od train, the chief question was who should be the
Republican candidate. It was obviously not a time when a President of
even moderate ability and character, with all the threads in his hands,
could wisely have been replaced except for overwhelming reasons. But
since 1832, when Jackson had been re-elected, the practice of giving a
President a second term had lapsed. It has been seen that there was
friction, not wholly unnatural, between Lincoln and many of his party.
The inner circles of politicians were considering what candidate could
carry the country. They were doing so with great anxiety, for
disaffection was growing serious in the North and the Democrats would
make a good fight. They honestly doubted whether Lincoln was the best
candidate, and attributed their own excited mood of criticism to the
public at large. They forgot the leaning of ordinary men towards one who
is already serving them honestly. Of the other possible candidates,
including Chase, Fremont had the most energetic backers. Enough has been
said already of his delusive attractiveness. General Butler had also
some support. He was an impostor of a coarser but more useful stamp. A
successful advocate in Massachusetts, he had commanded the militia of the
State when they first appeared on the scene at Baltimore in 1861, and he
had been in evidence ever since without sufficient opportunity till May,
1864, of proving that real military incapacity of which some of Lincoln's
friends suspected him. He had a kind of resourceful impudence, coupled
with executive vigour and a good deal of wit, which had made him useful
in the less martial duties of his command. Generals in a war of this
character were often so placed that they had little fighting to do and
much civil government, and Butler, who had first treated slaves as
"contraband" and had dealt with his difficulties about negroes with more
heart and more sense than many generals, had to some extent earned his
reputation among the Republicans. Thus of those volunteer generals who
never became good soldiers he is said to have been the only one that
escaped the constant process of weeding out. To the end he kept
confidently claiming higher rank in the Army, and when he had signally
failed under Grant at Petersburg he succeeded somehow in imposing himself
upon that, at first indignant, general. Nothing actually came of the
danger that the public might find a hero in this man, who was neither
scrup