e off, Vallandigham was transformed in an instant from a martyr to an
anticlimax. Though he went busily to work, though he lived to attend the
Democratic National Convention and to write the resolution that was the
heart of its platform, his tale was told.

Turning from Vallandigham, partly in amusement, partly in contempt,
Lincoln grappled with the problem of reinforcing the army. Since
the Spring of 1863 the wastage of the army had been replaced by
conscription. But the system had not worked well. It contained a fatal
provision. A drafted man might escape service by paying three hundred
dollars. Both the Secretary of War and the Provost Marshal had urged the
abolition of this detail. Lincoln had communicated their arguments to
Congress with his approval and a new law had been drawn up accordingly.
Nevertheless, late in June, the House amended it by restoring the
privilege of commuting service for money.(2) Lincoln bestirred himself.
The next day he called together the Republican members of the House.
"With a sad, mysterious light in his melancholy eyes, as if they were
familiar with things hidden from mortals" he urged the Congressmen
to reconsider their action. The time of three hundred eighty thousand
soldiers would expire in October. He must have half a million to take
their places. A Congressman objected that elections were approaching;
that the rigorous law he proposed would be intensely unpopular; that it
might mean the defeat, at the polls, of many Republican Representatives;
it might even mean the President's defeat. He replied that he had
thought of all that.

"My election is not necessary; I must put down the rebellion; I must
have five hundred thousand more men."(3)

He raised the timid politicians to his own level, inspired them with new
courage. Two days later a struggle began in the House for carrying
out Lincoln's purpose. On the last day of the session along with the
offensive Reconstruction Bill, he received the new Enrollment Act which
provided that "no payment of money shall be accepted or received by the
Government as commutation to release any enrolled or drafted man from
personal obligation to per-form military service."

Against this inflexible determination to fight to a finish, this
indifference to the political consequences of his determination, Lincoln
beheld arising like a portentous specter, a fury of pacifism. It found
expression in Greeley. Always the swift victim of his own affrighte