thus translated: "Resolved that the war is a failure"; and
the translation had that trenchant accuracy which is often found in
American popular epigram. The candidate chosen was McClellan; McClellan
in set terms repudiated the resolution that the war was a failure, and
then accepted the candidature. He meant no harm to the cause of the
Union, but he meant no definite and clearly conceived good. Electors
might now vote Democratic because the party was peaceful or because the
candidate was a warrior. The turn of fortune was about to arrest this
combination in the really formidable progress of its crawling approach to
power. Perhaps it was not only, as contemporary observers thought,
events in the field that began within a few days to make havoc with the
schemes of McClellan and his managers. Perhaps if the patience of the
North had been tried a little longer the sense of the people would still
have recoiled from the policy of the Democrats, which had now been
defined in hard outline. As a matter of fact it was only in the months
while the Chicago Convention was still impending and for a few days or
weeks after it had actually taken place that the panic of the Republicans
lasted. But during that time the alarm among them was very great,
whether it was wholly due to the discouragement of the people about the
war or originated among the leaders and was communicated to their flock.
Sagacious party men reported from their own neighbourhoods that there was
no chance of winning the election. In one quarter or another there was
talk of setting aside Lincoln and compelling Grant to be a candidate.
About August 12 Lincoln was told by Thurlow Weed, the greatest of party
managers, that his election was hopeless. Ten days later he received the
same assurance from the central Republican Committee through their
chairman, Raymond, together with the advice that he should make overtures
for peace.

Supposing that in the following November McClellan should have been
elected, and that in the following March he should have come into office
with the war unfinished, it seems now hardly credible that he would have
returned to slavery, or at least disbanded without protection the 150,000
negroes who were now serving the North. Lincoln, however, seriously
believed that this was the course to which McClellan's principles and
those of his party committed him, and that (policy and honour apart) this
would have been for military reasons fat