discontent,
represented truly this controlling body of voters. They thought they
knew. Two cries, at least, that rang loud out of the Babel of the hour,
should be heeded. One of these harked back to Niagara. In the anxious
ears of the managers it dinned this charge: "the Administration
prevented negotiations for peace by tying together two demands, the
Union must be restored and slavery must be abolished; if Lincoln had
left out slavery, he could have had peace in a restored Union." It was
ridiculous, as every one who had not gone off his head knew. But so many
had gone off their heads. And some of Lincoln's friends were meeting
this cry in a way that was raising up other enemies of a different sort.
Even so faithful a friend as Raymond, editor of The Times and Chairman
of the Republican National Executive Committee, labored hard in print to
prove that because Lincoln said he "would consider terms that embraced
the integrity of the Union and the abandonment of slavery, he did not
say that he would not receive them unless they embraced both these
conditions."(7) What would Sumner and all the Abolitionists say to
that? As party strategy, in the moment when the old Vindictive Coalition
seemed on the highroad to complete revival, was that exactly the tune to
sing? Then too there was the other cry that also made a fearful ringing
in the ears of the much alarmed Executive Committee. There was wild
talk in the air of an armistice. The hysteric Greeley had put it into
a personal letter to Lincoln. "I know that nine-tenths of the whole
American people, North and South, are anxious for peace--peace on any
terms--and are utterly sick of human slaughter and devastation. I know
that, to the general eye, it now seems that the Rebels are anxious to
negotiate and that we repulse their advances. . . . I beg you, I implore
you to inaugurate or invite proposals for peace forthwith. And in case
peace can not now be made, consent to an armistice for one year, each
party to retain all it now holds, but the Rebel ports to be opened.
Meantime, let a national convention be held and there will surely be no
war at all events."(8)

This armistice movement was industriously advertised in the Democratic
papers. It was helped along by the Washington correspondent of The
Herald who sowed broadcast the most improbable stories with regard to
it. Today, Secretary Fessenden was a convert to the idea; another day,
Senator Wilson had taken it up; again, th