extremely animated, enlisting the interest of the
entire country. The result was a victory for Mr. Seymour. His
majority over General Wadsworth was nearly ten thousand. His vote
almost equaled the total of all the Democratic factions in the
Presidential election of 1860, while Mr. Wadsworth fell nearly
seventy thousand behind the vote given to Mr. Lincoln. The
discrepancy could be well accounted for by the greater number of
Republicans who had gone to the war, and for whose voting outside
the State no provision had been made. No result could have been
more distasteful to the Administration than the triumph of Mr.
Seymour, and the experience of after years did not diminish the
regret with which they had seen him elevated to a position of power
at a time when the utmost harmony was needed between the National
and State Governments.

REPUBLICAN DEFEAT IN ILLINOIS.

To the President the most mortifying event of the year was the
overwhelming defeat in Illinois. Great efforts were made by the
Republican party to save the State. Personal pride entered into
the contest almost as much as political principle, but against all
that could be done the Democrats secured a popular majority of
seventeen thousand, and out of the fourteen representatives in
Congress they left but three to the Republicans. They chose a
Democratic Legislature, which returned William A. Richardson to
the Senate for the unexpired term of Mr. Douglas,--filled since
his death by O. H. Browning who had been appointed by the Governor.
The crushing defeat of Mr. Lincoln in his own State had a depressing
effect upon the party elsewhere, and but for the assurance in which
the Administration found comfort and cheer, that the Democrats were
at home to vote while the Republicans were in the field to fight,
the result would have proved seriously discouraging to the country
and utterly destructive of the policy of emancipation as proclaimed
by the President.

In the five leading free States, the Administration had thus met
with a decisive defeat. The Democratic representatives chosen to
Congress numbered in the aggregate fifty-nine, while those favorable
to the Administration were only forty. In some other States the
results were nearly as depressing. New Jersey, which had given
half its electoral vote to Mr. Lincoln two years before, now elected
a Democratic governor by nearly fifteen thousand majority, and of