ul campaign. The
Convention was still under the delusion of victory.

Lincoln also appears to have stood firm until the last minute in the
common error. But the report of Grant's losses, more than the whole of
Lee's army, filled him with horror. During these days, Carpenter had
complete freedom of the President's office and "intently studied every
line and shade of expression in that furrowed face. In repose, it was
the saddest face I ever knew. There were days when I could scarcely
look into it without crying. During the first week of the battles of the
Wilderness he scarcely slept at all. Passing through the main hall of
the domestic apartment on one of these days, I met him, clad in a long,
morning wrapper, pacing back and forth a narrow passage leading to one
of the windows, his hands behind him, great black rings under his eyes,
his head bent forward upon his breast-altogether such a picture of the
effects of sorrow, care, and anxiety as would have melted the hearts
of the worst of his adversaries, who so mistakenly applied to him the
epithets of tyrant and usurper."(18)

Despite these sufferings, Lincoln had not the slightest thought of
giving way. Not in him any likeness to the sentimentalists, Greeley and
all his crew, who were exultant martyrs when things were going right,
and shrieking pacifists the moment anything went wrong. In one of the
darkest moments of the year, he made a brief address at a Sanitary Fair
in Philadelphia.

"Speaking of the present campaign," said he, "General Grant is reported
to have said, 'I am going to fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer.' This war has taken three years; it was begun or accepted upon
the line of restoring the national authority over the whole national
domain, and for the American people, as far as my knowledge enables
me to speak, I say we are going through on this line if it takes three
years more."(19) He made no attempt to affect Grant's course. He had put
him in supreme command and would leave everything to his judgment. And
then came the colossal blunder at Cold Harbor. Grant stood again where
McClellan had stood two years before. He stood there defeated. He could
think of nothing to do but just what McClellan had wanted to do--abandon
the immediate enterprise, make a great detour to the Southwest, and
start a new campaign on a different plan. Two years with all their
terrible disasters, and this was all that had come of it! Practically no
gain, a