at the top of his voice: 'I believe there is a God who holds the universe in His hand as you would hold an egg.' This comprehensive scheme of theocracy was too much for the Missouri agnostics, and the Convention broke out in a tumult of jeers and roars. The rural delegate, amazed at the reception of his confession of faith, and apparently in doubt whether he had not stumbled by accident

into a lunatic asylum, paused, and asked the chairman in a tone of great seriousness whether he believed in a God. The wildest merriment now took possession of the assembly, in the midst of which the Illinois theist solemnly marched down the aisle and out of the house, shaking from his feet the dust of that unbelieving Convention."

Major-General John C. Frémont, of New York, and Brigadier-General John Cochran, of New York, were nominated for president and vice-president, respectively. Frémont promptly accepted in a letter which attacked the administration and warned the country of the fatal peril of Lincoln's renomination. The platform demanded the confiscation of rebel property and its distribution among the soldiers a clause which Frémont specially commended in his letter of acceptance.

The Convention made itself the object of public ridicule. It nominated both candidates from the same State, though the Constitution plainly forbids the elector to vote for more than one candidate from his own State. The committee to whom the matter was referred gave the name of the "Radical Democracy" to the proposed new party. The Democratic party looked on with glee at the impending split in the Republican party and anticipated Lincoln's defeat. Even the Confederate leaders, hateful as was to them the Frémont-Cochran platform, welcomed the "Radical Democracy" as an ally in the downfall of the Lincoln administration. But the North was not deceived. The work of the Convention, record Nicolay and Hay, "met with no response from the country. On the day of its meeting the German press of Cleveland expressed its profound disappointment at the smallness and insignificance of the gathering, and with a few unimportant exceptions the newspapers of the country greeted the work of the Convention with an unbroken chorus of ridicule. Its absurdities and inconsistencies were, indeed, too glaring for serious consideration. Its movers had denounced the Baltimore Convention as being held too early for an expression of the

deliberate judgment of the people, and now they had made their own nominations a week earlier, they had claimed that Baltimore was not sufficiently central in situation, and they had held their Convention on the northern frontier of the country; they had claimed that the Baltimore delegates were not properly elected, and they had assumed to make nominations by delegates not elected at all; they had denounced the Baltimore Convention as a close corporation and invited the people to assemble in mass, and when they came together they were so few they never dared to count themselves; they had pretended to desire a stronger candidate than Mr. Lincoln, and had selected the most conspicuous failure of the war; they had clamored loudly against corruption in office, and one of the leading personages in the Convention was a member of Frémont's staff who had been dismissed for dishonesty in government contracts.

"The whole proceeding, though it excited some indignation among the friends of Mr. Lincoln, was regarded by the president himself only with amusement. On the morning after the Convention, a friend, giving him an account of it, said that, instead of the many thousands who had been expected, there were present at no time more than four hundred men. The president, struck by the number mentioned, reached for the Bible which commonly lay on his desk, and after a moment's search read these words: 'And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred men.'

The tide of popular approval of the administration had been flowing for some time. It started, seemingly in rhythmic unison, at different political centres and the tributary streams at last meeting swept on in one over-powering current. New Hampshire, on the 6th of January, 1864, assembled in State Convention for the nomination of State officers, spontaneously declared in favor of Lincoln's renomination. The Pennsylvania Legislature, strongly

Republican, was in session, and its Union members signed an address endorsing the administration and urging Lincoln's re-election "purely on public grounds," the chief of which was that to defeat Lincoln would be confession of failure to preserve the Union. Similar declarations came from Central Committees in New York, Kansas, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Ohio, Indiana, Maine and Illinois. There could be no mistaking the drift and meaning of public opinion throughout the country. The president made no concealment of his readiness to continue the work to which he had been called.

When, June 7th, the Baltimore Convention assembled, it had nothing to do but to register the popular will. The platform demanded the suppression of the rebellion; a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery; thanked the army and the navy for their services; approved Lincoln's administration; demanded for the colored troops the full protection of the laws of war; pledged the national faith for the redemption of the national debt; deprecated any effort of European powers to establish monarchical governments near the United States, and approved the adherence of the administration to the principles of the Monroe Doctrine, meaning, of course, the attitude of the government toward the attempt of Napoleon III and Maximilian in Mexico. The declaration in favor of a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery provoked an outburst of cheers. It was not generally known at the moment that Lincoln was the author of the plank and had urged its insertion in the platform. Missouri had instructed her delegates, twenty-two in number, to vote for Grant, so that the first ballot stood, for Grant, 22, for Lincoln, 484. The Missouri delegates, before the result was announced wished to change their vote and make Lincoln's nomination unanimous. Parliamentary procedure forbade this, and unanimity was expressed in the second ballot.

On the second ballot for vice-president, Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, received all the votes of the Convention, save

twenty-six. The nomination of Johnson gave to the ticket a border State war Democrat and was believed by its promoters and by most of its supporters to give strength to the ticket. The weight of evidence is divided on the neutrality of Lincoln himself as to the nomination. Colonel McClure, in his Lincoln and Men of War Times brings forward proof that Johnson was manipulated into successful nomination by Lincoln himself because of his solicitude to retain the support of the border States for his administration. Nicolay and Hay assert with, equal assurance, and personal knowledge, that: "It was with minds absolutely untrammeled by even any knowledge of the president's wishes that the Convention went about its work of selecting his associate on the ticket." The other names before the Convention were the vice-president, Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, -whose attitude toward the administration, Colonel McClure asserts, eliminated him from Lincoln's support,-who received 150 votes on the first ballot; Daniel F. Dickinson, of New York, who received 108 votes, Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, who received 28 votes, with 33 votes scattered among six other candidates. It was a "Lincoln Convention" and it is improbable that the leaders allowed it to run counter to Lincoln's wishes, communicated to them confidentially by his personal representative and close friend, Leonard Swett. Or, to state the conclusion negatively, had the leaders understood that Lincoln favored any other candidate more than Johnson, the nomination would not have gone to Johnson.

The president's reply to the official notification of his nomination brings out the dominant thought of his mind and policy-the vitality of the Nation:

"I will neither conceal my gratification nor restrain the expression of my gratitude that the Union people, through their Convention, in the continued effort to save and advance the nation, have deemed me not unworthy to remain in my present position. I know no reason to doubt that I shall accept the nomination tendered; and yet perhaps I