tion have not yet been
counted! My faith in the ultimate good sense of the people is unshaken.
You can fool some of the people all the time. You can fool all of the
people sometimes. But you can't fool all the people all the time!

STEVENS

That's why we ask you to get off the ticket! You are to-day the most
unpopular man who ever sat in the Presidential chair. For the first
time in our history the effigy of a living President--your effigy--has
been publicly burned in the streets of American towns and cities, amid
the curses and jeers of the men who elected you! Your administration is
a failure--your conduct of the war a series of blunders----

LINCOLN

[_Brusquely._]

For example----

STEVENS

[_Furiously._]

For one thing--you have never yet chosen a successful General. The
South has not changed Commanders since Jeff Davis appointed Robert E.
Lee. In thirty days of the last campaign in a series of massacres, Lee
has killed and wounded sixty-two thousand of our men--more than he
himself commanded--and Grant has only reached the point where McClellan
stood in 1862. He could have marched there by McClellan's old line
without the loss of a man. Washington is piled with the wounded, the
dying and the dead. Your mail is choked with letters demanding the
removal of this butcher as our Commander, and you refuse--why?

LINCOLN

[_Smiling calmly._]

Well, now that you've _really_ let off steam, I think you'll feel
better, Stevens----!

STEVENS

I demand, sir, an answer to my question--why have you not removed
Grant?

LINCOLN

[_Quickly._]

Because I can't spare him! He is the one General we have developed who
knows how to fight--his business is not to reach any particular spot
where McClellan stood. McClellan was generally _standing_ somewhere--he
was a great engineer--of the stationary type---- Grant is a fighter.
His business is to find and destroy Lee's army--and his sledge hammer
blows are winning this war!

STEVENS

Winning--is he? And yet Lee sends a division under Jubal Early and
reconquers the Valley of Virginia--invades Maryland and Pennsylvania,
throws his shells into Washington and burns the home of one of your
Cabinet----

LINCOLN

And if old J