the courage to go to the
other extreme and become a resolute opposition party, wholeheartedly and
intelligently against the war. They equivocated, they obstructed, they
professed loyalty and they practised-it would be hard to say what! So
short-sighted was their political game that its effect continually
was to play into the hands of their most relentless enemies, the grim
Jacobins.

Though, for a brief time while the enthusiasm after Sumter was still at
its height they appeared to go along with the all-parties program, they
soon revealed their true course. In the autumn of 1861, Lincoln still
had sufficient hold upon all factions to make it seem likely that his
all-parties program would be given a chance. The Republicans generally
made overtures to the Democratic managers, offering to combine in a
coalition party with no platform but the support of the war and the
restoration of the Union. Here was the test of the organization of
the Little Men. The insignificant new managers, intoxicated by
the suddenness of their opportunity, rang false. They rejected the
all-parties program and insisted on maintaining their separate party
formation.(1) This was a turning point in Lincoln's career. Though
nearly two years were to pass before he admitted his defeat, the
all-parties program was doomed from that hour. Throughout the winter,
the Democrats in Congress, though steadily ambiguous in their statements
of principle, were as steadily hostile to Lincoln. If they had any
settled policy, it was no more than an attempt to hold the balance of
power among the warring factions of the Republicans. By springtime the
game they were playing was obvious; also its results. They had prevented
the President from building up a strong Administration group wherewith
he might have counterbalanced the Jacobins. Thus they had released the
Jacobins from the one possible restraint that might have kept them from
pursuing their own devices.

The spring of 1862 saw a general realignment of factions. It was
then that the Congressional Cabal won its first significant triumph.
Hitherto, all the Republican platforms had been programs of denial.
A brilliant new member of the Senate, john Sherman, bluntly told his
colleagues that the Republican party had always stood on the defensive.
That was its weakness. "I do not know any measure on which it has taken
an aggressive position."(2) The clue to the psychology of the moment
was in the raging demand of the m