till he had closed out the rebellion." Since the great danger was
now only that McClellan would become President in March, there was but
one thing to do--to try and finish the war before then. Raymond's advice
in favour of negotiations with the South now came, and Lincoln's mode of
replying to this has been noticed. Rumours were afloat that if McClellan
won in November there would be an attempt to bring him irregularly into
power at once. Lincoln let it be known that he should stay at his post
at all costs till the last lawful day. On August 23, in that curious way
in which deep emotion showed itself with him, he wrote a resolution upon
a paper, which he folded and asked his ministers to endorse with their
signatures without reading it. They all wrote their names on the back of
it, ready, if that were possible, to commit themselves blindly to support
of him in whatever he had resolved; a great tribute to him and to
themselves. He sealed it up and put it away.

How far in this dark time the confidence of the people had departed from
Lincoln no one can tell. It might be too sanguine a view of the world to
suppose that they would have been proof against what may be called a
conspiracy to run him down. There were certainly quarters in which the
perception of his worth came soon and remained. Not all those who are
poor or roughly brought up were among those plain men whose approval
Lincoln desired and often expected; but at least the plain man does exist
and the plain people did read Lincoln's words. The soldiers of the
armies in the East by this time knew Lincoln well, and there were by now,
as we shall see, in every part of the North, honest parents who had gone
to Washington, and entered the White House very sad, and came out very
happy, and taken their report of him home. No less could there be found,
among those to whom America had given the greatest advantages that birth
and upbringing can offer, families in which, when Lincoln died, a
daughter could write to her father as Lady Harcourt (then Miss Lily
Motley) wrote: "I echo your 'thank God' that we always appreciated him
before he was taken from us." But if we look at the political world, we
find indeed noble exceptions such as that of Charles Sumner among those
who had been honestly perplexed by Lincoln's attitude on slavery; we have
to allow for the feelings of some good State Governor who had come to him
with a tiresome but serious proposition and been a