but it was also in the fear of its own supporters playing
craftily a double game. These astute diplomats saw that there was a
psychological crisis in the North. By adding to the confusion of the
hour they had well served their cause. Greeley's fiasco was susceptible
of a double interpretation. To the pacifists it meant that the
government, whatever may have been intended at the start, had ended by
setting impossible conditions of peace. To the supporters of the war, it
meant that whatever were the last thoughts of the government, it had
for a time contemplated peace without any conditions at all. Lincoln
was severely condemned, Greeley was ridiculed, by both groups of
interpreters. Why did not Greeley come out bravely and tell the truth?
Why did he not confess that he had suppressed Lincoln's first set of
instructions; that it was he, on his own responsibility, who had led the
Confederate agents astray; that he, not Lincoln was solely to blame for
the false impression that was now being used so adroitly to injure the
President? Lincoln proposed to publish their correspondence, but made a
condition that was characteristic. Greeley's letters rang with cries
of despair. He was by far the most influential Northern editor. Lincoln
asked him to strike out these hopeless passages. Greeley refused.
The correspondence must be published entire or not at all. Lincoln
suppressed it. He let the blame of himself go on; and he said nothing in
extenuation.(15)

He took some consolation in a "card" that appeared in the Boston
Transcript, July 22. It gave a brief account of the adventure of Gilmore
and Jaquess, and stated the answer given to them by the President of the
Confederacy. That answer, as restated by the Confederate Secretary of
State, was: "he had no authority to receive proposals for negotiations
except by virtue of his office as President of an independent
Confederacy and on this basis alone must proposals be made to him."(16)

There was another circumstance that may well have been Lincoln's
consolation in this tangle of cross-purposes. Only boldness could
extricate him from the mesh of his difficulties. The mesh was destined
to grow more and more of a snare; his boldness was to grow with his
danger. He struck the note that was to rule his conduct thereafter,
when, on the day he sent the final instructions to Greeley, in defiance
of his timid advisers, he issued a proclamation calling for a new draft
of half a million men.